FFR бывает очень познавательным

[une-marmotte]

Не только Россию иностранцы считают диким местом. Европе, Австралии и даже Америке тоже не везёт:


Was the fic written by am American schoolgirl? Because there are apparently those who seem to think that Europe never quite grew out of the Middle Ages. Exchange students coming back from the USA told us about having been asked if we had cars. And fridges.

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Oh yes, the questions exchange students get asked! I never went myself, but classmates of mine reported being asked whether we had:

- cars (not only do we have them, we export them to you guys - what, you think Volkswagen is an English name?)
- shoes (uh...)
- wild kangaroos (someone is geographically challenged)
- the moon (okay, *now* it's just getting ridiculous)

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Mostly, the questions were fairly reasonable, cd players and mobile phones in 1996, divorces, president or king, etc. But I was also asked if in Poland, do we had:

- yup, cars and fridges?
- stereos? (I remember pointing at the stereo asking: what's that? while meaning the music that was playing, and the answer surpised me a bit)
- orange juice?
- churches? (I thought I would choke on the answer to that one.)
- paper money (no, we're not using stones anymore, never did in fact)

Oh, and I obviusly must have seen pyramids.

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I live in Australia. When I went to America, a kid (aged about 10) asked asked if we lived in... houses. I kid you not. Houses.
Also whether we had malls.
And whether I had a pet kangaroo.
In the end, I just answered "yes" to everything.

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I'm from Scotland, and a few months after moving to LA, a kid in my eighth grade class asked me how long I'd been in the country. When I told him it hadn't been very long, he looked impressed and said "Wow, you speak very good English!" There are no words.

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It goes the same way for European schoolkids. I did a six-month homestay program in Germany, and the kids kept asking questions like "Do you have cows/cheese/bread/Coca Cola (LOL)/bicycles/etc. in America?" And one of these kids was 15 years old, too.