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Something to keep in mind next time you're getting your wanderlust on.

I left Canada to travel the world for a year. A generation earlier, my father escaped Vietnam in a small boat. Don’t take your freedom of mobility for granted.

In August of 1983, at the height of the international humanitarian crisis in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, my father leapt onto a boat headed for the Gulf of Thailand — an escape he had already attempted 10 times before.

"If we’d stopped, they would shoot," my dad told my sisters and me, referring to the cảnh sát, or police. We looked at my mother, incredulous. She was nodding emphatically.


This tenth time, my father was lucky. Their boat managed to evade the Việt Cộng at every checkpoint; soon, they were out at sea. For two days, my father waited in the open waters that had already swallowed the lives of those brave enough to go before him. But again, he was lucky. Their crew was spotted by the knightly Chevalier, and the Frenchmen brought my father to safety at the Singaporean shore.

My father waited in a camp while Western deities deliberated his fate. Switzerland staked a claim, but he didn’t accept their offer; English was already difficult enough to learn, let alone German or French. Eventually, he was flown across the world and dropped off in Toronto, a cold, foreign city he would try his best to make his new home.

Like my father, I, too, have crossed continents and traveled far from home. At 20, filled with wanderlust, I embarked on a trip around the world. I visited a friend in Israel, toured ancient temple ruins in Myanmar, interpreted for doctors in Vietnam, interned at an NGO in Phnom Penh, partied in Siem Reap, partied some more in Koh Phangan, bathed in the Ganges river, practiced yoga at an ashram in Rishikesh, and taught English to monks in exile in Dharamshala. I went to many places far and foreign. I met new people, ate new foods, and learned new things.

But the circumstances that led to my travel, as opposed to my father’s, could not be more different.

My father, a Vietnamese army doctor turned political dissident, crossed the Pacific Ocean because he had no choice. My father traveled to escape a regime where enemies and academics were sent to ruthless "reeducation" (i.e. prison) camps. He had to leave behind his homeland, a country where kids walking home from school, including my mother growing up, knew to run into neighbors’ homes and hide under their beds when Cobra choppers and jet fighters and banana helicopters arrived overhead; rockets and grenades and explosives were about to be next.

Just one generation later, I had a powerful Canadian passport in my pocket and disposable income at hand. My travel was a choice.

One morning last year, I woke up and opened my laptop to see that an acquaintance — let’s call her Elizabeth — had posted on Facebook to encourage her virtual friends to seize the day and travel the world. Elizabeth, a recent American University graduate and a former sorority sister, was still high off a "transformative" trip to Indonesia earlier that year, a trip that mainly entailed hopping from one island to another, drinking cheap cocktails, and riding on exotic elephants (or at least, that’s what I gathered from her pictures). Life-changing indeed.

No one contested her point of view; an outpouring of likes and comments validated Elizabeth’s motivational status update. Even I found myself nodding my head in agreement. Change the world, and it’ll change you!

It’s so easy to forget that others may have had to make immense sacrifices to do something you’ve come to see not only as a rite of passage, but indeed, a right in itself.

Is travel a right? In the strictest legal sense of the word, I suppose you could argue "yes." The right to mobility is enshrined in Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which asserts that "everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." In the United States, the freedom of movement is protected in the United States Constitution, and in the 1958 Kent v. Dulles decision, Justice William O. Douglas opined, "Travel abroad, like travel within the country … may be as close to the heart of the individual as the choice of what he eats, or wears, or reads. Freedom of movement is basic in our scheme of values."

Everyone should have the right to travel, but, of course, that doesn’t hold up to reality.

For one, not everyone can afford it. My eight-month trip was paid for by two years of disposable income saved from my part-time campus job. Halfway through, I managed to squander all my own money, but I was lucky; my parents swooped in to finance the rest of my journey of self-discovery. Because of them, I was able to continue living my life-transforming, resume-padding life abroad. Thanks, Mom and Dad!

In any case, our carefully curated Instagram grids, full of lush Airbnb homes and landscapes with the ever-trendy "fade" filter applied, seldom mention how much the plane ticket to Byron Bay cost or who’s financing our Alternative Break to Myanmar (yes, my parents paid for that too). Instead, we use hashtags like #blessed, #wanderlust, and #35mmfilm and call it a day.

There’s also the opportunity cost of traveling. I wasn’t in a rush to start earning money, but many college students are. Over 70% of all "gappers" come from families whose parents have an estimated annual parental income of over $100,000. Case in point: At my ultra-altruistic, ultra-worldly, ultra-expensive alma mater, the average student’s family income is $107,753.

Besides the cost of travel, remember that this "right" is granted only to those who own an actual passport — and the nationality associated with your passport can determine whether foreign borders will invite you in or shut you out.

For many, the notion of traveling probably conjures up images of white sand beaches, modern skyscrapers, or pastel-colored colonial architecture as well as feelings of leisure, self-discovery, adventure, and hope.

But for millions of others, traveling comes with the credible fears of embarrassment, rejection, and even death.

According to various accounts, an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 Vietnamese boat people drowned at sea by the time the United Nations resettlement efforts ended in 1996. My father and his siblings were among the luckiest to have, quite literally, made it out alive.

Shortly after arriving in Canada, my penniless father (a doctor in Vietnam) went job hunting. An old family friend in Vietnam had told him to answer "yes" to every question in every interview. A pizzeria owner asked him if he knew how to make pizza, and my father, who had never seen a pizza before in his life, enthusiastically answered "yes." He was hired and, needless to say, fired a couple days later. My mother, also a doctor back in Vietnam, humbly spent her first couple of years in Toronto working in an electronics factory.

When my mother and her family arrived in Toronto as sponsored immigrants, they were reunited with their siblings, who had weathered the trip by boat six years earlier. The family of seven spent the years shortly thereafter sharing a two bedroom apartment.

While the teenage kids passed their days in high school classrooms, the adults worked their way toward becoming doctors, pharmacists, and engineers again. Although most of their education and retraining was supported by scholarships and loans from the Canadian government, everyone worked long hours and extra shifts at factories and restaurants in order to make ends meet. At their jobs, they endured not only laborious pain, but constant discrimination as well.

As a medical resident, my mother was examining a young boy’s ear when his mother angrily eyed her and pulled her son away. The boy’s mother asked for the doctor, even after my mother had already introduced herself as the doctor. The woman then exclaimed that she wanted another doctor, and kept insisting until the attending physician — an older white man — came into the room and to my mother’s defense.

But my mother knew not to cause a scene and remained silent. In fact, my mother’s had a lot of practice with staying quiet and obedient; the sassy, mouthy woman I know now had learned very quickly back then to keep her head down and her mouth shut when the white folks volleyed racial insults at her from across the factory assembly hall.

Welcome to Canada, they said.

My parents came to Canada with nothing but the clothes they wore on their backs; when I traveled, not only did I carry a fancy Osprey backpack and a snazzy Nikon camera, but also access to Canadian embassies as well as the comfort of knowing that when I was bored with "finding myself," I could always come home.

My father, on the other hand, relinquished his Vietnamese citizenship when he traveled to Canada. He believed in his heart that leaving meant saying goodbye to home forever.

With my perfect English and universally recognized North American accent, doors opened up to me on my travels that would have remained closed for others. “She’s American,” locals would exclaim to each other, wide-eyed, when I opened my mouth to speak. At first, I would try to tell them that I’m actually a Canadian studying in the United States, but it all got too confusing; anyway they didn’t really care about Canada, so after a while I just stopped trying.

Everywhere I went, people seemed to be obsessed with America.

I discovered that being treated like royalty isn’t uncommon when you’re a “Westerner” traveling abroad. Conversely, my parents’ accounts of hardship, discrimination, and sacrifice aren’t unusual for non-Western immigrants and refugees.

The next time you embark on a big adventure, remember that you carry much more than what’s in your bags. Remember that in your wallet, you carry the dollar, against which most other currencies in the world are matched. Your thin passports represent how lucky you are to travel visa-free to 166 countries. Your voice projects a widely recognized version of the world’s most universal language.

In light of today’s unfolding refugee crisis, remember that not everyone has your freedom of mobility.

This story first appeared on The Development Set and is reprinted here with permission. This is a shortened version of the original piece.

via Edith Lemay/NatGeo

Mia, Leo, Colin, and Laurent Pelletier pose on top of their camper van in front of adouble rainbow while in Mongolia.

True

“Blink,” a new film by National Geographic Documentary Films shows how a family with four children, three of whom are going blind, embraces life in the face of an uncertain future. It’s a testament to the resilience of the Lemay-Pelletier family but also a reminder for all of us to seize the day because all our futures are uncertain.

Edith Lemay and Sébastien Pelletier are the parents of Mia, a 13-year-old girl, and three boys: Léo, 11, Colin, 9, and Laurent, 7. Over the last six years, they’ve learned that Mia and the two youngest boys have retinitis pigmentosa, a rare genetic disease in which the cells of the retina slowly die. As the disease progresses, the person develops “tunnel vision” that shrinks until very little vision remains.

The diagnosis devastated the parents. "The hardest part with the diagnosis was inaction. There's nothing they can do about it. There's no treatment,” Edith says in the film.


However, even though the parents couldn’t affect the progress of the disease, they could give their children’s senses an epic experience that would benefit them for a lifetime.

“We don’t know how fast it’s going to go, but we expect them to be completely blind by mid-life,” said the parents. Mia’s impairment advisor suggested they fill her visual memory with pictures from books. “I thought, I’m not going to show her an elephant in a book; I’m going to take her to see a real elephant,” Edith explains in the film. “And I’m going to fill her visual memory with the best, most beautiful images I can.”

The Pelletier family (from left): Mia, Sebastien, Colin, Edith Lemay, Laurent and Leo inKuujjuaq, Canada.via National Geographic/Katie Orlinsky

This realization led to an inspiring year-long journey across 24 countries, during which every family member experienced something on their bucket list. Mia swam with dolphins, Edith rode a hot-air balloon in Cappadocia, and Léo saw elephants on safari.

Colin realized his dream of sleeping on a moving train while Sébastien saw the historic site of Angkor Wat.

“We were focusing on sights,” explains Pelletier. “We were also focusing a lot on fauna and flora. We’ve seen incredible animals in Africa but also elsewhere. So we were really trying to make them see things that they wouldn’t have seen at home and have the most incredible experiences.”

Cameras followed the family for 76 days as they traveled to far-flung locales, including Namibia, Mongolia, Egypt, Laos, Nepal and Turkey. Along the way, the family made friends with local people and wildlife. In a heartbreaking scene, the boys wept as the family had to leave behind a dog named Bella he befriended in the mountains of Nepal.

But the film isn't just about the wonders of nature and family camaraderie. The family's trip becomes a “nightmare” when they are trapped in a cable car suspended hundreds of feet above the Ecuadorian forest for over 10 hours.

annapurna range, blink, nat geoLeo, Laurent, Edith, Colin, Mia, and Sebastien look out at the mountains in the Annapurna range.via MRC/Jean-Sébastien Francoeur

As expected, NatGeo’s cinematographers beautifully capture the family's journey, and in the case of “Blink,” this majestic vision is of even greater importance. In some of the film's quietest moments, we see the children taking in the world's wonders, from the vast White Desert in Egypt to a fearless butterfly in Nepal, with the full knowledge that their sight will fail one day.

Along the way, the family took as many pictures as possible to reinforce the memories they made on their adventure. “Maybe they’ll be able to look at the photographs and the pictures and they will bring back those stories, those memories, of the family together,” Edith says.

But the film is about more than travel adventures and the pain of grief; ultimately, it’s about family.

“By balancing [the parents’ grief] with a more innocent and joyous tale of childlike wonder and discovery, we felt we could go beyond a mere catalog of locations and capture something universal,” the directors Edmund Stenson and Daniel Roher, said in a statement. “Keeping our camera at kid-height and intimately close to the family, we aimed to immerse the audience in the observational realities of their daily life, as well as the subtle relationships between each of them. This is a film built on looks, gestures and tiny details—the very fabric of our relationships with one another.”

Ultimately, “Blink” is a great film to see with your loved ones because it’s a beautiful reminder to appreciate the wonders of our world, the gift of our senses and the beauty of family.

The film will open in over 150 theaters in the U.S. and Canada beginning Oct. 4 and will debut on National Geographic Channel and stream on Disney+ and Hulu later this year. Visit the “Blink” website for more information.

File:L.N.Tolstoy Prokudin-Gorsky.jpg - Wikipedia

Leo Tolstoy was a Russian novelist known for epic works such as"War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina.” His life experiences—from witnessing war to spiritual quests—profoundly influenced his writings and gave him profound insights into the human soul.

His understanding of emotions, motivations and moral dilemmas has made his work stand the test of time, and it still resonates with people today.


Juan de Medeiros, a TikTokker who shares his thoughts on philosophy, recently shared how Tolstoy knew if someone was highly intelligent, and his observation says something extraordinary about humanity.

“The more intelligent a person is, the more he discovers kindness in others,” Tolstoy once wrote. “For nothing enriches the world more than kindness. It makes mysterious things clear, difficult things easy, and dull things cheerful.”

@julianphilosophy

Intelligent people are kind #intelligent #intelligence #kindness #smart #tolstoy #men #women

De Medeiros boiled down Tolstoy’s thoughts into a simple statement: “Intelligent people are unafraid to be kind.” He then took things a step further by noting that Tolstoy believed in the power of emotional intelligence. "To have emotional intelligence is to see the good in other people, that is what Tolstoy meant, that to be intelligent is to be kind," he added.

It seems that, according to de Medeiros, Tolstoy understood that intelligent people are kind and perceptive of the kindness in others. The intelligent person is conscious of the kindness within themselves and in the world around them.

Through the words of Tolstoy, de Medeiros makes a point that is often overlooked when people talk about intelligence. Truly smart people are as in touch with their hearts as they are with their minds.


This article originally appeared on 10.13.23

Family

'It's not Little Sun': Mom admits she's having trouble pronouncing her newborn's name

It was fine 'til other people tried to say it and now she's confused.

via JustusMoms29/TikTok (used with permission)

Justus Stroup is starting to realize her baby's name isn't that common.

One of the many surprises that come with parenthood is how the world reacts to your child’s name. It’s less of a surprise if your child has a common name like John, Mohammed, or Lisa. But if you give your child a non-traditional name that’s gender-neutral, you’re going to throw a lot of folks off-guard and mispronunciations are going to be an issue.

This exact situation happened with TikTok user Justus Stroup, who recently had her second child, but there’s a twist: she isn’t quite sure how to pronounce her child’s name either.

"I may have named my daughter a name I can't even pronounce," Stroup opens the video. "Now, I think I can pronounce it, but I've told a couple of people her name and there are two people who thought I said the same exact thing. So, I don't know that I know how to [pronounce] her name correctly."



@justusmoms29

Just when you think you name your child something normal! #2under2mom #postpartum #newborn #momsoftiktok #uniquenames #babyname #babygirl #sahm #momhumor

Stroup’s daughter is named Sutton and the big problem is how people around her pronounce the Ts. Stroup tends to gloss over the Ts, so it sounds like Suh-en. However, some people go hard on the Ts and call her “Sut-ton.”

"I'm not gonna enunciate the 'Ts' like that. It drives me absolutely nuts," she noted in her TikTok video. "I told a friend her name one time, and she goes, 'Oh, that's cute.' And then she repeated the name back to me and I was like, 'No, that is not what I said.'"

Stroup also had a problem with her 2-year-old son’s speech therapist, who thought the baby’s name was Sun and that there weren’t any Ts in the name at all. "My speech therapist, when I corrected her and spelled it out, she goes, 'You know, living out in California, I have friends who named their kids River and Ocean, so I didn't think it was that far off.'"

Stroup told People that she got the name from a TV show called “The Lying Game,” which she used to watch in high school. "Truthfully, this was never a name on my list before finding out I was pregnant with a girl, but after finding out the gender, it was a name I mentioned and my husband fell in love with," says Stroup. "I still love the name. I honestly thought I was picking a strong yet still unique name. I still find it to be a pretty name, and I love that it is gender neutral as those are the type of names I love for girls."

The mother could choose the name because her husband named their son Greyson.



The commenters thought Stroup should tell people it’s Sutton, pronounced like a button. “I hear it correctly! Sutton like Button. I would pronounce it like you, too!” Amanda wrote.

“My daughter’s name is Sutton. I say it the same way as you. When people struggle with her name, I say it’s Button but with a S. That normally immediately gets them to pronounce it correctly,” Megan added.

After the video went viral, Stroup heard from people named Hunter and Peyton, who are dealing with a similar situation. “I've also noticed the two most common names who run into the same issue are Hunter (people pronouncing it as Hunner or HUNT-ER) and Payton (pronounced Pey-Ton or Pey-tin, most prefer it as Pey-tin),” she told Upworthy.

“Another person commented saying her name is Susan and people always think it is Season or Steven,” Stroup told Upworthy. After having her second child, she learned that people mix up even the simplest names. “No name is safe at this point,” she joked.

The whole situation has Stroup rethinking how she pronounces her daughter’s name. Hopefully, she got some advance on how to tell people how to pronounce it, or else she’ll have years of correcting people in front of her. "Good lord, I did not think this was going to be my issue with this name," she said.

Gen Zer asks how people got around without GPS, Gen X responds

It's easy to forget what life was like before cell phones fit in your pocket and Google could tell you the meaning of life in less than .2 seconds. Gen Z is the first generation to be born after technology began to move faster than most people can blink. They never had to deal with the slow speeds and loud noises of dial up internet.

In fact, most people that fall in the Gen Z category have no idea that their parents burned music on a CD thinking that was peak mix tape technology. Oh, how wrong they were. Now songs live in a cloud but somehow come out of your phone without having to purchase the entire album or wait until the radio station plays the song so you can record it.

But Gen Z has never lived that struggle so the idea of things they consider to be basic parts of life not existing are baffling to them. One self professed Gen Zer, Aneisha, took to social media to ask a question that has been burning on her mind–how did people travel before GPS?


Now, if you're older than Gen Z–whose oldest members are just 27 years old–then you likely know the answer to the young whippersnapper's question. But even some Millennials had trouble answering Aneisha's question as several people matter of factly pointed to Mapquest. A service that requires–you guessed it, the internet.

Aneisha asks in her video, "Okay, serious question. How did people get around before the GPS? Like, did you guys actually pull a map and like draw lines to your destination? But then how does that work when you're driving by yourself, trying to hold up the map and drive? I know it's Gen Z of me but I kind of want to know."

@aneishaaaaaaaaaaa I hope this reaches the right people, i want to know
♬ original sound - aneishaaaaaaa

These are legitimate questions for someone who has never known life without GPS. Even when most Millennials were starting to drive, they had some form of internet to download turn-by-turn directions, so it makes sense that the cohort between Gen Z and Gen X would direct Aneisha to Mapquest. But there was a time before imaginary tiny pirates lived inside of computer screens to point you in the right direction and tales from those times are reserved for Gen X.

The generation known for practically raising themselves chimed in, not only to sarcastically tell Millennials to sit down but to set the record straight on what travel was like before the invention of the internet. Someone clearly unamused by younger folks' suggestion shares, "The people saying mapquest. There was a time before the internet kids."

Others are a little more helpful, like one person who writes, "You mentally note landmarks, intersections. Pretty easy actually," they continue. "stop at a gas station, open map in the store, ($4.99), put it back (free)."

"Believe it or not, yes we did use maps back then. We look at it before we leave, then take small glances to see what exits to take," someone says, which leaves Aneisha in disbelief, replying, "That's crazyy, I can't even read a map."

"Pulled over and asked the guy at the gas station," one person writes as another chimes in under the comment, "and then ask the guy down the street to make sure you told me right."

Imagine being a gas station attendant in the 90s while also being directionally challenged. Was that part of the hiring process, memorizing directions for when customers came in angry or crying because they were lost? Not knowing where you were going before the invention of the internet was also a bit of a brain exercise laced with exposure therapy for those with anxiety. There were no cell phones so if you were lost no one who cared about you would know until you could find a payphone to check in.

The world is so overly connected today that the idea of not being able to simply share your location with loved ones and "Ask Siri" when you've gotten turned around on your route seems dystopian. But in actuality, if you took a few teens from 1993 and plopped them into 2024 they'd think they were living inside of a sci-fi movie awaiting aliens to invade.

Technology has made our lives infinitely easier and nearly unrecognizable from the future most could've imagined before the year 2000, so it's not Gen Z's fault that they're unaware of how the "before times" were. They're simply a product of their generation.

Pop Culture

Non-Americans share weird things about the U.S. that Americans don't realize are weird

Apparently American conversational habits are legendary. 🇺🇸🤝

Our relationship to coffee is like no other.

One very fun thing about living in a vast, multicultural world is getting to discover how certain ways of life that you find completely ordinary are actually quite baffling to those outside of those customs.

Americans, for instance, might have no idea how strange things like being able to substitute things in restaurants or having toilets with a TON of water in them can seem to non-Americans.

How do we know this? Non-Americans said so.

Recently, Redditor rickyjones75 asked, "Non-Americans who have been to the US: "What is the weirdest thing about America that Americans don't realize is weird?" And man, the responses were just too good not to share.


One thing that soooo many people mentioned, which might come as a surprise, was just how friendly Americans are.

Our social skills are apparently second to none—be it striking up random conversation or just being polite and kind to strangers.

As u/Muter put it, “Yall can strike a conversation with a tree. You literally don’t need anyone to respond and you’ll yabber away relentlessly,” adding, “I love it, I’m a fairly quiet dude - New Zealand’s a fairly reserved place, so just being able to stream your consciousness out like that is just something truly remarkable..”

u/Guycg also wrote, “Americans can strike up a sincere conversation and not be weird about it. No one precedes a question with 'Sorry to be weird'. They don't feel embarrassed if they don't know something. They can listen to you tell a story without jumping in to tell a vaguely similar story related to them.”

“I went there for university and honestly Americans just do a lot of little things that are generally nice. Holding the door open, smiling if you make eye contact while walking, randomly saying a quick greeting, etc. Random compliments too, and I never got the vibe that people were just making them up,” shared u/faeriefountain_

u/Bungle_bogs also noted how Americans are so “enamored you are with British culture and people.”

“I was invited to a BBQ, in a public place, by someone that I met because he liked the t-shirt I was wearing. I felt like some sort of celebrity! I’m an average guy, but everyone wanted to chat to me,” they said, adding, “I’ve traveled extensively and have met many other nationalities, whilst in their country. I’ve been made to feel welcome in almost all, but how I was treated once my accent was heard in the US was on another level.”

Also, it’s not just America’s tipping culture that leaves non-Americans scratching their heads. Here’s what a few folks had to say.

“The options when ordering food, I thought it was a TV joke! I feel naughty asking to swap chips for mash but you guys can request pretty much anything!” -Bizzle_B

“Weirdest thing for me, visiting Madison, Wisconsin, was the absolute top cheese curd selection and cheap and delicious local beer.” -u/Throwawaythisoneplz

“My friend from the Netherlands described his visit to the US as the 'land of endless choices' which is how Americans like it.” -u/RedSolez

“The restaurants expect you to NOT finish the food and take it home. My mother finds taking home leftovers from a restaurant to be embarrassing and will not do it. But American restaurants have portion sizes that seem to expect this.” -u/Repulsive_Tear4528

Aaaaand we also might have a caffeine problem (masking a productivity problem, of course).

“Coffee in the states is a ‘to go’ thing while in the rest of the world it's a ‘sit and relax’ thing,” said u/vivalaroja2010

"Coffee all the time. I got a tattoo in Barcelona and was completely embarrassed when I asked the artist if he wanted a coffee from next door. He told me, 'Oh no, I have to keep working.' He thought I wanted to go sit with him for a while."—u/MattSk87

America’s signature love of diversity in many forms also manifests itself in our lawmaking, which can be baffling to an outsider.

“Radically different laws for each state? like you could be illegal in one, then travel a few miles, then boom you're safe?” asks u/Frequent_Print7915

u/omnipresent_sailfish might have hit the nail on the head when they quipped, "The United States is not so much a single country as it is 50 raccoons in a trench coat."

Driving around in America seems to feel very odd as well.

“The gigantic open spaces everywhere. SO.MUCH.SPACE.” -u/Murmurmira

“The billboards on the interstates.... 'Only 20 miles to....,' 'Only 15 miles to....' and some chain or business. Oh, and fireworks... everywhere…” -u/Iracing_Muskoka

On a related note…"Driving through rural Oregon on US26 and seeing billboards proclaiming Hillary Clinton to be the anti-Christ who wants to steal your guns and eat babies."u/ConstableBlimeyChips

“Tailgating on highway (even people complaining about tailgaters were themselves often tailgating).” - u/bolyai

"The car dependency. I was in LA, and when I said I was walking to places, people looked at me like I was out of my mind."—u/VisibleElephant

“The flags everywhere.” -u/davorg

Then there were a few things that even Americans can probably agree are on the weirder side:

“Putting the real estate agent's face on the for-sale signs.” -u/toastehmonstah

“Prescription drug ads on TV that casually say ‘side effects may include death.’ I was shocked.”-u/Lattice-shadow

“Your news channels display FAR TOO MUCH info on the screen.” -uRaioc2436

"Not using the coin/token system for your shopping carts. And while on the subject, grocery baggers are also super weird."—u/No_nukes_at_all"

The love for all things drive-thru. You can find 30 cars in a drive-thru and not a single person inside a place."—u/PrettyBoyLarge

"I've never been to the US, but something I think is really weird is how the election works there."—u/Cinefilo0802

“You guys do love your big cars, huh :p” -u/Bman1465

“The toilet is so FULL of water. I always have to convince myself that I'm not about to dunk my cheeks.” -u/Hazz3r

Speaking of toilets…"The gaps in toilet stalls."—u/Affectionate-Emu1374

“You advertise antidepressants on the TV. 🤯”-u/Melonpan78

And then some that totally caught us off guard:

"The taste of apples. I've tried ones in Turkey, New Zealand, Japan, Thailand, and China, and they all taste pretty much the same. American apples, on the other hand, are like frozen French fries with all the sweetness sucked out and replaced purely by weird sourness. My German, French, and Japanese friends also agreed with me."—u/PassakornKarn

"Measuring distance in time. (ex: 'I'm two hours away from you')."—u/sss100100

Dorito chips and Cheetos have like ten times the amount of orange powder. Everything is so sweet and tastes 'heavy' for some reason." —u/Bman1465 (Hmm, maybe this one isn't so much of a surprise…)

"Using paper towels to wipe things in and out of their homes. ESPECIALLY if they are inside the house." —u/passionate_milf

"I find military people boarding airplanes first strange."—u/MrChicken23

"Chips with everything; if you invite Americans to a party, definitely bring chips. Even if it's a romantic dinner, be prepared for chips." —u/Exotic_Second2734

"I was there on Valentine's Day. Random wait staff and hotel staff wished me a happy Valentine's Day and gave me roses. It was so weird. In Australia, it's a thing for couples only." —u/harrywho23

Lastly, our favorite: “They have those angry sinks that chop sh_t.” -u/Mind_Extract

Bet you’ve never thought of a garbage disposal that way. And you’ll never think about it the same way again.

Children playing at a daycare

There’s a popular sentiment among some stay-at-home parents and those with a family member taking care of their kids that it’s better than sending them to daycare. One common criticism is that parents who send their kids to daycare are letting other people raise their children.

This causes many parents to feel ashamed that they can’t be there for their children during the day.

However, Veronica, a mother of two, believes that stay-at-home moms who shame those who send their kids to daycare must stop perpetuating this myth because there are some great benefits that kids get out of daycare.


Veronica shared why that “narrative” needs to be reconsidered in a viral TikTok video with over 56,000 views.

@vfrieds

Giving parents guilt for daycare is CRAZY #daycare #momguilt #workingmom #daycarelife #workingparent

“I hate the narrative that if you send your kids to daycare, you're not raising them,” Veronica begins the video. “And people are like, ‘Oh, you know, we made some sacrifice. My kid used to have fun at Water Day, but now we go to the water park together’ and she's better for it,’” she said.

Then she shared four big reasons why parents need to stop daycare-shaming.

1. Not all parents can stay home

“One, that's not an option for every family. So, stop making moms feel like crap because they send their kids to daycare.”

2. Kids have fun at daycare

"Two, my kid freaking loves Water Day and daycare. In fact, she gets pissed when I pick her up 'cause she's having fun with her friends.'"

3. Kids learn a lot at daycare

“Three, she's so smart because they teach her so many things there. So smart.”

4. You don’t have to be either/or

“Like, I'm instilling morals with her. I see her more than her daycare teacher sees her. I can raise her and she can still have fun at school. They're not mutually exclusive like things.”

daycare, stay-at-home moms, parentingChildren playing at a daycare.via Canva

The video's commenters were overwhelmingly on Veronica's side. The most popular comment was from a woman who mentioned that stay-at-home moms will eventually send their kids to school. "My question to all the moms that feel that way, are they planning to stop raising their kids when they start kindergarten? Like, do they think they’re just done when they start 5k?" Tayler asked.

Others shared some of the many benefits that come with going to daycare.

"It's really frustrating when people assume daycare is something negative. I often say that we WANT her in school, she's learning so much and has great social skills and independence,” Elmarie wrote. "I’m an early intervention service coordinator and kids speech and emotional skills usually improve so much when they start daycare and school,” Tay added.

Is daycare good for children?

What do the experts say? Regarding whether sending your kids to daycare is outsourcing parenting, the findings show that home life has a much more significant impact on a child’s development than daycare. “An over-arching finding in the literature is that daycare influences are less important than home influences, even for children who spend much time in daycare,” Noam Shpancer Ph.D. writes in Psychology Today.

On the negative side, research shows that the quality of the daycare is very important and that kids raised in low-quality establishments can have some behavioral problems later on. On the positive side, daycare benefits “cognitive development and school readiness” in children and especially helps low-income children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Given the positive aspects of having children in daycare, it’s interesting that parents are still shamed for doing so. Parents like Veronica should be happy about their parenting decisions because there is little to suggest that sending their kids to one means they aren’t raising them. Ultimately, the most important thing is quality care; if a child is in good hands, it shouldn’t matter where they happen to be.