Foreign visitors ♥ America
You can see the videos all over the internet: foreign visitors for the World Cup, enjoying the US – especially the food, the free refills on soda, and the friendliness.
You can read a description here, and YouTube is filled with reports such as this one, a compilation which I’ve chosen pretty much at random:
One theme that repeats itself is shock and wonder at the sheer size of America. Similar clips have been on YouTube for years, featuring foreign tourists reacting – mostly positively – to trips to the US. So it’s not just something about the World Cup visitors.
But I’ve noticed one topic lately that I’ve never seen before in this genre of videos. It’s about seeing yellow school buses:
I spent a few years at Los Alamos National Lab. finishing a Ph.D. and spent some considerable time hanging out with Klaus from Köln, Germany. Eventually, his postdoc came to an end and several of his immediate family members came over to visit him and they rented a large van.
For something like 2.5 weeks they drove the entire west coast into Cananda, then on the way back covered much of the southwest, including Texas. Many thousands of miles. I don’t recall if they ventured into Mexico, though I’d guess they did just for the bragging rights. Talk about overdosing on the vastness of North America.
They’re getting noticed because of the World Cup, but videos of foreign visitors enjoying the U.S. — whether it’s the food, shopping, natural beauty, Americans’ friendliness and hospitality, or just the vast size and diversity of the 50 states — have been popular on YouTube for years.
We enjoy them because it’s fun to see other people discovering the countless positive aspects of our country, but also because it’s easy for those of us who live here to take them for granted — so it’s nice to be reminded.
It seems to me that most of these videos are from the south. If they had been shot from left leaning areas like New York or Los Angeles it would be an entirely different story.