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23.01.2008
Canadians
Canadians are NOT stupid NOR fat NEITHER arrogant. Let's have a closer look at those characteristics stepwise
In terms of inteligency Canadians are the same as the Czechs in my opinion. Lots of people in the Czech Republic might have the prejudice that all the USA inhabitants are stupid. Well, it's not the truth at least for Canadians :) There is only one interesting thing – Canadians are more naive and more likely to believe anything you told them. For example, my friend from Brazil told his home stay family's babysitter that Brazil is just a jungle and nothing else. Suprisingly she seemed to believe that.
You'd be suprised, but there aren't lots of fat people in Canada. However, when you meet someone who is kind of heavy, he or she is usually way too overweighted. When Canadians are fat, they have fat on every part of their body. It's not like in the Czech Republic where men owns big potbellies. However, needles to say that there are many fastfoods in Winnipeg – not only MacDonald and KFC, but also Wendy's, Burger King and A & W. By the way have you seen the movie "Super size me"? A friend of mine once told me that lots of people here had seen this movie, so they stopped eating at MacDonald's. However, they still go to all the other fastfoods. I have a funny experience related to this theme. My friends and I went to eat to Wendy's and there was a guy who was ordering XL fries, a double cheeseberger and then he asked for a XL diet coke :)
It's interesting how many Canadians know where the Czech Republic situated is and most of them even know that Prague is the capital city. Furthermore, lots of them actually have been to Prague and they say they liked it a lot. What else could they say? :P. In general they have pretty good knowledge about Europe. In fact I met only one guy that fits the Czech stereotype about the Americans. Let me show you our conversation. It looked aproximately like this:
..."Where are you from?" the Canadian guy asked me.
"The Czech Republic"
"Vow, that's really cool! What an amazing country!"
After this response I became suspicious whether he knows what he is talking about.
"Do you know where it is?"
"No"
"It's in Europe, right next to Germany"
"Where is Germany?"
At this point we were interrupted which probably prevented me from obtaining other interesting replies.
It's also interesting that Canadians say about Americans that they're ignorrant and doesn't know what's going on outside of their country. However, I'm missing the experience with the USA, so I can't tell whether it is a prejudice or not.
On the other hand I've realized how is it possible that some of the Americans don't have a clue about anything else than their our country. I was speaking with a guy from Serbia and I felt like a fool, because I had no idea if Serbia has a see or not and how many countries are there now in the area of former Jugoslavia whereas he knew all the important things about my country. I think the Americans just don't have a need to be interested in other countries. Besides this, think about how much have you been taught about USA from movies, music groups and so on. Are there actually any famous Czech films that are known international or any succesful Czech music groups? Thus, how do you expect "normal" American to know anything about a small country in Europe?
99% of the Canadian girls wear make-up. In addition, they wear it all the time – they had it on even when we went to a outdoor track competition. I still can't understand how is it possible that the make-up doesn't melt when they start sweating. It could have only two possible reasons. Either they don't sweat or the make-up simply doesn't melt. However, I still remember suncream flowing down my face when I was downhill skiing. Perhaps make-up is way different than suncream :)
Concerning Canadian humor and jokes there is one big difference. Nearly all the Canadians say "I'm just kidding" after they told a joke. I still wonder if it's just a custom or whethear they want to make sure that everybody understood that it in fact was a joke. They also use less irony and sarcasm than we do and it can happen that they won't understand a sarcastic joke.
Yesterday my chemistry teacher said: "If you experience putting in less effort then you are becoming canadiazined. I can only agree with him – Canada is the land of little effort.
In the next article I'll look at how have I changed so far after 4 months in Canada.
Comments
(Hekko [openID] - Mail - WWW)
Lots of people in the Czech Republic might have the prejudice that all the USA inhabitants are stupid. Well, it's not the truth at least for Canadians (...)
Oh, dear, you DO know Canada isn't in the USA, don't you? :))))
(Ted - Mail - WWW)
Hekko: :D
Well, I guess that when Canada is mentioned, lots of people think like "Oh it's in the north of the US" But it also might be only my prejudice.
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