Comparing Notes

In a tour group of 45 English speaking people, we are the only Americans. They are mostly from South Africa and Australia, some from the UK and New Zealand, and 1 couple from Canada. We had an opportunity to compare notes some on politics, the state of real estate, health care, and jobs. They all had way more knowledge of the US and what was going on than we had of the internal workings of their countries. When it came to health care, the one common denominator was that all of them were complicated. However, at the end of the day all of them have some kind of universal health care. No one was going to go bankrupt if they got sick in their countries although they were quick to point out that there are problems with any system, of course, and that they did rely more on their own health insurance than on the government plans.

One question that quite a few people asked which I found amusing was that they had heard that we only get 2 weeks of vacation and how did people possibly survive with only 2 weeks off a year??? I told them many people get more but that yes, it's not unusual. They were shocked. One thing they have that I liked is they have something called 'long service leave'. If you work for a company for 10 years they give you like 6-8 weeks off - a reward for your long service. They also encourage you to take it because if you don't and you leave the company they have to pay you cash for all of that leave. That's pretty cool.

Less than half had visited the US. One lady from New Zealand told us that she had been watching the past election and had decided that if Obama won she would visit the US. When he did, she and her family came over. She said that if the US was going to be the world leader than she thought that people should go and see the country that they are following. (An interesting perspective, I thought.). She was vocal and passionate when she said she loved the US. She said people were very nice to them. She described that she and her family were standing on the sidewalk in Chicago looking at a map and in 1 city block they were asked 3 times if they needed help. (Yeah Chicago! I was grateful - it's one family, one experience, but I was grateful for all people who are nice to visitors and strangers because I've seen people who are not...we have to win them over 1 person, 1 family at a time). She turns to me and said, "You know people don't ...um..have a great view of the US." She scanned my face, I think to see if I was shocked by this. She continued, "That changed for me after I went there." She turned to the group and said, "I tell everyone. I am okay with the US being the world leader, they are good people over there."