Quote: (12-06-2010 09:56 AM)rudebwoy Wrote:
Has anyone noticed a kind of sadness to them, like they cannot be truly happy? A kind of seriousness like something happened to them in the past.!
It is not sadness, it is self-restraint. Internally they're as happy as you (or even more), they just do not show it up because our culture taught us that we need to hide our feelings from strangers.
Quote: (12-06-2010 10:29 AM)zanetti Wrote:
even the nice & friendly ones tend to have a 0.0 sense of American humour
(corrected by me)
Humor is something which is defined by the culture, and defined differently in every culture. If you think American humor is something universal, which is widespread and accepted everywhere, this is a big mistake. For an expat this is usually the most difficult part of the culture to grasp, and a lot of people
never could make it, no matter how long they lived in the country and proficient their language is.
First, there are things which are acceptable to laugh on and things which are not. For example, fart jokes are acceptable in USA but offensive in Russia. Racist jokes are acceptable in Russia - you can do one on a company meeting - but generally offensive in USA. When you're dealing with friends it is a little different, them being more tolerant to your jokes, but when you're dealing with strangers, an offensive joke may be enough to write you off. This is something one cannot get through no matter how long you loved in the country - I'm pretty sure I will never laugh on a fart joke.
Second, there are things which are based on known local traditions, celebrities, games and so on. Baseball joke? She has no idea what even the rules are, not to mention team names or players. Even after living five years in US I still keep a mile-high distance between me and anything related to baseball, and I'm sure it won't change until I die. Political joke? On Fri night the karaoke host made a joke about someone Glen Beks, who is some politician or whatever; I have no idea so it wasn't funny. Cartoons, movies, music - this all is part of culture, and all the jokes you make using those references may not be understandable to her at all.
One of a good examples of such a clever joke is Roosh's "car insurance" he uses in Bang. First time I've read it I thought something like "this is just lame, why would anyone actually laugh on that?" So I showed it to my American friends, and they all laughed and said it's quite interesting and funny. Of course their attempts to explain it to me failed.
Foreign humor is harder to learn than foreign language.