DISGRASIAN™

Canadians And Their Curious Milk-Dispensing Ways

I spent five years of my early childhood in Canada, and when we eventually moved back to Texas, one of the things that really tripped me up was how no one in the States drank milk out of a bag. The first lunch at my American elementary school was totally traumatic because I didn’t know how to open a milk carton. I observed the other kids opening theirs and tried faking it, but I wound up trying to open it from the wrong end, only to make a papery mess of things. I’m pretty sure the other kids thought I was retarded.

(The other lunchtime item I had never encountered during my time in the Great White North? Tater tots. A travesty!)

Years later, someone is finally exposing this great cultural divide. Phew.

[via BuzzFeed]

Filed under: Canadians, Canadiasians, Cultural Differences, Cultural Divides, Lunchtime Traumas, Milk Cartons, Milk Out of a Bag, Tater Tots

Hardass Asian Prep Schools

As a public high school graduate, I didn’t know what a prep school was until I went to college and found myself surrounded by kids who had gone to Exeter, Andover, and St. Paul’s, among others. I quickly learned that being a graduate of one of these elite schools meant you were better prepared to write a 5-page paper on, say, homoeroticism in The Iliad, more predisposed to wearing fleece, obsessed with being “mellow,” well-versed in “lax” (i.e. lacrosse), a lover or hater of the Dead; someone who used “summer” as a verb, was attracted to people in baggy pants, had an elaborate eating disorder, knew how to ski, and owned a bong or two.

Yesterday, the NY Times published a front-page story on first-tier Korean prep schools that serve as Ivy feeders, and they sound just as fun. Some of the things these schools have to offer:

• a 15-hour school day
• more than a month-longer school year than American high schools
• discouragement of teen romance as “a waste of time”
• weekend classes
• an average combined SAT score of 2203 out of 2400
• a daily schedule that begins with students rising at 6 for martial arts and ends around 2 a.m., when dorm lights are switched off

These schools seem exactly like their American counterparts, minus the prevalence of bong hits, Bob Marley, hacky sacks and, uh, anything remotely resembling freedom.

Source
Thanks, Dave!

Filed under: Bong Hits, Cultural Differences, Hardass Asian Prep Schools, Mellowness, No Pressure, Unreal Expectations, Weird Korean Behavior