I looked up to the US as a kid. Then I went to the US about 8-10 times in my teenage years (lost the count) due to my dad's work. We travelled through ~20 states. Only during those trips I realized in what poor life standards most Americans live. My wife also lived in the US for a year and had the same experience. She also found that average Americans have real weird believes about the rest of the world (this was in the nineties), like they would ask her whether Hitler is still alive, whether European only has US radio stations, and some believed that European's don't have fridges.
Another thing that surprised me was the segregation. One time we went out to eat something while crossing some states. Apparently we drove into a black neighborhood, and we walked into a large place with a buffet. And suddenly almost everyone was looking at us completely stunned. Then the other shoe dropped, we were the only white people, and they were probably surprised that white people showed up. They were extremely nice to us, but for me it also uncovered how weird the US is.
