America presents itself as it really is, and such a trip is definitely many times more educational than a tourist tour of major US cities, which, in reality, will not allow you to fully touch the culture or understand the differences and similarities. Now, when I come across facts about American life online, I realize that I have experienced them myself: constantly running air conditioners and ice-cold drinks that make your teeth ache, friendliness and openness, neat blocks of residential areas interspersed with mobile homes, and huge pickup trucks covered in stickers.
And it is actually great that the program rules prohibit working in megacities – real American life is in small towns, which you can understand just by looking at the territorial demographics. Small towns are safer, cheaper, and more convenient for living.
In America, life seems to be maximally adapted for motorists: ubiquitous drive-thrus, sidewalks that suddenly end, and huge distances. However, walking from neighborhood to neighborhood allows you to fully explore the city and the country, noticing little things that a driver would not pay attention to.
It is a well-known truth that the age of majority in the USA is 21. However, in the minds of Americans, a person remains not quite an adult for a long time, and until 21, they are considered a child altogether. When locals found out that I was 19 ("Oh, you are such a baby!") and alone on the other side of the world, they were very surprised and said that I was very brave. From the concept of "teenager," which extends up to the age of 20, to calling institutes and colleges "school"—meaning the continuation of an unfinished process that began in kindergarten—Americans perceive people who are adults by Russian standards as still immature.
By the way, traveling alone is actually not that bad: it minimizes communication in Russian, encourages new acquaintances and closer contact with an unfamiliar culture (despite globalization, cultural differences turned out to be colossal), allows you to make wild plans, and makes you easy-going.
Moreover, a solo traveler cultivates new useful traits: independence, the ability to solve problems on their own, the development of social skills and the ability to find common ground (and thus develop a common language – English) with different people, or finding beauty in solitude, understanding accents, noticing everything around, etc.
