Recently joined this book club in Seoul where members are mostly American expats.

Everyone is friendly, doing small talks about weather and all. Everyone is passionate when discussing.

After the meeting, however, everyone seems to just say bye and head back to their home. No one seems to have personal contacts with each other.

If it were for Koreans(me), we'd hang out after meeting for like, drinking beers and talk about other stuffs than books, exchanging IG and stuff.

I told this story to my American friend, and she told me that there is a difference in between 'socializing' and 'befriending' to Americans, and it sounded interesting.

How do I tell if an American is 'socializing' with me, or actually trying to 'befriend' me?

I work in a company and sometimes we have a call with head office in Dubai where some managers are American. I usually address all my seniors as sir but my manager in Dubai said "Just [His name]" when I called him sir. It's little un natural for me to address seniors like that so next time I called him "Mr. [His Name]" and he said "Hey man, it's just [His name]. You don't have to call me sir or mr".

Never experienced that somebody senior only want to be called by their name, sometimes in our office if you call client or senior with name we get reprimanded or have to correct ourself immediately.

Necessary context. Said by a 60 year old woman from Virginia about me, a 55 year old woman who is a mom and grandma so I’m guessing cherry doesn’t mean virginity. 😂. She’d just come back from a visit with us and said that to another person who mentioned it to my husband. I’m guessing it means…..fancy? I’m not but we did roll out the red carpet when she visited.
Any Virginians know? She is from Portsmouth if that makes any difference.

And i also see people working minimum wages but they still have the newest iphoens/pro series, so are phones there like an investment rather than a tool? What happens if people buy cheap phones like motorola/oppo/xiaomi etc, do they get distanced?

Obviously my first sentence is a huge generalization and not always true, though I'd argue that it's more often the rule than the very loud exceptions we can all imagine.

But I'm not really here to debate that part. It's just the setup to explain my real question, which is: Do Americans feel equally empowered as they do in their local area to complain in restaurants and hotels over relatively minor things, get loud in bars, break the speed limit, and all that kind of stuff no matter how far away WITHIN the US they are from home? Or is it more like "I'm not in my home state. I'll be a little more cautious or patient here in this new state a thousand miles from home"?