Sparkly and Shopping – you are both making sweeping false generalizations about Americans and Israelis. Everything that each of you said about Americans only applies to some Americans and can apply to some Israelis as well, and the same with the things you said about Israelis.
There are many Americans who don’t believe in going to College and do believe in getting married young and there are also Americans who smoke. There are also many Americans who are very mature. In terms of the seminaries, I know a girl who attended a seminary that placed Shana Bet Americans with Shana Alef Israelis or American/Israelis, and the Americans had a very hard time because the Shana Alef Israelis were so much more immature than them and were at the stage they had been at a year before.
In any case, I just want to remind everybody that it is Loshon Hara to speak about groups of people within Am Yisrael. It is the Nine Days and hopefully, if we work on not speaking LH and increasing our Ahavas Yisrael, the Beis HaMikdash will be up before Tisha B’Av and we won’t have to fast this year!!!! So let’s get to work (myself included) and start thinking about good things to say about each other.
I think that each person here should write a post listing the maalehs of a group she does not belong to, and we will vote on the best post!