Talking about T.H. Lawrence

while cleaning out the gutter. That is the strange  American guy I am stuck with :-)
This is in continuation to this post .
I had a lot to learn. When I moved here now 11 years ago I believed that there wouldn't be many differences between the German and the American culture. There are so many things, that German people have taken over from America and maybe because  of the post-war history, many people also admired all things coming from the other side of "the pond". (There were more and more critical voices because of politics but that should not be a subject here). The first and only diapers that my mom was able to put around my butt came from a care package from America.
But I was really wrong. There are huge differences between the two cultures. I had to learn f.i. that there can be a very smart head hiding under eternal caps and a Stanford graduate in white socks and white sneekers below equally eternal blue jeans. Both picture in Germany the rather common, not so intellectual American. Rather the burger eating football  lover. Might I say that in Germany in certain parts of the society the surface, the outside, the knowledge about the rules of behavior are a lot more important than here?
I learned that there is a difference between Americans of the Westcoast and Americans of the Eastcoast. I came from a culture where people constantly criticize each other to a culture where already little kids hear : "good job" for the tiniest accomplishments. I totally had to change my feedback to students, while teaching at the Community College here.  I had to learn to deal with a little American kid, then 8 years old,  and that required a totally different approach to what I remembered from the upbringing of my own daughter, then 28 years old.
And my teacher in patience and tolerance, also towards myself, was the guy on that ladder. But you may guess that our first 2 to 3 years together were not all that easy.