Hi，everyone and welcome back to America under the Microscope.Hello，James.

Hi，Lulu. Hi，everyone.

So, what are we gonna talk about today?

Well. At the time we recording it was recently May 1st holiday in China and we are having 5 days of rest and relaxation. Now, I wanted to ask whether Chinese schools had kind of a spring break.

Spring break? What is that? We already have very long winter and summer holidays. Adding a spring break, you pretty much don't have to go to school the whole year.

Well, spring break in America is a one week break that students have usually in March or April.

That's right in the middle of the term. Why would you have a break?

Well. It's not always in the middle of the term. It depends on the school. So, some schools have three academic terms a year.

Oh, I see I know that.So you have a spring break，a summer break and a winter break.

Yeah, the end of the terms. For other school’s system, the midterm break. So in the fall, we have thanksgiving break, which is a midterm break. And then we have a spring break, which is another midterm break.

Ok. So you have two extra midterm breaks. But you know what? I sense that spring break is not as innocent as a midterm break. Just one week holiday, like we have May day holiday, not like that. Because based on my years of experience either talking to people or really watching the TV and films.

That's your mistake watching TV and films.

Yeah. Spring break always has that crazy undertone.

All right. Yes. This is true. Spring break has an image of being a wild fun party time where people will go to sunny, beach locations. You have young men, young women out playing, drinking, having fun. Well. This is something that does happen. Reality...is a bit more boring.

It is not all beautiful people on the beach wearing bikinis.

Yeah, I wouldn't look very good on the beach.

You probably have seen it in many films and TV shows.

Yeah, it’s a common theme.

But does every student get it like university students and also even secondary school students?

Yeah, so American students have spring break at all levels of school. There's a spring break in elementary school, middle school, high school, university. Yeah, not all at the same time which can be a pain for parents.

Parents don't get any break.

No, cause it’s not a holiday. So this is one of the things. For university, university student doesn't go to school, they can take care of themselves. But when you have like elementary school students, they have a week off from school, you still have to go to work.

Yeah. And who's gonna take care of them?

This causes some issues because for some parents they don't like spring break for the younger students because child care is important.

Yeah, but we're not gonna focus on kids.

No, we'll focus on the university level.

Because ...kids... what are they gonna do? They're gonna stay at home and do what...

They will play video games all days that’s what they do. For college, now during spring break at college, the reality is most students just go home.

Oh?!Is it that boring?

Yeah, because most American students don't have enough money to go travel to the beach and have fun unless you live near.

I see. So let me guess. You were quite far away from the beach when you were in university.

Yeah. My university is way up in the North. If I wanted to travel somewhere to have a fun, warm, sunny beach vacation, I would have to go to the south part of California, which is a pretty good distance away. And airline tickets were kind of expensive. I was a poor student. I didn't have enough money to fly down there. Let alone pay for accommodation, food and all those other things.

It is costly. I mean the whole point of spring break if you believe in the pop culture, it's supposed to be not that costly when you just go to a nearby beach and then you just drink cheap alcohol and then use party all day.

Yeah, so that's fine if you can do that. So if you're someone who lives in California. Yeah, that's easy to do. Or if you live, a lot of the case, in the east coast, the east coast, it's a lot easier to get to beach location at a much lower price.

What are the big beach locations? Spring break location.

The most common ones, most popular ones, at least inside the country, would be Florida. Always sunny, warm. That's a good time of year. Lots of people live there. So a big thing. You also get quite a few people in South Carolina. California? Not as much. Because California also has lots of beaches but the location of the California beaches are always in kind of high cost areas.

It might be cheaper to go to some other states.

But a real big one is actually going to Mexico.

Is it because going to Mexico in some situation is actually cheaper than partying inside the country?

There's two reasons for this. One it's cheaper. Second, the drinking age.

Oh, of course. Because in America you gotta be over 21 to drink.

You have to be 21 to drink.

And in Mexico?

I don't know, there is no drinking age in Mexico.

I see. So you sort of bypass that. You don't even have to make fake ID.

I have my first drink in Mexico.

And when was that? I dare ask.

In middle school.

WOW. I see. So they go there to bypass the drinking age rule.

Right? So Mexico is cheaper, they can drink. So if you had wanted to go drinking in America spring break, you have to be 21 to buy the stuff. Going to Mexico, you don't have to be. So you can do that. Things are cheaper, but then again, you still need to pay for transportation and not all students have that.

I suppose some students will just carpool.

Carpooling is an option. That's one thing you can do and even going to Mexico. But the locations of spring break in Mexico would be a really long drive. You drive there three days, have one day of break and rest, you head back home and go to school.

Doesn't sound that much fun. It becomes a road trip rather than a beach holiday.

A road’s log.

But the whole point of spring break is just basically drinking, dancing, having fun.

Yeah, what students do they go on the spring break trips. A big part is hanging out with your friends, swimming on the beach, drinking, dance clubs, partying, meeting people, making friends, finding romance stuff like that.

Making bad decisions. Lots of bad decisions.

lots of it. Well. They are young college students, they have to learn.

Yeah, but there are also a lot of sort of advertising opportunities. When it comes to spring break, I know there are a lot of brands who are gearing towards young people. Right? They would use that a spring break as some sort of a selling point.

Yeah, so if you watch a lot of advertising, you'll see, not so much now, but if you watch them like a couple of months ago in America. They would like buying these clothes for spring break, come to this location or this is the perfect spring break food, spring break drink, and so on. So they do target towards these college students. But also, some of these towns directly target them because these towns can make a lot of money on the spring breakers.

But these towns they probably don't have a lot of local residents? They are mostly just shops or what not for tourism.

There are mostly tourist city locations but usually the time is spring break. It’s not a busy travel season.

A low season.

It's a low season for a lot of places because people have to work, There's no big public holidays.

I see.

Because students don't all have been brought together at the same time. So you have a group of people who can take a break so you can bring them there to make money off of them.

But are there any problems? Associated with spring break? I would imagine when that amounts of not teenagers, young college students.

They are teenagers.

Some of them might not be teenagers, but anyhow, people around 20, they are partying, they're drinking, they're bound to do stupid things, not just having a few bad days, but perhaps even doing things illegal.

The most common illegal activity in spring break is underage drinking. So well ...yes... in America the drinking age is 21. So they're not going to go drinking at party. They're gonna go drinking at somebody's house.

I see. We'll get one person to buy the drink.

They get someone to buy it, it’s not that difficult to get it. There are a lot of kids that get caught by the police and issued tickets for underage drinking. And then you also get all the problems caused by drinking. You get drunk driving is a common issue during spring break. Fights, because drunk people do fight. Yeah, you also get vandalism, it’s really common.

Is drug a big problem.

Yeah, unfortunately you get young people, no supervision, they want to have fun. They will buy drugs. So that's not uncommon and a lot of kids get ...it's like I wanna go spring break and get drugs, and then the police show up.

You can make some pretty bad decisions that will affect your life.

Yeah, there are students that sometimes do some really dumb things and the school finds it. It’s like kick you out.

One thing that I think the relevance of spring break is back in last year probably around the spring break time. And then when the whole pandemic thing was still very, very iffy, when its case number has been rising in America. But we've all seen the news reports where the kids are like still wanting to go to spring break, they're like... they cannot...

It’s like I'm not going to get sick, I'm young and healthy, and that happened. That was actually a really... we were here in China at the time all of us were like locked up in our homes, all working from home, talking to our friend, all completely only online. And then we look at Americans like these students are still going on spring break on the beach. And then to nobody's surprised, a lot of them got sick.

Yeah. Anyhow. When you’re young you’re bound to do something stupid. So I know some of our listeners are actually currently in United States or they were there to study. They had experience of living there, studying there. If you have ever experienced spring break or if you live in other countries, you've experienced something similar. Because I know Chinese have never really experienced spring break. Let us know in the common section and thank you James for coming to the show. We'll see you next time.

Bye everyone.

Bye.

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