There are two things that I cannot stand, one is people who are intolerant of other cultures, and the other is the Dutch.

Those are all good points. I want to emphasize that this is relative to East Asia. The West as a whole tends to be more direct in its communication style, and you're going to find differences inside of that. Speaking from our experience, we've had the fewest communication problems (in terms of directness being a problem) with German and Dutch kids. We're also not having any issues with the Italian kid. Kind of in the middle is the Russian kid we hosted, who struggled a bit with understanding the how casual Americans are (the affectionate teasing that we do, joking around at any old time, hanging out for the purpose of hanging out, etc. but he eventually got it down like an old pro). At the far end are the east Asian kids. It's pretty consistently an issue to get them to open up, advocate for themselves, tell us if something's wrong, etc. They get there eventually, usually, but it's always the biggest journey for them. I can respect that it isn't easy. I'm sure I'd have a much worse go of trying to adapt to their cultures, based on how hard of a time just dealing with the indirectness of the southeast US.

I just wanted to add, but didn't know where to squeeze it in, that they apparently don't do lame-ass dad jokes in Russia. It was a brand new experience for him, and he mastered it by the time he left. I'm really proud of him, and I hope he's doing okay.

Good grief. There are times I miss the south, but I had a hard time with that indirect stuff. It was being neurodivergent on hard mode.

Germans are, in my experience, often presented as speaking the most directly. That is, they tend to say exactly what they mean and are less afraid of saying something that might be considered rude or uncomfortable by less direct cultures.