1. You expect to be in another country if you've spent two hours in a car.
2. Your kid asks you how to say a word in three languages.
3. You learn the Cyrillic alphabet so that you can read the street signs in your favorite spa town (and know what your spam is talking about).
4. You think $4 gas is a good deal.
5. Americans regularly compliment you on your English and ask what country you're from.
6. You catch yourself singing to an oompa beat.
7. You think the New York Times online edition is the hub of American journalism.
8. U.S. politicians are still embarrassing, but then so are everyone else's.
9. You believe everyone has the right to good chocolate at least once a day.
10. You forget your favorite holidays. See below:
Conversation on a conference call to the States, July 7
Julia: Hey guys, so, how are ya’ll doing over there. You just had a holiday didn’t you? Which one was it again?
Saturday, July 26, 2008
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11 comments:
This place makes it TOO easy to forget the 4th of July, I totally agree :)
And you probably think this tower is perfectly normal: http://bit.ly/2FIKor
I do!! We used to live one block from the tower and we used it as our navigational homing device. The babies are a bit odd but unless you are a rapeller you don't get to see them close up.
(Though I have had taxi drivers tell me that the babies are alien messengers, come ahead of the rest of their flock. They apparently disturb at least a part of the population ;-)
We've had Americans not realising we're native English speakers - What do you mean we've got an accent?!
James looks gorgeous, is it really over three months already?
You have totally got these right. I didn't learn Cyrillic but Jesse started to on his Ukrainian trip. Being complimented on my English was indeed weird.
Cyrillic is really quite easy to learn and when you do you suddenly realize how much Russian you can read thanks to Czech!
That made me smile, even though I'm British i can somehow relate...
You've got some lovely photos on your blog too,
Reversing the field as we square-eyed US football enthusiasts used to say, there's the case of the Britisher living in the States. You know you're in a foreign country when:
(1)The lady at the Y, asked to guess my nationality, comes up tentatively with "Albanian".
(2) The host's wife at a cocktail party resents the fact that I know Roberto Clementi's batting average and she doesn't.
(3) The woman setting up my bank account at Carnegie-Mellon giggles at my elastic-sided ankle boots (this was in 1966!) and says she has some slippers like that.
I could go on and on, but it's your blog
Thanks Juliet! And Barrett (one of my favorite seafaring characters by the way), I nearly fell out of my chair laughing when I read your tentative identification as Albanian. I'm mostly identified as Slovak (by Czechs), Belgian (by the French and Germans) and generally furren (by Americans).
Two hours? What massive size country are you living in? I'd add - but it may only be in Switzerland - EVERYTHING must be translated into at least 3 languages when thinking communications...
You know the Czech Republic, we're the size of South Carolina! Most communication stays in Czech here, with less than a quarter of it translated into English. You Swissies do complicate your life with three languages, but it does make it easier for me to decipher when I can compare the same text in two languages I only sort of know!
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