I love being a Měiguó Rén (American)!

Living in Asia, I am painfully aware of how white I am at almost all times. When I'm teaching, I look across my classroom and see Asian faces staring back at me. When we drive on our scooters, there are always people staring from street corners and cars passing by. At the mall, the bank, the local grocery store, EVERYONE can see that we are different and we stick out.

Before coming here, I never really realized how much a person can stick out simply because of the color of their skin. It's probably a really good lesson in life to learn and would be great to see how some people might react to the same situation. But all sage wisdom aside, it totally rocks sometimes!

Today I went into a random little key shop to get my gate clicker fixed (yes we have a gate, we have to keep the children penned in somehow!). With my horrible Chenglish and a lot of pointing, I communicated what I wanted and it took the little man working there about 45 seconds to fix it. Then he smiled, handed it back to me, and waved goodbye. When I tried to pay him, he kept saying "no no no, Měiguó Rén, Xièxiè ....." and so on and so forth in other Chinese I couldn't understand. Basically, he was saying "No no no, you are an American! Thank you! blah blah blah"- something I'm hoping was complimentary at the end.

I love being an American living in Asia sometimes! You get your clicker fixed for free :)