After teaching and attending the faculty meeting after school today, we traveled home via scooter and dropped off our bags at home. After a quick costume change, we were back out the door again to hit the grocery store for dinner supplies. We generally always walk to the closest grocery store which is about 3 short blocks down the street from us. I think thus far we have been the only white people in there on each visit.
Tonight I was standing next to Nichole seriously pondering which type of odd, leafy green to buy for our salad (we never can find spinach here), when there was gibberish coming from our left. We're pretty used to locals trying to talk to us in Chinese, and we've gotten pretty good at smiling and nodding and then saying "I don't know! Sorry!" in Chinese. But this woman wasn't speaking normal Chinese.
I looked over and literally blinked a few times before I realized it was a white woman talking to us. And that wasn't gibberish she was speaking, it was English! I think she had to repeat her initial greeting four or five times because we both just looked at her like a couple of deer in headlights.
I guess that when you aren't expecting to understand something, you simply won't. Even your own language can seem foreign when you are out of place somewhere.
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