The Fascinating, Frightening Foreigners

After being here for 2 weeks, the things I don’t feel I’ve touched on enough are the interesting reactions to foreigners and my interactions with the locals around here.  Sometimes I feel kind of like a unicorn, or maybe a mutant.  For instance, if you walk through the streets in a big group of westerners, be prepared for people to stare and take pictures as if you’ve all just parked your spaceship down the road.  Children wave frantically or stare, wide-eyed and mute; adults have no qualms about sticking their iPhone in your face to snap a photo; teens are the most daring, and will brazenly ask you for posed shots.  Of course, I’ve also seen children sobbing as we walk past, but I’m not sure if we invoked that reaction or not.

At a restaurant one evening, the owner actually told us “I love you” after we answered her questions and complimented her food.  This was a far cry from the woman two doors down who had greatly disapproved of our hot pot skills.  I also got a disdainful look from the man next to me in the metro line today when I declined to shove into a place half my size on the train, instead opting to wait for the next train.  He looked at me as if to say, “What are you thinking!?  You’re holding me up.”  The doors were still open, so I stepped over a bit, gestured at the train and looked at him pointedly: “Be my guest, buddy.”  He instead opted to glower at me until the next train came.  Yeah, that’s what I thought.  You’re just being ornery.

Today at lunch, a colleague, who had introduced herself to me via post-it note last Thursday, told me “I think that a lot of people in the office would like to know you because you are a foreigner, but they are scared of talking to you, like I was.”  This is not the first time I’ve heard this sort of sentiment, and it is completely mind-boggling to me.  Here I am, with the life skills of an advanced infant (sure, I can take care of myself, but I can’t speak, read or write, and most of the locals would argue that I can’t actually feed myself, either), and YOU’RE scared? 

However, all that weirdness aside, I do find that most people are willing to engage with me, even if it is in the language of “awkward mime.”  Most people have been friendly and helpful once we actually get to talking (or miming).  I also find that they are very willing to just run me down in the sidewalk, but that’s a whole different issue for another day.

On a completely unrelated note, this afternoon I drank something called “charcoal roasting flavor iced coffee.”  Not quite as exciting as the “Man of snacks” or the “Big face” (I’m going to have to compile a list of weird food name translations), but it gave me a chuckle when I read it and it tasted pretty good.

We’ve also had a bit of a towel debacle.  Yesterday was cleaning day, and we came home to discover all of the towels missing.  Thinking the maid just made a mistake, we called down to the main office to ask for some towels and were told “no, I’m sorry, you only get towels for a week.”  Thoroughly confused and slightly enraged, we hung up.  This morning I got a text from my roommate that says, “I found us some towels.”  I’m not sure I want to know where or how, but I AM glad we have towels!