How to Look American

Apparently, I don’t look American.

Unless being mistaken for a Native American counts. One summer during my college days, a couple of Native American guys greeted me with “ya ah tee” as they passed. Now I knew that “Ya ah tee” was a Navajo greeting, one often used among many of the Native American students on campus (and a large percentage were Navajo) when they passed each other because I had a good friend and roommate who was Navajo; I had witnessed this exchange many times when I was with her. However, on this occasion I was with my sister Diane—very much a blue-eyed blonde—and I had never seen these guys before either. Granted, I sported a summer tan and my hair was pulled back in a ponytail. When I returned the greeting, though, I guess I lacked a convincing intonation/inflection because they took a second look and just smiled.

Yes, I have lived overseas for over twenty years now, but I had only lived in Germany for a little over five years when I first detected the fact that people could no longer easily place my nationality. When wandering bazaars in Turkey, vendors and hucksters—masters at individualizing any sales pitch (think language as well as what price to begin the bartering)—would call out to my friends in English whereas I usually had French directed toward me. When I didn’t respond immediately, they would often try an Italian or German version; from the menu of possible languages to employ with me, English rarely made an appearance before the third attempt.

Although I lived in Germany for eighteen years, I rarely had people in Germany come up to me and ask for directions or whatever, so perhaps I don’t look very German either. Yet, when I traveled in France, Spain, or Italy, inevitably I would have someone approach me and inquire after something in the official language of the land.

One time I went with a friend to a popular Biergarten in Kaiserslautern, Germany, to meet some other friends before going to a movie. When we entered—obviously together—the waitress spoke English to him, he responded in German (yeah, he spoke pretty good German), and then she turned to me and spoke in French! Now what’s up with that?!

For my first trip to Sri Lanka, I traveled with a tour group comprised of sixteen American school teachers all teaching in Germany. At one point we toured a facility that made batiks, and during the free time at the end—for browsing and buying—one of the guides asked me if I was American, too, like all the others on the tour. I said yes, and then she asked me if I was “mixed.” (Okay, my ancestry is totally some sort of “Euro” mix, but I don’t think that is what she meant.) Sri Lanka marked the first instance of a mixed heritage question, but since actually moving to Asia, I’ve fielded that question at least twice more, most recently one Sunday in December. For church I attend an English-speaking congregation that shares the church building with a Korean-speaking congregation. Although one has services in the morning and the other in the afternoon, there is often overlap of congregations in the common areas, of course. That Sunday I was prowling the church building a bit before heading to a Sunday School class and ran into a contingent of Koreans in the lobby. Two Korean men in conversation turned as I entered, smiled and then greeted me. I can’t remember if they greeted me in English or Korean (I have mastered the Korean greeting now), but we talked in English because I definitely can’t converse in Korean. One of those men asked me if I was Korean! I must have looked surprised because he quickly added “Korean and American?”

Whether or not I have ever looked American, I am no longer sure. At present, though, I seem to be deficient in some basic qualities and/or characteristics deemed representative of Americans. Hence, if you want to look American, the best counsel I can offer is to avoid looking like me