Seat of Our Pants

Traveling Americans have a habit of falling into a number of stereotypes. There’s the loud travelers, the cheap ones, the I’m-an-American-so-F-you crowd, and the people who refuse to eat anything that isn’t served at their local restaurant; the list goes on for longer than your attention span. While I may fall in to some of those categories at one time or another (I am, after all, an American), the one stereotype I actively try not to propagate is the Loose American Woman.

I wear appropriate clothing when it’s called for. I don’t swagger around clubs late at night. I don’t kiss my husband in public. In other words, I try to be very sensitive to the nuances of a foreign culture’s expectations of women. There are times however, that I have at admit absolute failure in this respect.

We arrived in Georgia a few days ago to find that almost no one speaks English. Mustering up my best picture drawing skills, I tried to explain to our hotelier where I used to live. He had heard of San Francisco and asked it it was a very big city (this was all communicated with hand motions). I whipped out my trusty notepad and pen, drawing him a brilliant diagram of the Bay Area, explaining that the city itself (circled) is quite small – just 7 x 7 miles – but the Bay itself supports a much larger population.

Feeling proud of myself for explaining a tricky thing like that, I glanced up at him. The puzzled look on his face led to a sly smile and an interested nod. Confused, I smiled and returned to our room. It was just today that I realized my mistake.

It was Martin who called my attention to it while glancing through the notebook this morning. He cried out, equally confused,”What the hell is this?”

Um…San Francisco Bay?

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