I'm not stupid. I'm American.

(This post is dedicated to Heidi because it's her birthday.  And birthday cards are hard to find here!)

Recently I took a trip to southern West Virginia.  And I do mean southern West Virginia…complete with missing teeth, run-down homes, camouflage clothing, and accents so strong it took us a few minutes to decipher a cheer at a high school basketball game.  It took a lot of work but we finally figured it out:  Defense!

West Virginia could almost be its own country.  I mean, really, you wouldn't use any of those attributes to describe most of our country…unless you’re French.  They apparently visited the Independent Country of West Virginia when they stereotyped America.

You’d be surprised the things they call “American” here…and most of it isn’t good.  In fact, most of the time it involves a food with enough calories to keep you alive for days.  For example, there’s a sandwich here that involves piling chicken nuggets and fries on bread, topped with dressing.  Want to know what it’s called?  The American Sandwich.  Or I could tell you about The American Dessert I’ve seen served at a nearby restaurant.  It’s basically a large brownie served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. And two other flavors of ice cream. And a piece of pie.  Covered in hot fudge.

So maybe Americans do eat a lot.  I’ll give them that.  I have yet to see more than a handful of people in this country that would even fall onto the high end of a “normal weight” BMI.  This, however, does not mean all of us are walking around in circles, wearing our camouflage jacket, carrying a Big Mac in one hand and a pie in the other, and talking about how y'all need to be a-fixin them there tires.

One day we saw a sign for an “American” clothing store.  Interested, we look inside to see racks of camouflage clothing and flannels.  Now I am a huge advocate for flannel but really, that's not what you actually wear in America.  I mean, I do.  But I’ve never seen people other than me wear it unless they were trying to dress up as cowboys or farmers.

Also, English is all over the place here…but don’t you dare try to pronounce it like you do in America. I’ve also had some bad experiences with ordering food with English names.  It seems like it’d be easy to order a milkshake.  However, when we ordered it the girl looked at us like we were dumb.  It’s written on your menu like that.  So I’m going to say it how I normally would.  My accent can’t possibly be that bad.  However, when it takes the help of two other employees to decipher your order from the English word, “milkshake,” to the French word, “milkshake,” you realize your accent really is worse than you thought.  And it's not what they would think of as any sort of intellectual accent.

I’ve also had battles with the school here just to get into classes.  After some misunderstandings due to differences between educational systems, I left the office of the Technology Department to the laughter of the secretaries.  Excuse me for thinking your semester would start at the same time as all my other classes.  But I’m not stupid.  I’m American.

Which is more-or-less the same thing here.