Outted On The Bus
Last night, as I was riding the bus home, I was outted as an American. Who knew that it would cause such a ruckus? Here's how it happened:
I have to walk to the bottom of the hill in front of the campus to catch the bus. There are buses that leave from the Campus, but they are almost exclusively headed into town, whereas I have to go away from town to get home. Every once in a while, a co-worker will also be taking the bus in the same direction. When this happens, we will talk until he gets off at his stop, which is about half-way home. This isn't normally too much of a problem as the bus is usually a double decker and will have plenty of seats available on the ground floor. The kids heading home from grammar and secondary school are too cool to sit on the ground floor, and will go to the second floor. Well, last night, the bus that came was a single decker bus, and so all of the "adults" and "kids" (I put these terms in quotation marks because it's not really that clear-cut) were mixed together. My coworker and I ended up sitting across the isle from each other surrounded by school children - probably between 13-15 years old.
I was talking with my friend about a planned trip that I will be taking to Spain at the end of March. As our conversation progressed, it dawned on the kids around us that I was a foreigner. This led to some pretty innocuous questions, but nothing too horrible as long as my coworker and I were talking. This all changed, however, when he got off at his stop. At this point, it was just me surrounded by sugar-enhanced gregarious 13 year olds, some of whom were fairly loud about asking me questions. This, of course, drew the attention of more ritalin-deprived kids, so before I knew it, I was surrounded by between 10-15 kids all of whom thought I took requests. I've taught that age student before, and know how energetic they can be, but I've never been a novelty item at the same time. They seemed enthralled by my accent, and so they pestered me to say things like "potato," "wanker," arsehole," and the alphabet (among many others), while also asking me questions like "Have you ever been to Chicago?", "How about Las Vegas?", "What do you think of George Bush?", and "Led Zeppelin or Queen?"
This doesn't sound too bad, but imagine being machine gunned by this type of request every few seconds for about 20 minutes. I thought my stop would never arrive. I got off the bus more tired than ever before...
Last night, as I was riding the bus home, I was outted as an American. Who knew that it would cause such a ruckus? Here's how it happened:
I have to walk to the bottom of the hill in front of the campus to catch the bus. There are buses that leave from the Campus, but they are almost exclusively headed into town, whereas I have to go away from town to get home. Every once in a while, a co-worker will also be taking the bus in the same direction. When this happens, we will talk until he gets off at his stop, which is about half-way home. This isn't normally too much of a problem as the bus is usually a double decker and will have plenty of seats available on the ground floor. The kids heading home from grammar and secondary school are too cool to sit on the ground floor, and will go to the second floor. Well, last night, the bus that came was a single decker bus, and so all of the "adults" and "kids" (I put these terms in quotation marks because it's not really that clear-cut) were mixed together. My coworker and I ended up sitting across the isle from each other surrounded by school children - probably between 13-15 years old.
I was talking with my friend about a planned trip that I will be taking to Spain at the end of March. As our conversation progressed, it dawned on the kids around us that I was a foreigner. This led to some pretty innocuous questions, but nothing too horrible as long as my coworker and I were talking. This all changed, however, when he got off at his stop. At this point, it was just me surrounded by sugar-enhanced gregarious 13 year olds, some of whom were fairly loud about asking me questions. This, of course, drew the attention of more ritalin-deprived kids, so before I knew it, I was surrounded by between 10-15 kids all of whom thought I took requests. I've taught that age student before, and know how energetic they can be, but I've never been a novelty item at the same time. They seemed enthralled by my accent, and so they pestered me to say things like "potato," "wanker," arsehole," and the alphabet (among many others), while also asking me questions like "Have you ever been to Chicago?", "How about Las Vegas?", "What do you think of George Bush?", and "Led Zeppelin or Queen?"
This doesn't sound too bad, but imagine being machine gunned by this type of request every few seconds for about 20 minutes. I thought my stop would never arrive. I got off the bus more tired than ever before...
1 Comments:
Interesting.... how does 'wanker' sound in American? Go on..say it for me..will ya?? I'll tell my big brother if you don't... who will come to your office and moon you all afternoon!
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