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When foreigners think you're from their country
When my dad lived in the US, Arabs would always greet him in Arabic. Whenever an Arab saw him, sure thing, they'd approach him and say hi. Puzzled, he one day asked why that was, and the Arabs told him he looked Saudi. The funny thing about it is that my great grandfather was indeed an Arab (from Syria), but he's from my mother's side of the family. We've always laughed about it, and used to think it was a just a random thing.
Or so we thought.
As most TA's know, my fiancée is now studying abroad. Though she's a Brazilian girl living in the land of her forefathers, everyone there thinks she's from yet another country - namely, China. Most Japanese apparently know she's a foreigner, and it never really bothered her mainly because... well, she is. But, she was puzzled as to why everytime a Chinese person spotted her, they'd immediately try to strike a conversation in Mandarin. Some of them are so incredulous they ignore the fact that she's speaking a different language altogether, and insist until they realise all efforts have been anything but fruitful. A guy once told us he thought she came from Canton... and, granted, when she visited China, everyone seemed to think she was a local (though she's never been to Guangzhou).
Has this ever happened to you, or to someone you know?
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