I'm now in Santa Fe, Argentina on a Fulbright Specialist Award. My blog posts remain highly correlated with travel, and you're welcome. I'm even more boring at home.
I've been playing American Undercover like I often do abroad. It's easy - just lie about your nationality. Many Americans play Canadian and that's pretty uncreative. If I were a foreigner, I'd suspect anyone claiming to be Canadian as a Fauxmerican. And if I were Canadian, I'd be annoyed at all the lying Yankees apeing my nationality. Although I'd be polite about it.
I have limited myself to English-speaking countries due to obvious linguistic inadequacy. I was often Mexican in Timisoara because there was almost no chance of running into any real Mexicans (although in fact I did). In Argentina, I'd be expected to speak Spanish with a flawless Mexican accent. Never had it, never will - though I do try.
You may think: but the differences between and within Englishspeaking accents are really obvious. Yeah. To you, fellow native English speaker. Can you spot the differences among different Spanish accents? Also, I might have been born somewhere and learned English somewhere else.
For the first time, I played accidentally. I actually told an Uber driver the truth [Translated from Spanish]:
Where are you from?
Colorado.
Ah! Canada! Very beautiful.
Yes, very beautiful.
Colorado is in Canada?
Excuse me, I got a WhatsApp.
I was also graced with a free shot this morning. I sipped a morning coffee and realized it had whiskey. The waiter smiled and said he gave me a coffee from my country because I was friendly and left a generous tip last week. Took me a while to remember I had told them I'm from Ulster. I do have an Irish first name and Welsh last name. I do not know whether "Irish Coffee" is also "Northern Irish Coffee." I do know I got a free shot of whiskey.
But region-based food names are highly suspect anyway. I keep encountering the same phenomenon as in my many Eurodining and other posts: so-called "American" food. Yes, technically I'm in the Americas now; no, according to many people I've asked, they don't mean "pan-American food" but specifically "USA American food." I also don't think they mean that the food contains Americans.
This is only a partial list:
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