American Dad

In honor of my husband, just in time for Father's Day! 

As is often the case on foreign trips, the subject of being an American abroad has come up frequently since we left home.  Being former Anthropology students, Mark and I try really hard not to be ethnocentric (i.e."ugly Americans") but rather to fit in and go with the flow.  Of course when we open our big American mouths, the cat's definitely out of the bag because there's no hiding our accents!  

There are other times too when our American shows.  For example, not wearing cut-off jean short-shorts with tights is apparently a dead give-away for me not being Scottish.  And when the locals excitedly exclaim over the prediction of a little sun in the afternoon forecast and we say, "Oh, I hope not because we're really enjoying not having to use sunscreen," is another clue that we're not from around here.  But the big one is, of course, soccer.  I mean, futbol, er, football!  See what I mean!?  It's a mess.  

Today as we were walking through lovely downtown Glasgow, an errant soccer ball came rolling towards us.  Mark "attempted" to kick it back to them, resulting in the following conversation:

Me:  "That kick sucked.  You just proved your Americanism by your inability to kick a soccer ball."

Mark:  "I was trying to be nice!  I could have kicked it across the square."

Me:  "Ooh, you should have and then you could've yelled, 'It's called SOCCER, b*tch!'  Then they totally would have recognized our American superiority!"  

Don't worry, we only joke about our [supposed] American superiority amongst ourselves!  No international incidents on this trip, thanks!  Although we may have to stage one later in England, just to live up to our hosts' perception of Mark as a "typical crazy American."  ;)  Should be fun!  Besides, all we have to do to get out of any trouble is to run to the nearest American Embassy screaming, "I'm an American!" and then a big Marine will step out and save us, right?  I saw that in Val Kilmer's "The Saint" so it must be true.   

Speaking of American stereotypes, we stumbled upon not one but TWO American Candy Stores in Glasgow.  And what is an American Candy Store, you ask?  A store full of nothing but the junkiest of American junk foods and sugary cereals.  In other words, row upon row of Trix and Lucky Charms cereal, a wall of Twinkies, and lots of cokes and mountain dews of course.  *sigh*  This is our legacy to the rest of the world.  :P  

But back to Mark... I had a heck of a time keeping him from creating an international incident when we went to the Palace of Holyrood House in Edinburgh today.  Ok, we were not so much IN the Palace of Holyrood House as BEHIND it since the tours for the day were over by the time we arrived.  But behind the Palace/House is the amazing Holyrood Park, about which I naively asked one of attendants, "What's that and how do we get to it?"  Little did I know that before the end of the day I would have summitted - and nearly fallen down - all of its peaks.  :P  Because when Mark sees a mountainous hill or a hilly mountain, all he can think is up!  It matters not how ill-equipped we are for rocky hill climbing or how bare the treads of my tennis shoes are, Mark must ascend.  And I must tag along, carrying the water and reminding him of the many signs prohibiting climbing on the rocks.  And that's how I ended up on top of this!