I love singing new wave rock at karaoke.
In Buenos Aires, I sang “De Musica Ligera” by Soda Stereo. Soda Stereo, an Argentinian band, was the most popular Latin American rock band of the 80s and early 90s. The crowd in the bar went nuts hearing someone sing it with a foreign accent (a gringo). This was the most appreciated that I’ve ever felt at karaoke. I also participated in a karaoke contest held by The Wombats, an amazing English rock group. They did a compilation video of the responses, and they used my voice at the end!
The Perfect Culture
I stayed with a couple of families in Cuzco, Peru for a few months, studying Spanish.
In the first home, they had no heating (or air conditioning) and the insulation was very poor. During the day, it was boiling hot from the strong sun, and then at night it was freezing! They drank tea to keep warm. They said that Cuzco didn’t have seasons. I replied that Cuzco has two seasons: day and night!
In Japan one night in December, I was out with a friend and we missed the last train home.
Japan is very expensive, and we had very low salaries. This was long before Uber. We couldn’t really afford a taxi or hotel, so we stayed out until the trains started again at 5AM. It was quite cold that evening. At one point, we went into a hotel. We sat on some couches for a while. Then against my better judgement, I sat on the floor and laid my head against the couch. Fifteen minutes later, an employee came to talk to us. He calmly said, “You cannot stay here.” That’s how polite they are in Japan! I don’t remember where we went after that, but regardless, it was a long night.
When I was in Namibia, a baboon came into my room one day.
My roommate said that the air conditioning was too noisy (perhaps he wasn’t used to it in his country), so we had to keep the windows open. The next day, I heard something come in. I froze, and just stayed on my bed. I didn’t have my glasses on, so I couldn’t see very well. After he left, I went over to the other side of the room. He threw some packets on the floor, took a bunch of sugar packets, and then left. Apparently Mr. Baboon had a sweet tooth. My roommate was unfazed when I reported the news. “We’re in Africa,'' he replied.
It’s easy to remember when I entered my fortieth foreign country.
I was on my Central Europe trip, and we were driving from Slovakia to Hungary. On the bus, I noted that this would be my fortieth country. Our tour leader announced that we would be having a very late lunch. I said, “That’s very fitting; we’ll be hungry when we get to Hungary.”
On my Israel trip, I had a very “in between” feeling.
In my group, other than my relative, I was the only person with a Jewish background, so of course, I felt Jewish compared to them. But I could tell that the Israelis saw me as very American. Compounding the complexity, based on my appearance, they often thought that I was Israeli. They spoke Hebrew to me in a few places (which I don’t speak). We visited a Druze place; the Druze are a small Arab-speaking minority there. They serve in the Israeli army and they are not considered Muslim. Later, the Druze guide said to me, “When I first saw you, I thought that you were Israeli since you look like a local.”
On my “Stans” trip, there was an interesting disagreement.
This trip started in Uzbekistan. We learned about Timur, a famous conqueror from the fourteenth century. Our Uzbek leader insisted that Timur was Uzbek. There wasn’t DNA evidence, and he said that in his culture, they don’t do DNA tests. Later on the trip, we changed tour leaders, and our second leader was from Kyrgyzstan. He was equally adamant that Timur was not Uzbek. The Kyrgyz leader (I’ve forgotten his name) also told me that I was the first American that he’d ever had on a trip. Unfortunately, on average, Americans don’t explore foreign countries nearly as much as Europeans or people from the other English-speaking countries.
The Perfect Culture by Brent Robins is available from Amazon and all good book retailers. Find out more here: www.brentrobinsauthor.com.