Sure, flying standby the weekend before Christmas would be a bit risky, but the benefits were blindingly rewarding.  I’d been offered a “buddy pass” from an airline employee, and the price was less than a third of the regular tickets I’d been finding.  The dates were flexible and easy to change, and, oh yeah, there was also the prospect of flying business class.  After many an experience feeling like an intercontinental deli meat sandwiched between two strangers, I was ready to risk a few hours of waiting around the airport for a shot at the extra legroom and free booze that only business class can offer.

That’s how they made it sound–a few hours of sitting around.  “If you get bumped from the first flight,” they told me, “you just try the next.  It could take a couple attempts, but since you’re alone you should have a good chance.”  I had to settle on a later day than when I really hoped to leave because they don’t always honor “buddy passes”, but I still accepted with enthusiasm.  As of the day before my scheduled flight, I was 11th on the list for 22 available, spacious seats in business class.  (Did you know that they recline to 150 degrees?)  I would fly into Atlanta, and transfer there for Buffalo.  All was going according to plan.

That was, until a huge blizzard hit the entire Eastern seaboard of the US that night.

So apparently, when the flights to New York for hundreds of paying customers get cancelled for bad weather, airlines will try to accomodate them on different flights.  And they will put 22 of those customers on a flight to Atlanta (in business class), and will laugh at someone who thinks they still have a chance to fly with their severely discounted buddy pass.  I called to reschedule my ticket for the next day, and was informed that my chance of boarding would be, “at best, zero.”  Same for the day after that.

Five hours after I’d left that morning, I returned to my apartment with no prospect of leaving any time soon.  Worse still, I discovered that there were only 2 flights a day from Rome to the Eastern US with this company.  This hadn’t been mentioned in the “wait around a few hours part.”  I had wrongly assumed there would have been numerous possibilities throughout the day.

My mother, who expected my presence preferably sometime before Christmas, offered to personally come to Rome just to kick my ass.  “What part of flying without a reservation, in the winter, 4 days before Christmas sounded like a good idea to you?”  Something told me that even having my own TV in my seat wouldn’t be a convincing argument at this point.

I should have just booked the ticket the moment those fateful words–what could possibly go wrong– passed through my head.  Instead I spent my expected day of departure poring over travel websites, hoping to find a ticket that wouldn’t require me to pool my checking and savings account, plus two credit cards.  I cried a little as I pressed “make payment,” but it paid off the next day.

When I arrived for Airport Attempt #2, I saw that the flights from the original company had again been cancelled.  But me and the most expensive coach ticket in the world just breezed past the line of stranded and disgruntled passengers and headed to New York.  Maybe I didn’t get my own personal TV, and I couldn’t recline lest I found myself in the lap of the gentleman to my rear, but it was better than still sitting around the airport.  Plus, we’d been delayed an hour, so they even gave us deli-meats in the back the wine for free.  I’d say it worked out as well as possible.

Still, this experience was not without its lessons.  First, I’ve been able to rule out gambling and investing as potential career paths.  Risk-taking is not my thing.  Second, and maybe more importantly, flying standby in the winter, 4 days before Christmas is not as fantastic of an idea as it probably sounds.  Who would have guessed?

(Oh, and if free alcoholic beverages are really important to you, just fly with a non-American company.  Just sayin’.)

One particular student like this explained to me that  only one foreign language was required when she was in school, and she had chosen French.  Now schools tend to require English, plus a choice of another.  In fact, this was exactly what made her decide to come to our school this summer.  “I’m an elementary school teacher,” she explained, “and this year the classes each have English for an hour or two a week.”  As it was required in her curriculum, she thought it would be a good idea to pick up some basic words and pronunciation.

As we outlined some goals and plans for the course, it was decided that instead of following the adult program, she would bring her kids’ books and we could work from those.  I was psyched because they would be much more fun than the adult books we have, and she was happy because she’d be focusing on specific things that she needed to know.

When she arrived for the next class, I was surprised to see that she was carrying a whole stack of children’s books and workbooks.  They appeared to be levels 1-5 of the same series of books.  “Why so many?”  I asked.  “Don’t you know what class you’ll be teaching yet?”

“Sure,” she told me.  “All of them.  First to fifth grade, an hour or two each per week.  I’m the school’s full-time English teacher.”

Ah, of course.

I think my brain actually began to cry as I tried to work out the logic in this situation.  How could something like this happen?  What was her interview like? (Do you speak English?  Yes?  Great, you’re hired!) Who stamped the “OK” on that application?  Does she have some sort of powerful connections?  Who accepts a job that they are so very painfully unqualified for?  And–oh god–what kind of language are those kids going to be speaking by the end of the year??

I mean I guess I can understand why she’s doing it to a certain point.  The job market here is rough, and people don’t just go turning down employment offers.  And at least she took the initiative to study on her own.  But as with many situations here, it makes me feel crazy and there’s not much I can do to change it.  So instead, I try not to think too deeply into it, and focus instead on gentle reminders that you don’t pronounce the “t” in “listen” but you do pronounce the “s” at the end of words.  (That’s tricky after all the years of French.)

Even though reason sustained a serious blow here, the situation is not without its silver linings.  For example, it gives me the hope and comfort that I, too, could get a job in a Roman elementary school if I needed to.  Hell, I could apparently teach Japanese, or German, or even Calculus!  Because I have learned that you can’t let silly details like a lack of qualifications stand in your way.  There is a world of opportunities out there, and all you have to do is say yes.

You probably think I’m going to say something about anti-American sentiment, but I have to say that in my (albeit limited) experience, the overt “ugly American” comments were few to none.  So no, the issue is not that I think people in other countries hate us (although this naturally depends on where you go…), it’s that it seems many people are sure that they already know us.

This situation was highlighted to me a few days ago by a Dutch friend, as he made several statements about Americans in the course of a normal conversation.  We were at a park along with an Italian girl and a Greek guy, sitting on a blanket trying to absorb a few of summer’s last rays.  A large group of people nearby were talking and laughing loudly, in English as it happened.  “God, Americans are so loud,” he said.  “You can always spot them from 5km away.”  I found this amusing for two reasons– first, though I am also American, I did not feel particularly loud myself, chatting normally as we were.  Second, just about 10 minutes earlier, 3 blonde girls had walked by who he immediately declared as American.  “you can just tell.”  As they approached however, we heard that they were speaking what sounded like Portuguese, but definitely not English.    This seemed to disprove his “5km away” theory, but I shrugged it off.  Besides, a big group of friends like the one we saw would be loud no matter what their nationality is.  It’s just numbers.

A little later, he dropped another comment, or a “judgment bomb” as I will call them from here on.  This one was so cliche’ that I didn’t bother to remember the exact wording or context, just the main idea; “Americans are fat.” “What are you trying to say,” I asked, mock-but-kind-of-really offended.  Though certainly not model material, at 5’8″ (about 175cm) and weighing in at a whopping 125 pounds (about 52kg), I don’t usually classify myself as fat.  “Well not YOU,” was the reply, which failed to comfort me.  It seems rather flawed in the logic department to have a non-fat American in front of you as you proclaim that they are all fat.  It’s like talking to a blonde, fair-skinned Italian (a relatively common occurence) and then proclaiming that Italians are all raven-haired and olive-skinned.  The physical evidence really doesn’t support your argument.

Yet another judgment bomb fell soon after, as we boarded the subway.  A maintenance worker had been emptying trash bags as we waited on the platform, prompting him to observe “it’s interesting that in Italy, the cleaning staff is Italian.”  I found this neither noteworthy nor interesting, as we were in Italy, where there is a fairly high probability that an employee in any position is Italian.  If the cleaning staff in say, Anchorage, Alaska were all Italian, now that might be a different story and worth a mention.  “In the Netherlands,” he continued, “it’s usually immigrants who do that type of job.”  Then perhaps looking to fill that silence that our wordless shrugs created he added, “and in America it’s the Mexicans.”  It wasn’t a question or a joke, he appeared to be stating a fact.  Now call me ignorant, but I guess I have never asked the cleaning staff of the New York City subway or anywhere else about their nationality.  Nor have I ever done statistical research on the matter.  Perhaps he had?

“Have you ever been to the US?” I finally asked him, already anticipating the answer and subsequent explanation.  “No, but I know a lot about American culture.  I read a lot of news stories about it, and like half of what’s on TV is American.”   I tried to suppress a full-body shudder at the thought that the TV shows that Italy chooses to import from the US are truly shaping people’s opinions.  They must believe that every city is so full of maniacal criminals that it employs a team of highly specialized forensics scientists to solve murder mysteries.  If we get sick, we are rushed to emergency rooms run by smart-talking, sexy doctors.  Then when we’re not plotting mysterious murders or getting operated on, we’re hanging out in California, fighting over guys with our friends between pedicures and our Sweet Sixteen parties.  And as far as the news, well, we all know that journalists never try to sensationalize a story to create a stir, so at least there it’s a fair and unbiased presentation of life in the US…

So fellow Americans, this is an idea of what you might encounter abroad.  Unlike a particular young man, I cannot make a statement like “all foreigners see us like this” or something similar, but it’s a good example of an experience I’ve had more than once.  And of course, this was just one frustrating experience out of the many great ones I’ve had with open-minded and truly interesting individuals in various places.  That being said, I do think that American culture is much more widespread and available abroad than we might realize, and more so than that of other foreign countries.  Because of this, the reactions you get from people (again, depending on where you go and who you meet) might range from fascination to amusement to downright disdain, or anything in between.  And it just might be based on the belief that they already know you from what they’ve seen and heard.

I guess it’s up to us to decide if these ideas are worth reinforcing or debunking.  I personally don’t believe that “we Americans” are like the stereotypes that define us, and I’m willing to bet that most of us have a lot more to offer to the people we meet in our travels.  So please, don’t stick a Canadian flag on your backpack before your trip.  Just show people a side of American culture that they might not have expected.  In fact, I always hope that after meeting some cool Americans, someone will go back and say to their friends “You know, I met some people from that States, and they were very ____________. [insert: modest, intelligent, physically fit, or any other positive adjective not normally associated with the stereotypes of our countrymen].”  It would be great–a sort of natural, grass-roots diplomacy.

But then again, if you’re a loud, fat American who plots complicated crimes, plans extravagent Sweet Sixteen parties and employs Mexican immigrants to clean… well, might I suggest domestic travel?