Reflections, Reflections

You know, being abroad, I am getting very tired of having to explain to people the most basic things about the US or other countries that I have extensive knowledge of. It is truly scary to see what deranged, ignorant stereotypes people form of « other » nationalities. And, given that I am not one endowed with patience for teaching certain subjects, specially the ones concerning most primitive notions that should be obvious to every single urban educated human on our now globalized 24-CNN MacDonalds GPS world, one truly encounters these medieval type notions that are extremely lame about national stereotypes or about other national aspects of foreign cultures.

If I didn’t have anything to do, I would collect these pearls of idiocy and publish a guide to « Understanding the ***** (and each other country in the world) from the point of view of ignorant outsiders ». Or I could title it : « Everything you have always thought that was totally misinformed about country X and that I will now clarify for you ». I cannot tell you how many times someone has come up to me and said, I cannot understand why in the US [fill in by most distorted stupid notion of any of a hundred different things]. Then I am reminded once more of how my personality does not like teaching morons. I want intellectual, cultural, moral elites as students, thank you very much. Sigh. Will I ever be a real good teacher, if morons drive me up the wall ?