"if only you knew me in my own language, you would think I was such a fool"
Let me tell you what's like to be foreigner…
You give your name and you know you' ll have to say it at least twice, and then spell it, as you watch the frown on their face get deeper and deeper.A frustrating feeling of being stupid and inarticulate,when you have something worthwhile to say.
That look that people get on their faces, and you know that they are not listening to what you are saying, but to the way you are saying it
When everybody else laughs at Paul Hogan or Rodney Rude or Edan Everage and you just don't get it .it is funny, or is it funny because it is so un-funny, because it is so awful?
Sooner or later you stop asking for directions in the street, because you know you will scream if someone
else uses " You Tarzan-me Jane" kind of language ,and perhaps you will punch the next person who shouts the answer to you as if you were hard to hearing.
And you get into the habit of watching people's head going round in circle as they watch
your hands while you are talking to them, or trying to explain something so they will understand you.
Australia are very inscrutable; they do not always smile when they are joking, and at other times they smile when they are being insulting or deadly serious, and you offend them because you can't pick the difference.
After a little time, you begin to feel persecuted, and so you concentrate on way you speak,
the words you choose, the right grammar, avoiding the things you can't pronounce or
those you are not sure of and you finish up forgetting the idea you wanted to express, and just mutter something obvious and unimportant, and the other person looks at you with the face that is trying not to show impatience or contempt.
It seems unimportant now, but you get quite a shock when your partner met you outside the school gate and says,
" Hi sweaty" in English for the first time, when up till then you had always spoken in your own language with your partners
And even after years and years when you think you how Australian think and talk, you meet someone for the first time, and trying to be kind, they ask, "when did you get here?" or
"what do you think of Australia?" my friends was right; " I 'll always be a stranger, expect to those Australian like me!"