{"id":465,"date":"2015-08-11T12:26:45","date_gmt":"2015-08-11T12:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/2015\/08\/11\/bloody-americans\/"},"modified":"2021-10-15T16:28:34","modified_gmt":"2021-10-15T21:28:34","slug":"bloody-americans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/bloody-americans\/","title":{"rendered":"Bloody Americans"},"content":{"rendered":"

It may have been the blonde hair, fair skin, straight teeth, flip flops or my selfie stick, but somehow I have \u201cI\u2019m an American\u201d painted across my forehead. I have learned in the short amount of time spent in London thus far that Americans are very easily spotted here, maybe because of a mild tourist distaste or because they just do not fancy Americans in general? Nonetheless, trying to disguise where you are from is a difficult task.<\/p>\n

\"oauGJbk\"<\/a>

Much like this disguise in how easy it is to tell its Tina Fey, it was easy to tell we were Americans.<\/p><\/div>\n

What makes you an American in the typical Londoner\u2019s eye? For starters, the classic \u201cdontchaknow\u201d Minnesota accent is a dead give away. Even if you begin to fake a British accent, the Midwestern American language will always show through (believe me I\u2019ve tried\u2026 and failed). We were walking through the crowded, constantly moving streets of Piccadilly- the Times Square of London- and above the noise we hear a group of about ten people shouting down from a 3 story building \u201cWelcome to Britain!!\u201d followed by heaps of laughter. Despite the mild embarrassment we couldn\u2019t help but to laugh along with them because of how blatantly obvious it was to everyone that we are from America. Even without them hearing our accents, the giant, flashing \u201cAMERICAN\u201d sign above our heads follows us everywhere. It\u2019s not only the young Europeans who pick up on this, but the elderly do as well. One of our voluntary tour guides at Westminster Abbey saw our group and said, \u201cYou all must be from America\u2026 very healthy and fit looking\u201d. What a complimentary stereotype!<\/p>\n

\"Americans-gif\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The main reason others notice this so easily is because we don\u2019t catch up on their cultural customs right away\u2026 like saying hello for example. It\u2019s not just a simple handshake and smile. I met an Australian and he asked for my name so I replied \u201cBecca\u201d and held out my hand for a handshake but then he leaned closer\u2026 I figured he didn\u2019t hear what I said so I repeated my name and he started laughing. At this point I was very confused, maybe he was just a jerk laughing at my name? Nope. He was expecting a kiss on the cheek, their type of hello. My face flooded with heat from the slight humiliation followed with a sheepish \u201cOh\u2026 sorry I\u2019m from America.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"awkward-kiss-little-girl\"<\/a>

Can you say AWKWARD!<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Is the reason they may not be so fond of us because we are Americans or typical tourists? It\u2019s pretty comical how many people carry around selfie sticks to these tourist attractions. At Warwick castle I spotted six selfie sticks. Yes, I repeat six of them and I was the seventh. It\u2019s becoming a trend apparently. Even at the house where Shakespeare grew up in Stratford upon Avon there was a sign of three circles with X\u2019s in the middle of them, all meaning no photography. The disturbing part was that the first picture was a standard hand held camera, the second was a picture of an iPhone, and the third was a picture of a selfie stick. I laughed to myself and thought, \u201cWhat has our generation come to?\u201d Bloody Americans.<\/p>\n

\"giphy\"<\/a>

Even Barack has a selfie stick!<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

–Rebecca Rhyner<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It may have been the blonde hair, fair skin, straight teeth, flip flops or my selfie stick, but somehow I have \u201cI\u2019m an American\u201d painted across my forehead. I have learned in the short amount of time spent in London thus far that Americans are very easily spotted here, maybe because of a mild tourist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[162],"tags":[166],"class_list":["post-465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel","tag-london-2015"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb2ffS-7v","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1885,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions\/1885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}