Coming To America

The hardest part of day to day life in America for me was learning jokes, I could not understand English jokes at all for a long time. It was difficult for me to communicate with people even though I was able to speak the language. People always thought I just did not have a sense of humor but it was not that I do not think that things are funny, I just do not get that things are a joke. It is hard to understand jokes in a language that you are still learning. Sarcasm is the same way! It was so hard to understand sarcasm when I first got here. You tend to take everything so literal.

               It was at the local gas station that I worked at that was the only time that I felt discriminated against while living in America. You hear all the time on the news people in American showing hatred to these people or those people, I never really felt that even being from a completely different country except for one time. It was just shortly after the attack on the Twin Towers in New York City. Osama Bin Laden and the guy from Iraq what was his name, Saddam Hussein! Yes Bin Laden and Saddam were on the news all the time. Well one day I was working and this regular customer of mine was coming in and the news was on. He gets to the counter to buy his cigarettes and looks at the television showing one of those two, and says “hey look your cousins on the TV”. This really offended me, I am generally a good man about my temper but when he said that I began to yell at him, how you like it if I just assumed that you were a certain race or religion? I do not know maybe it was just a joke, a bad joke but a joke I still was not good at getting when someone was joking at the time, but it deeply offended me. To just assume I was related to such a person just because we are both foreign was wrong.

               But the job helped, I was able to work on my people skills and work on my ability to understand the little things about how Americans interact with each other. In America customs are different. When people give you something hear that you bought you thank them. You get a drink at a store they give you back your change you say thank you. Back in Nepal you do not do that. You get your drink and your change and you leave. I did not realize that this was offense in America. That is until one day I was in a store buying something, what it was I do not remember maybe a back of gum maybe it was something to drink who knows, but I remember handing the man my money and he gave me back the change. I just started to walk away, as I was walking away he yelled “you’re welcome” at me. I realized that I had offended him. I did not mean to offend him, you see it is just that back in Nepal we do not do that. From then on out I told myself that I had to do that. If I got something I would say thank you because that is what you do in America.