Just the other day I met someone from Puerto Rico at a party and when he found out where I come from he was surprised and said that I didn’t look Peruvian. Even though I was not sure what he would expect a Peruvian to look like, I politely explained to him that, when it comes to its ethnicity, Peru is a diverse country and, as such, not everyone looks the same.
On second thought though, frequently people will guess I come from anywhere but Peru. Sure, there are people who have no clue (especially in this country) and will assume I’m Mexican just because I’m not Caucasian and I look latina. Nevertheless, there have been some interesting instances: in a couple of occasions I’ve been addressed in Italian by Italians and in Portuguese by Brazilians, because they thought I was one of them!
And it gets better: on one of my trips to Peru a few years ago, they tried to charge me the foreigner’s fees at some touristic attractions! Of course that may have had to do more with the fact that I lost my Peruvian accent in favor of a kind of neutral one, after living abroad for such a long time. Still, I thought it was funny.
I’m sure a lot of people can relate to this, especially now that we live in such a global world. Nowadays, pretty much anyone can be from anywhere! And yes, sometimes people look the way we expect them to, coming from a certain place, but a lot of times we’ll be surprised to hear where they’re actually from. Isn’t that awesome though? I think it is!
One of the funniest things in this regard happened to me in NYC, back in 2001. One night I went out with this Turkish friend and some other people. We were at this club and at one point one girl from our group started talking to me. I had no idea what she was saying! The first thing that crossed my mind was: “Oh my God Mariela, your English is so bad!” I couldn’t believe I couldn’t make sense of the words she was saying. A bit embarrassed, I said to her: “I’m so sorry but I didn’t understand what you just said!” She started cracking up and replied to me: “Oh no, it’s my fault, I thought you were also Turkish!” No wonder I didn’t understand her, she was speaking to me in Turkish!
The moral of this story: the only certain thing is that we are all human beings and that we should embrace our diversity…so I propose that we all just rock our global looks everywhere we go!