1) Expect others to speak my language and cater to me. If they don't speak my language, they should make every effort to dumb down their rhetoric for me and interpret my babblings. I'm having a hard time in this new country, so they should take pity on me and make things easier. God knows it's not my responsibility to learn the language. Others should be extra tolerant of me, even though I've lived in the country to 10 years and still haven't learned, and don't even bother to carry around a bilingual dictionary.
2) Expect to be given a job even though I can't sufficiently read, write, and communicate in the language. Communication with others isn't important, especially if it's in a job in which communication is key, such as the healthcare field. I have common sense and brains, which is all I need. I won't have to be able to read things like biohazardous waste, and I'll never have a patient die on me because a nurse can't understand that I'm trying to tell her than someone is bleeding to death. It's discrimination to not be hired for my lack of communication skills, even though a native person that lacked the same skills would not get the job either.
3) If I am attending a foreign school, I will expect to have texts in my native language language, or have an interpreter with me at all times. I will do this even if I plan on working in this foreign country, because they need to give me a chance to be myself.
4) Even if a person explains things to me, asks me if I understand, and tell me not to hesitate if I have any questions, I will still badmouth them behind their back for being rude and insensitive to my needs. If I come from a culture that interprets questions as a sign of stupidity or if I plain out don't want to ask questions for no particular reason, I will keep that mindset even though it severely limits my understanding. I would rather have a tiny chance of an unempathetic person thinking that I'm stupid rather than a 100% chance that they will think that I am a two-faced whiner who needs to take responsibility once they find out about my slander.
5) To promote myself, I will say, "We (insert my ethnicity/nationality here) work hard, unlike these lazy (people living in the resident country, usually Americans). Yes, I'm surrounded by people in that country, this will not make me very unpopular due to bigotry and snobbery. God knows that my superior race has absolutely no lazy people whatsoever, even if my native country is famed for marrying off its daughters to rich foreigners whom the families use as ATMs. I will refuse to acknowledge that the ones who go overseas are generally the ones who are willing to work hard to make a new life, because EVERYONE in my superior race has an excellent work ethic.
Man, now I can see why people dread tourists from other countries. I'm working as a secretary in a health career school, and we get tons of international people. Most of them are very nice, and are attending the school to further themselves in this new world. However, there are some really rude ones, and I'm seeing a lot of the above qualities in almost all of them. Today, a Vietnamese lady came in and flunked the basic reading comprehension test. Her daughter started whining about how she's really a smart woman (we didn't doubt that at all), and that she has common sense, which makes her more cautious, and that she'd be a good nurse aide. I tried to explain to her that communication can literally be a matter of life and death, especially in the healthcare field, and that it didn't matter if she had a Ph.D if she couldn't communicate with others. She got very pissy and huffy, accused me of being insensitive and racist, and told me that I should be more sympathetic to her and give her a chance. For Chrissakes, it's not racism if the person is unable to read and write enough English on a fifth grade level. Such people would probably be unable to benefit from the schooling. I certainly wouldn't want her taking care of me in a nursing home or hospital if I couldn't tell her that I'm getting a bedsore. Yeesh, and people stereotype Americans as being egocentric.



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