Mrs. Crockett: You’re a long way from home, aren’t you, Mr. Carpenter?
Klaatu: How did you know?
Mrs. Crockett: Oh, I can tell a New England accent a mile away.

— The Day The Earth Stood Still

I was truly a stranger in a strange land when I moved to Tennessee and Kentucky.  My accent was wrong, my tastes in food was wrong, and the way I dressed, as if I still lived in Arizona, was way off.  Walking into a Waffle House and asking if they had chorizo and eggs with chilis got me some of the strangest looks.  Luckily, I like biscuits and gravy, even if I do douse it in hot sauce.

Moving to California when I was a teenager was a bit rough, but mostly because my manners and speech were a bit old-fashioned for my classmates.  Let’s be honest:  Not a lot of teenagers in the Bay Area in 1987 stood up when they spoke  to a teacher and said ‘Yes, ma’am” and “No, sir”.  But they got over it.  I learned to like the food (there’s a reason I say I dated the United Nations when I was a junior and senior.  Immigrant mothers can cook!), found a way to be polite without making the teachers uncomfortable, and got on with life.

Wherever I went,  I was never rejected because I was different.  True, there were the occasional “Yankee” or whatever thrown my way, but rarely out of meanness.  The people I met were patient with my ignorance, open to listening to my differences, and willing to try my strange way of doing things.

It’s that openness that I miss the most when I go overseas.  No matter where I have been in the United States, so long as I was respectful, others were willing to accept me.  I can’t say the same about most other places I’ve been.  You always have to know the ways of the local tribes when you go to a new place, but nowhere else on Earth have the local tribes been so willing to take from me as much as they give.