Unlike my brother and sister who have, I suppose, all the "good Swedish genes", I got, according my mother, all the "bad Mongol" genes. I never really questioned her why she always says I got all the bad Mongol genes, but I just assumed it's because (based on the very old black-and-white pictures I've seen of my Mongolian grandmother taken in the early 1940s) I look more like her than anyone else in the family. I definitely don't look like my mom (she's a stereotypical blond-haired, blue-eyed Swede) and I don't really look like my dad either. But from her pictures, my Mongolian grandmother is the closest familial resemblance I can find. So, I look the most Asian out of the three children. No one ever thinks my brother or sister are half Asian. Once when my brother shaved his head in the summer, skinheads started talking to him because they thought he was one of them. Then he told them his father was Asian! What a surprise that must have been.
I, on the other hand, can be virtually anything except "white". Depending on the situation, how tan I am, the person who's guessing, what my hair is like, people have guessed that I was anything from Mexican to Japanese to Native American to everything in between. Recently, I've been attempting to get tanner since my sister commented on a recent photo that my arm was so white that it looked like a "friggin' baby ghost's arm", I concluded she was right and bought some self-tanning cream. A few days ago, when it was 82F (27C) here and sunny, I rode my bike to Germany to tan by the river. So now, I have some good, healthier color on me, but not enough that people will guess I'm Mexican =).
On the tram today, someone randomly started talking to me while I was getting out my language flashcards. I politely entertained the conversation then she asked the question I've been asked so many times before in my life that it's really getting old, even in French. "Where are you from?" Now, it's very easy to answer this question since I don't live in the U.S. So I said the U.S. She didn't seem satisfied with my answer. She asked if I was from Alaska (probably implying the questions whether I was an Inuit or not). I said no and to answer the question she really should have asked/wanted to know (my ethnic background), I told her. Then she asked if I spoke Chinese. WTF?! How the hell do you get a question like that from Korean, Mongolian, and Swedish? Then she asked what the difference was between Korean, Mongolian, and Chinese. Apparently to her, anyone who has Asian roots is just Chinese. Uh... wow. That's the equivalent of saying anyone who is European is just German. Just because a = b and b = c does not mean c = a. After I said that I think she understood, since Alsatians, despite speaking a dialect which is basically a German dialect, consider themselves to be very different from Germany and Germans.
I really don't like it when people jump to conclusions like that. If you're curious about my ethnic background, just ask! And if you're really uninformed about the differences between different countries and languages, read a book and learn a foreign language!
I told this story to my sister while talking to her today and she sent me this:
Today's Random Conversation:
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