On the way to Salt Lick Lodge from Nairobi last fall one of the sellers at the souvenir hut asked us where we were from (small talk while they wrapped our purchases). We answered "Pennsylvania" and they said "Ooh, like the Amish?" Interesting that in rural Kenya they had such a specific knowledge of regional US facts.

Sorry I forgot my all time favorite...
 

...always an American who asks "do they speak french there?"..even had that one during a job interview :)

I say "England. Now cower before the might of our empire!" ;)

I say Calgary, which even in America usually just gets a blank stare. Then I follow up with Canada. Then I will usually be told that they have a friend who has visited Toronto or family in Toronto, and I will tell them it takes almost 4 hrs by plane to get to Toronto from where I live, which usually produces the blank stare again! Most people who have heard of Calgary associate it with the winter Olympics or the Stampede.

I associate Calgary with good steaks, hot women, oil & gas production, good bars.

M8

My reply to that question is "Tabernac!". :D

^ All true!

Saying that I'm a Brit who moved from Paris to LA usually gets some kind of conversation rolling. On the other hand, sometimes I'm really not in the mood to hear someone's opinion of Britain/Paris/LA... ;)

I tell people San Diego.. I mean, that's what my DL says. If they ask what area, then i'll tell'em. SD suffices for most. Most only known downtown or La Jolla anyways unless they lived down this way.

I've lived a lot of places and have street-level knowledge of a few more so i can come up with creative stuff.

when I'm overseas, I say "America." That usually works OK. When in NA, I say "Cleveland." Close enough.

After learning the hard way, I no longer say I'm from America , when I'm in a foreign country. The USA is the technically correct answer for where I am from. It was impatiently pointed out to me on my first vist to Europe that "America" comprises a lot of countries, from Chile to Canada and everything in between. Apparently I had a lot of nerve to imply that the only America was the US.
Travel is the best education you can get.

Amen to that :P

Sanosuke!

Ya know I am so tired of hearing that politically correct story [nothing personal].

Fact is this, when you meet a Chilean in Europe he says he's from Chile. Meet a Canadian in Europe he says he's Canadian. Meet a Costa Rican, and he says he's a Costa Rican. None of them say they are American. It is universally understood that US Citizen and American are synonymous, and the only folks who make this correction as indicated above are simply doing so to display "one-upsmanship", or have some other psychosis, like being anti-American.

So should Americans say, I am a United Stater :rolleyes:

M8

I hear that pedantic argument often. Funny, though, when the Europeans want to bash that country that lies between Canada and Mexico, you will hear them denounce "America" at least as often as "US" or "USA".

Yeah, when was the last time someone shouted "Death to America!" and meant Guatemala and Uruguay as well as the United States? :rolleyes:

Street merchants of course always ask that question at first when potential buyers walk by. The merchants of the Grand Bazaar in IST are particularly well-prepared to follow-up practically any answer with a few words in the corresponding language as well as a mention of their [insert semi-distant relative here] whol lives there.

In Cuba, finding myself unable to deal with this anymore, I switched my story to "Zimbabwe", and that seemed to do the trick :)