Culture Shock

I am an American born and raised.  In fact, I am American in every way.  I look American, I talk American, I AM American!  I say that with unabashed pride.

While I love my homeland, I no longer live there.  I am an expatriate.  I have not fled, been kicked out, or feel as if I have been marginalized by the increasingly socialistic oligarchical government so I live in a foreign land sitting in the local coffee shop agreeing with the locals that the empirical United States is doomed to fail.  You see, Sommer and I made the decision to leave the comfortable confines of our native land to work for a non-profit organization (not organisation like the Brits would have you believe) in the emerging world.

We have studied their language, we have learned their customs, even adopted their eating habits, but still have yet to truly grasp the humor (again, not humour).  They say that humor is the last thing to come while living in a foreign culture, and our experience testifies to the truth of that statement.  However, it is not a failure on our part due to being raised insulated and isolated from the rest of the world while living in the United States.  It is a universal truth, humor is that last thing to come.

We came here after the global, "That's what she said" phenomenon hit.  While these jokes just seem natural to me, probably because of my uppity highbrow tendencies, the natives seem to have a tremendous amount of trouble with applying the "That is what she has said" appropriately.  They tend to apply them to any number of mundane statements such as:

Person 1: Could you get me some milk?

Person 2: That is what she has said.

Countless times, we (meaning the Americans) have tried to explain the context and execution of these jokes to no avail.  While it may never translate well to our friends and neighbors (not neighbours) here, I leave you all with a montage of extremely witty "That's what she said" jokes as told by the best group of thespians to ever have hit the television (not telly), the cast of the AMERICAN version of The Office (maybe not the first, but definitely the best)).

ps.  I have no issue with the British being that we won the war and all.