How do you know you're in a foreign country?

My dad has repeatedly said "If you want to see anything, anything at all, go to Manhattan." Yet I saw something the other night which is beyond all my experiences, even in, as Al Pacino calls it in Scent of a Woman, "Freak Show Central."
While at a bar (called a dance club, but it was far from that) with had a small dance floor, there was this older man. What brought my attention to him was not that he was the "old guy in the club". In his early-to-mid 50s, he wore jeans and a black wife-beater. Over the wife-beater was a Mr. T-style gold chain and a jean button-down shirt, open most of the way revealing some white chest hairs and plenty o' chest wrinkles. He also donned a leather jacket, and to cover his bald head, he sported a leather bandana. Yes, a leather bandana. Think about what that looks like for a moment. Oh, how I wish I had a camera to film his arhythmic gyrations to Flashdance.

On a different note, I was walking through town the other morning with my camera (it was a gorgeous day), and I came cross this sign:

Sure, the natural follow-up to shots and beer is "salads." You know, for all those health-conscious tequila drinkers.

Meanwhile, I am here to teach English. The lesson of the day for everyone out there to think about is how to explain - to a non-native speaker - why "to look like", "to look into", "to look up", "to look up to", "to look down at" "to look in", "to look at" and "to look" mean such different things. Or the difference between "above" and "over" as well as "below" and "under". Why is it "above the ground" but "over 18"? Why can a pilot say "we are currently over Germany" as easily as "we are currenly above Germany", but he can only say "we are above the clouds" and not "over the clouds"??

A quick anecdote: Heather (my roommate) loaded a picture of her cat (who is pretty overweight - the cat is, not Heather) as her desktop background image on her computer at her job. The image she loaded was distorted as Windows stretched it to fit the dimensions of the screen, so the cat looked even fatter than it is normally. Upon seeing that image, one of her Czech co-workers said, "Wow, that's one American cat!" To which Heather replied, "How did you know it was an American cat?" The immediate response was "Well look how fat it is!"

Teaching a group of 6 women and one man last night, I played a game where they have to - in teams - write on the board words in different categories starting with letters I specify. Categories such as "parts of the body", "countries", "colors", etc. Well, a few spaces were left blank. For example, they could not think of a body part beginning with the lettter V. I stated "well, there are several parts of the female reproductive system which work here." (yes, I realize... now... that I could have used "vein") After talking amongst themselves for a moment, they say "oh... we know... vah-gee-na" (where the "gee" is a hard "g" - like in "girl"). And I found myself uttering these words for the first time in my life: "Actually, it's 'vah-JI-nah'." As I was saying those words, the amusement of the fact that I was instructing 6 women on how to say this word hit me pretty hard. Pretty tough not to laugh like a 12-year old in moments like that.

I leave you with that thought.