You know you're an expat when...

by Mishaela
(CA, USA)

8 years after re-entry, you still have difficulty answering the simplest question in the world: "So, where are you from?"

MY painfully inadequate and blindly desperate answer, despite carefully memorized versions, always comes out as "the United States...?"

They always look confused. But not as much as I feel.

You also know for a certainty when you meet 20 different Europeans at a hostel in LA over a period of six weeks and none of them know you are an American until you admit it.