Expatriate?

I'm in Warsaw. It's my last night in Europe, I catch a flight back to the US tomorrow after church. And, tonight as I walked from the grocery back to the apartment I'm staying at I reflected on the day and thought I'd share.

Reasons I'd be a great resident of another country:

1. If I need to ask a question and I'm not quite sure how to say it I can just say "I'm learning Polish" or: "Oo-chee sheh pole-ski-egg-o" and then ask the question. People are 1,000 times nicer when they feel a little bad for you. And then they're kind of excited that you're learning their language. And I don't have to tell them that I did technically learn and speak Polish fluently five years ago...
2. I totally visit the sites of the city and love walking down their beautiful streets BUT I also like being in the residential areas. I like walking down the street to the grocery store, taking the bus to and from the city center and riding the metro. I like city living. 
3. Grocery stores are awesome and there are tons of them here. I have lots of different options of so many awesome foods. Today I went to three different ones. And yes I bought food at all them. (Some food though is to bring home...)
4. I like to pretend I'm a local and only disappoint myself when I have to tell the person that I don't know what they're talking about or that I didn't understand. This happened and to me three times today, and then I started busting out the "I'm learning Polish" line.
1. Met up with friends for lunch. I didn't understand what the guy in the line was asking me. I had to say, "Sorry I don't understand, I'm trying to speak Polish but my first language is English."
2. When I tried on a lovely skirt in Zara (side note: why is Zara always so much better outside the U.S.?), the girl asked me to put my bag on a scanner to make sure I wasn't stealing or something. I had no idea what she said, finally I busted out my, "I'm leaning Polish line". She laughed and said something to the affect of, "Oh! that makes sense, I couldn't figure out what was so difficult to understand!" I felt stupid but she was cute and nice and made it so much better.
3. I saw that if I'm not from the EU I can get tax free shopping and tried to ask the lady
    what that meant and when I couldn't explain to her what I wanted I just appologized and used "the line" and she was all nice and sweet and explained it slowly. 
4. I'm totally a local.

This post is getting long and it's totally boring, and if I didn't have Nasa's computer to use it wouldn't exist. And I have no way to get phone pictures or camera pictures onto the computer so you're just going to have to settle for this googled image of Mr. Gyllenhaal instead:

via

Why him? Because he was a large subject of a conversation last night between the girls here. Half in English and half in Polish and lots of gasps from my new favorite Polish ladies (Dorota, i Nasa i tez Ewa, ale zawsze bedziesz ulubiony,)
I'll post more when I'm home and settled.

Czesz! (see, I'm also good at mixing in the country's jargin in with my every day language...)

P.S. It was really hard to stay in Warsaw when all I wanted was to go to Bydgoszcz with the rest of all my friends this afternoon. I kept thinking how I could legitimately take off another day after already being gone for 10+ days. I couldn't. I'm coming home.