We're not stupid; we just don't understand you.

Have you ever found yourself complaining about the idiotic [insert potentially offensive racial nick-name here] workers at your job? Or in your classes? Or who attend your book club? You do. It's okay. Because as a few Broadway bound puppets once taught me, "Everyone's a little bit racist." You're thinking-- Egads! Not me! But you're wrong. When someone doesn't understand you, the immediate instinct is, "Wow. What a moron." Perhaps it's because unconsciously we try to equate the words dumb (as in, mute) with dumb (as in, a bumbling fool). Well, let me urge you my friends to do your best to stop thinking of those not sharing in your Mother Tongue as dumb. Chances are that idiot you're talking to could perform brain surgery if the instructions were in his native language ("Brain Surgery for Dummies").

This stigma is one that has plagued my fellow Americans and me since the moment we arrived. I know this is shocking, Greece, but we're not stupid. We just have no idea what you're saying.

As part of this experience I have going here, we are required to take two courses at the college per semester. These courses are all conducted entirely in Greek. The idea? Immersion. We take an actual Greek language course that spans both semesters and then two other additional classes, one per semester. The idea is to take a "workshop" class of some sort so that there is a direct visual to linguistic relationship at hand. So, I enrolled first semester in a class termed "Trash Art." This turned out to essentially be "advanced arts and crafts" involving crap that you find on the street. I figured I would be able to follow along by watching my teacher and/or classmates craft something and follow along whilst trying to pick up vocabulary. This didn't work so well as "Trash Art" turned out to be more of a lecture class at times than a studio art class. True, there were projects, but the main problem is that I would never understand the instructions at the end of class concerning the activity to come. For example, one day I showed up to class and everyone had five or six huge sheets of plexiglass. Definitely didn't catch that one.

One miraculous day, though, my teacher came in with a huge roll of wire and several pairs of pliers. He started going to town shaping the wire into things like flowers or people. He then handed out cuts of the wire and the tools and the class started to shape things as well. Finally! Supplies at hand! So, I grab some of the wire and pliers and start making little people. Seriously, this isn't all that difficult, but you would have sworn I'd just made a perfect reproduction of the Mona Lisa. My teacher was beside himself. He stops the class from working to show them my wire men. He applauded me. All the while declaring, "Ah! The American! She is creative! She figured it out!" Yeah. Because I'm not actually a moron. I just can't contribute to the group discussion because I've been studying Greek for about an hour. But, sir, I did go to art school...

Second semester I elected to take a ballet class. I figured, ballet is in French and French is French even in Greece. A plie is a plie in English, and it's a plie in Greek because plie is French. Also, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this class would definitely involve concrete demonstrations, and this was at least something I had some previous knowledge of. Point is, I had high hopes that my lack of Greek fluency would not directly impact my ability to dance or my feared reputation as an imbecile. I was only kind of right.

See, what I failed to consider is that a ballet teacher is obligated to give the dancers notes and pointers to improve their technique. These, of course, came in Greek. My teacher, however, was very kind and would translate for me when I was confused so as to actually aid in my progress rather than allow me to fumble around in the darkness. The downside to this is that her English, like my Greek, was not perfect. Dance teachers are notoriously strict to begin with, but as Irana lacked the vocabulary to sugar-coat any notes she would give me, my pointers would often be things like, "Feet. Bad." Or my personal favorite, "Your legs, they are good. But this [non-committal sweeping motion around my torso/head] is uh... [stank face]."

As for my reputation as an ignoramus, it became very clear that it had followed me to ballet class the first day we worked on our pirouette technique. Now, I'm not enrolling at Julliard any time soon, but I can manage a pirouette. So, I did one. This time you would have sworn I was accepting my adoring public after dancing the lead in Giselle. That is, my teacher reacted the same as my Trash Art instructor: "You know how to do a pirouette?! Unbelievable! The American! You turn very well!" Yeah. I have no idea what "pointers" you gave before we began the exercise, but I did take classical dance for years and years and years.

The intentions of the fellowship are just-- immerse us in Greek classes so that we can expand our vocabulary. I'm not sure I learned any words from Trash Art, but my vocabulary thanks to ballet class now includes essential phrases like, "Stretch your arches!" or "Tuck your tailbones, ladies, you look like ducks!" or "Taller! Taller! Energy from your head and energy into the floor!" or "Front, side, back, side." or the dreaded "One more time!" or "Softly! Softly!" Softly in Greek is malakAH, which you may recall from the entry on potty-words is a mere accent mark away from being a naughty word. I spent half the semester thinking our ballet teacher was constantly calling us offensive names. I consider this alone to have been a valuable vocabulary lesson. Additionally, I can now count from five to eight backwards, forwards, upside down, and sideways.

So, if there are foreigners around you, embrace them and help them learn instead of just assuming they are stupider than dirt. I take solace in the fact that at least there's always Ikea-- guaranteed to make us all feel like idiots. On this, at least, we can all unite.