One In A Crowd

In my past two weeks (yes TWO) here, I've noticed that we REALLY stand out. Not the stand out like... having your shirt on backwards or wearing two different shoes, but the kind where your continually stared at. We are really one of the few white people here. Whenever we go and visit a site people continually ask to take a picture with me; or I'll watch them try to take a photo on the sly, with someone SLOWLY walking past me and their friend take a photo when they were near enough to me. Usually its the tourists that want photos with the locals, but I've never heard of locals wanting photos of the tourists. It's all amusing really.

I've even noticed myself doing the same thing as the local people. If I see a white person I find myself staring or trying to figure out what they're doing here. Then I just have to laugh. The other day in the market, there was a man from England that was shopping and he came up to me and seem flabbergasted that we were there. He said... "I've been here 8 months and your the first white person I've seen!" So we chatted and turns out he's an engineer that lives just down the street. I've definitely gotten used to all the staring and I realize its mostly just a curiosity thing so it doesn't bother me, but at first it was a bit unnerving.