Dear Dana's Blog Readers,

This is Dana's hubby, guest blogging for the first time here on the blend-o-matic. When Dana asked me to be a guest blogger I showed my enthusiasm by saying, “Sure, when I think of something.” Nine months later I finally have that thought.

It's Friday, Presidents' Day weekend. The young 'uns are in their room playing “Let's Pretend We're on the German Version of American Idol,” and it reminds me of the last time I played “Pretend I'm Someone Else.” It was on our trip to Turkey, which happened to coincide with some less-than-favorable political goings-on between the Middle East and Upper West. We wondered at the soundness of an American Soldier and his family vacationing in that region, but of course the tickets were non-refundable. After much deliberation the decision was made that for vacation purposes I would become an Australian expatriate living in Germany; our reason being that while there may be some animosity toward Americans out there, nobody doesn't like and Australian.

Armed with this meager back-story and vague memories of Crocodile Dundee sequels I marched into Turkey as a new man: Dirk McCallister from Ipswich (kidding, of course). My basic plan was to have only brief interaction with locals, generally free of social niceties. Well, if you've ever been to Turkey, you'll know that this attitude just won't cut it. Theirs is a culture rife with social niceties and intricate, subtle interactions.

Everywhere you go in Turkey there is a smiling face offering a seat and a glass of tea. (In the faux pas world, nothing is lower than refusing a steaming glass of apple tea.) Along with the tea comes conversation, much of which starts with the question, “Where do you come from?” Almost immediately our little subterfuge started to head south as, one after another, our hosts would offer a quizzical expression or outright double-take every time the answer was, “Australia.” It seems not a lot of Australians visit Turkey; so in reality we were attracting more attention than we were avoiding. More questions were to follow such as: “How long is it to travel from Australia?”; “Why would you come to Turkey all the way from Australia?”; and “Why don't you sound like and Australian?”

I guess by and large nobody really cared where anyone else was from; but there was this one gentleman by the name of Mammoud. Mammoud, it seems, had been to Australia. Mammoud apparently knew quite a bit about Australia and couldn't resist showing his knowledge by asking a series of progressively detailed questions. At one point I just gave up and said, “¿Què? No compreno. Ich komme aus Puerto Rico, nicht Australien.” I don't think Mammoud actually believed I was from Brisbane, but he never let on about it. In fact, we ran into Mammoud at a farmers market the next week; he was selling fruit and nuts and appeared very pleased to see us. He greeted me as his 'friend from Australia' and offered a hearty, guttural laugh and a bag full of bitter almonds.

The whole act came crashing down when we were on a bus-ride to the Manavgat waterfall. Devin, sitting in his much coveted window seat, turned to me with his angel face and in all sincerity asked, “Daddy, are you really from Australia?” Apparently he had been stressing a lot about it, as he had always been under the assumption that he is half American. The prospect that he may have to redefine half of his identity was undoubtedly weighing heavily on the boy and he nearly broke down in tears when I said, “'Course ah yam, mate.” Right then and there I saw the error of my ways and spent the rest of our vacation as good old Christian Michael Allen, a low-level manager at the BMW factory in South Carolina who got transferred to headquarters in Germany and settled down with a local girl. Kidding again, I was myself; which I guess is kind of the moral of this story: Be Yourself.

Until next time; God bless,

Christian.

Caveat: so as not to offend anyone, let me say that I am proud to be an American Soldier. The interactions above did actually happen, but it was really just a joke between Dana and myself and we only did it a few times. Mostly I said who I really was if asked and nothing bad ever came out of it. Turkey is a lovely country with a rich and vibrant culture and I'm not being coerced into saying that. A good time was had by all.