Lazs,
Your comment on the class system here in England is right on the money, even if many Brits don't realize that's what they're doing.
My wife is of Taiwanese descent, but she has lived in the US all her life. She went to a local Cambridge college tonight to take a computer class and here's how she was greeted:
Betty: "I'm looking for the Computer course. Can you tell me where the room is?"
Receptionist: "The Coversational Chinese course is in Room 4L"
Betty: (not getting mad yet) "I'm not here for any Chinese course, I'm here for the Computer course."
Receptionist: "Down the hall, room 6"
Betty goes down the hall, finds the door locked and the room empty, goes back to the receptionist and finds another person at the desk.
Betty: "Room 6 is the wrong room. Where is the Computer course?"
Receptionist 2 leans over and says to receptionist 1: "I thought you said she was American"
*finger*
Every damn place we go, we get this sort of thing. It's like everyone here is wearing these magical glasses so they only see what they're used to seeing, and magical ear plugs so they only hear what they want to hear. A green martian with 3 eyes could go to a school in the most inbred middle-American town and at least get directions to a class without being insulted, incorrectly labeled, and given the run-around, but it happens almost every time my wife leaves the house here.
It's not just the guns Lazs. The whole country looks at many things completely differently than Americans. When an American woman goes into a school and clearly asks in an upper middle class east-coast accent how to get to a computer class, 2 separate receptionists were completely unable to get past their preconceived biases to provide a simple room number. This happens to her every damn day. It's not always the same bias, but there is always SOME bias that shows through. Whether it's because she's a colonist, a foreigner (any foreigner), looks Chinese, is a woman, has natural lighter brown streaks in her otherwise dark brown hair, or is a medical doctor, almost every so-called "service employee" she's met in this country has come up with some reason to demean her or lie to her.
She hates this place, hates most of the people she's met in this country, and I can't blame her. The last time we went through customs, even though she handed her passport to the customs official, he refused to speak to her. After the usual entry questions all directed to me, he handed both passports back to me as if she wasn't even there. Coming back to this country after a vacation makes her want to cry because she's treated like crap.
I personally rather like England, but that's because nobody treats me like that and I have a thick enough skin to shrug off the small amount of anti-american sentiment I occasionally run across. But when we get out of here, we're not coming back.
