You Know You're Considered a Native When....

Today I had a couple of moments that made me feel officially accepted as a native in my little town.

This morning when I got on the bus to go to school, I did the usual: I waved my school pass with my ID and ticket by the driver's face and turned to get in.  He stopped me and took my card.  He said, "Hmmmm...... Hmmmmm," and kept flipping it over.  I asked him if something was wrong and he told me that, although it didn't show it on my card, that my ticket was expired.  Now that got me truly confused, because I buy monthly tickets, so there was no way.  I told him so, inwardly freaking out that I was somehow going to have to come up with the money for a new ticket.  He just stared at me for what felt like 10 minutes and then burst out laughing.  "Just kidding, just kidding," he said.  This entire conversation was carried out in German, by the way, and so the fact that he didn't treat me like a foreigner made me laugh too.

The second thing that happened was that Fabian, a boy in my class, brought his new exchange student to school today.  Matthew is from London, and he is staying with Fabian for a couple of weeks.  I'm not the newbie anymore :)  I'm not the one with the wide-eyed stare, pretending to understand what everyone is saying. I know, I know, it's mean to make fun of him since he is what I once was, but I was nice.  I came over and spoke to him initially in German, because I always was insulted when people spoke English to me without giving me a chance to show I could speak German, and asked him where he was from.  It scared him so badly that he quickly said London and waled away before I could be like, "Cool, I'm from the USA." Oh well.

Anyway, I'm a native because the bus driver says so and because I am old news, not new. :D  Hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's Day.