Discrimination - comes in all shapes and sizes

Today, the kids and I walked to a local hamburger place (think McDonalds) called Bembos for their weekly treat of ice-cream for doing their checklist well. The entire experience from ordering to getting my food was not very pleasant. I will spare you the gorey details, but it boils down to discrimination. If you have ever lived in a foreign country long enough and tried to speak the language, you will definitely be able to relate to this post. As soon as they see my blonde hair and blue eyes they turn off their ears. They decide to not listen before even a word has been spoken from my mouth. They have deemed me "dumb" and "ignorant" to their culture and ways before even a word has left my mouth. And today's experience just showed me that. I have NEVER asked to speak to a manager, EVER, the entire 3 years I have been overseas. However, today was just too much and I spoke to the manager and told him that I felt that just because I am a "gringa" that his people were not listening to a word I was trying to say and were being rude and talking about me thinking that I can't understand or hear them. I said, "Look, I know I don't speak PERFECT Spanish, but I do speak Spanish and I can communicate myself and the words "mixed" and "vanilla" are not even similar words. I told him I had been treated very poorly by his employees from the moment that I walked into the restaurant (and you would agree if I told you the story). He apologized and said he just had "too many" people working and there was a lot going on and that he understood me perfectly and there are no problems with my Spanish and that he assured me it wasn't because I was a gringa. I felt a little better after I spoke with him, but honestly this happens ALL the time, but not quite as severely as what happened today. Most Peruvians (not all), just don't want to listen to each other or to you. I left thinking about how many times I have discriminated against someone in the states who doesn't speak English perfectly or has a strong accent and I just assume they can't "communicate" when in fact if I would just look at them and listen I would see that they can. Or maybe I could help them along instead of just putting a big ol' "ignorant" stamp on their forhead and sending them on their way like they did to me today. By the way, I was speaking VERY well today. So, as you can see, I didn't have the most pleasant experience, but I beg you to help internationals along when you run across them. Speak really slow, make them feel welcome in our country and give them a listening ear. You might find that they are really great people!