Weekly Photo Challenge: Foreign
This week’s ‘Weekly Photo Challenge’ from WordPress is all about the theme ‘Foreign’. I sat and thought about this one and decided that to me the word often describes a feeling rather than a place or a thing. I have sometimes been thousands of miles from the UK (my birth place and where I grew up) and have felt totally at home. Equally I have sometimes been in my own home town and felt like a foreigner. ‘Foreign’ means to feel out-of-place I think. The photo I am using is not a great image but is one that sums up a moment where I felt foreign. In 2011 I went to Sierra Leone for the first time and for the most part felt happy, accepted and welcome. The only time I felt really foreign whilst in the country was taking a walk on the sucking sands of Sussex beach. I had been thinking to myself how lovely it was to take a walk on an empty stretch of beautiful beach – I could have been anywhere in the world! Just then a group of local children started running at me shouting ‘AMERICAN, AMERICAN’. They were incorrect in their assumption but I was instantly reminded I was only a visitor to this place. We had a short chat where they trialled their English on me and my friends and then they ran back off to continue with their games. I was left standing on the beach feeling out-of-place. A tourist. Foreign.
wow! looks like clay!
Sierra Leone is awesome like that – one beach fine white sand, another pebbles and then a few miles away rich golden colour! In Sussex they described the sand as sucking-sand because it is sticky
wow that’s really interesting! thanks for the added info
A lovely addition to the challenge.
Thanks 🙂
Oh that’s hard Laura. I live in Vancouver 1/2 the year and Oxford UK the other half. Brtish father and I’m still thought of as foreign in my own village…sucks. Also sucks to be identified as American before anything else. Been there…oh, and then they say, “same thing!”
I have lots of American friends but you are right there are huge differences in culture (even within the States) and certainly between the US, UK and Canada. Must feel very hard to feel foreign in your own home village as well. I have family that moved to Scotland and have been in a village there for fifteen years but still have the same feeling.
[…] Weekly Photo Challenge: Foreign | THE THING WITH FEATHERS […]
Beautifully composed image and a really great choice for this challenge – your words really add to it. There are many places like this in the world where no matter how long you spend there, you will always be seen as a foreigner, and you’re right…sometimes that can even happen in your own town.
If you get some chance, we’ve got a challenge going for this week too – the theme is escape. Judging by this, I’d bet you’d come up with something great!
http://www.letsbewild.com/photo-challenge/wild-weekly-photo-challenge-3-escape/
Thanks for the lovely comments. I will take a trip over to your site this week and look at the ‘Escape’ theme.
[…] Weekly Photo Challenge: Foreign | THE THING WITH FEATHERS […]
Beautifully written post and brilliant photo. 🙂
Thanks so much. Sierra Leone is a wonderful place to write about