It became somewhat of a point of annoyance for us, especially for those who lived out of the country. Sometimes because people weren't familiar with a country such as Slovakia or Kazakhstan and insisted on grilling the foreign student on their geography, language, and school situation. Other times, people would mistake the country for a last name and wonder if everyone with Ukraine on their name tag were brothers and sisters.
This was a little less common for those of us with states under our name, but I still got asked a few times during the summer if California was my last name. One time someone even remarked what a coincidence it was that my last name was California seeing as how we were in California.
Anyway, after almost two whole summers of being "Angela California", a few of us decided it would be fun to change our point of origin. It was fun for a while being from Illinois. It was good that I picked somewhere I had actually been and knew a little about because some people seemed very interested in just exactly where I was from. I had just enough knowledge to fake my way through questioning. However, I must be a horrible liar because I started to feel guilty for lying about something that really made no difference. After that, I changed my location, not only back to California, but specifically to Georgetown. Not only did that make for a few interesting conversations with people who actually knew where my town was, but it also helped streamline the questioning process down from "Where in California are you from?" and me having to explain that I lived up North near Sacramento up in the foothills etc... Instead they would ask "Where's Georgetown?" and I would say "Near Sacramento" and that was it.
When you work in a place where you get asked the same 5 or 6 questions 50 times every day, its nice to be able to cut down or at least streamline a few of your answers.
Angela
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