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The Terrace Bar during a welcoming session for postgraduate students
Late afternoon/beginning of the evening
ii. Who was involved?
My German friend with two course mates and a girl she hadn´t met before from China (later the story is provided by may friend)
iii. What happened?
The girl came over to introduce herself and talk to us. She was friendly, outgoing and nice to talk to. After we shared a couple of sentences we started to introduce ourselves. I was the last one in the round and after saying my name the girl interrupted me saying:
“You are from Germany aren´t you? You have such a beautiful skin colour!” I was taken aback, because I didn´t know how to respond at all…so after a few seconds I said something like:
“Wow that’s correct! But what about my skin colour? Your skin colour is really pretty yourself… I mean you are really pretty!”
I couldn´t understand why she had made that compliment, especially because she was really, really pretty herself (much more than me).
My confusion or shock grew when I got the answer: “What? But I am Asian!”
Iv. Reaction
As already explained, I was shocked, surprised and taken aback. I tried to divert the attention away from myself by focusing back on her. And I really didn´t think she should have complimented my skin colour…or my looks – especially because she looks better herself, and her skin colour was nearly as fair as mine. So I tried to make her see this impression, but got to a more stunning point in the conversation by this attempt!
II. Reflect
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I. Self-Explanation
She could be similar to myself in the sense that she does not know how to take a compliment and feels in a loss when it comes to responding to one…
Maybe she was just trying to be nice and make a good first impression…
My other idea would that she actually meant what she said (still stunning that she got my nationality right.. which I can only think was a more than lucky guess)! … but I hope that is not the case;-)
Ii. Self-Reflection
I think I have a stronger reaction to this than most people, because the national culture of my home country forbids mentioning of skin colour (especially in connection to nationality) as well as of race or ethnicity (being ask to fill in my “ethnicity” in on questionnaires by my new University is a shock for me and I refuse every time!) Complimenting somebody to someone’s skin colour (unless it’s a beautiful summer-tan) is a complete no-go!
+ I cannot take any complements well…
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