Traveling in a foreign country the trickiest thing is sometimes just buying food at the local shop or asking what’s vegetarian on the menu.
In all these circumstances, all I’m looking for is a sparkle in the eye. This is the sparkle that says “Hey fellow human, I see you’re nice and I’m a kind person too”.
This is a universal sparkle that requires little shared language. When I enter these tricky new conversations with locals, I’m on the hunt.
More often than not, you can see the little sparkle- and certainly if you’re looking for it, you spur it out.
If that sparkle isn’t there after being so sweetly invited by your own optical sparkle, then any unpleasantness from them has nothing to do with you and you can move swiftly on to finding the next foreign sparkle.
