Found in Translation - Part 2 (T-Shirt Edition)

The next best thing to tattooing a foreign language upon your flesh is the less permanent option of wearing a shirt that bears said language. Bonus points if you know what the shirt says.

I'm pretty sure these people had no idea.

But they were usually happy to pose for a picture. Usually.*





These matching shirts read, "Harry Potter Wizard". Trying to connect with another culture via the hit book series, I held up my camera, pointed to their shirts, and said, "Harry Potter!" They did not know what I was talking about. Or if they did, they didn't act like it. Maybe the boy wizard pronounces his name differently in China.



Ah, the Union Jack. A symbol of Britain and a beacon of the English language the world over. Especially in New York.



These girls were nice and wanted to take a picture of/with us. So we returned the compliment. Except we sort of did it because of the taller girl's inspirational shirt, which I could only assume was meant to encourage the next generation of Picassos and Monets.



*It may seem odd that I have a bunch of pictures of Chinese people whom I don't know. It is not strange. In China, and especially when we were in Beijing - during a national holiday - it was not uncommon for people to ask to take our picture. Many of them were tourists themselves, not from big coastal cities and therefore not used to seeing Westerners. My height and Lindsay's blond hair were interesting enough to snap a photo. After a few hours, we became used to this. So it wasn't odd for me to start asking to take photos of people I found interesting. More on this in an upcoming post.