“Now remember” Mr. Sundquist lectured before we de-boarded the tour bus. “The moment you step on that sidewalk, you are all ambassadors of Princeton High School, every single one of you. Everything you say and everything you do will represent Princeton High so…so don’t go around making fools of yourselves.” It was the heart of winter in St. Petersburg, Russia and despite the warnings, as a tenth grader all I wanted to do was get out and pee in the snow.

It was a novel idea at the time, to be considered ambassadors at such an early age. “If we’re all ambassadors, why do we have to ride this crummy school bus?” I remember one of the class clowns shouting back. “The thing doesn’t even have seat belts!” While I may not have understood it perfectly at the time, being ambassadors didn’t only mean five course dinners with the president or parking in specially reserved spaces. But also, the notion that our direct actions were widely emblematic of our country as a whole.

Upon originally moving to Casco Viejo I, as an American ambassador, befriended the smallest children in the neighborhood first who, if for no other reason, liked me because I gave free piggyback rides. I also occasionally bought them sodas at the local grocery store; an act I would like to think enriched the symbol of a gringo to them. Had someone described a similar person to me, one who brought such joy to the children, I might have envisioned a pope-like figure. A Mother Theresa in the making. Had I been their only lifetime exposure to North Americans, we’d be depicted forever as an extremely charming bunch.

“Hola amigos” I used to, and still do, say to locals sitting on their stoops as I’m walking by for a morning slice of pineapple. “Hello friends.” It’s a nice salutation, but one I imagine more appropriate in the late 1800’s where it might have been followed by, “would thou like to go for a ride in mine horse-drawn carriage?”

This awkwardness is partly because the Spanish I learned was from an old textbook: the kind of thing that still referred to the USSR and Cabbage Patch Dolls. And while my Spanish interaction in Casco surely sounds, to a native, a bit remedial and old-fashioned, it is fairly effective. “Buenas dias vecinos” I like to say. Good day to you neighbors. “How are you doing Sir. Sebastian?” I once said to the local architect. “And your wife? She is doing fine too I hope?”

I must have appeared to my new friends mostly as a simpleton: this happy-go-lucky gringo who had nothing but good and uncomplicated things to share with the world. “The sun. Is very strong today.” I remember once remarking. “Yes, I have very much heat. But not tonight! Noooo, tonight will be dark and…no sun.” My words came off almost like those of a soothsayer. The neighbors gossiping about the white-skinned boy who walks around the neighborhood and predicts ordinary things before they happen.

Slowly, the local tongue began to seep into my daily repertoire and because most of my teachers were squatters living in derelict buildings, my speech started to sound significantly more hardcore and gangster-like. “Que es lo que es?” became one of my favorite phrases—a thug-like way of saying good day. It was a step in the right direction from my fundamental grammar, and one which clearly elicited harmony from my new friends. I had gone from a tourist to a local in the span of a few weeks and it felt good in my new home.

Most of my neighbors knew not how to read nor write, and it was this fault that severely impeded their learning of my name. After a brief period of trying to explain the sound of the word Matt, I gave up and let them call me whatever they chose. “Hi Henry” is the salutation I still get from the local shoe shiner. “Wesley!” the teenage boys call me. “Wesley, you can buy me a cerveza, Wesley?” How my true name evolved to these, I do not know.

It was not until moving to Casco Viejo that I realized the true meaning of being an ambassador of one’s country. While it’s nice to learn a foreign culture and speak a foreign tongue, while it’s nice to wear good clothes and not talk when you’re mouth’s full, the overall gist is to not make a fool of yourself. And in that regard, I think I’m doing just fine.

Matt Landau is a real estate expert living in Panama City and the author of the nation’s top guide to investment, The Panama Real Estate Report, which he sells on his website, www.thepanamareport.com for $99.

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Filed under: Culture on April 30th, 2008