We're the ones with "American" stamped on our foreheads

The more you spend time with people who are from Saudi Arabia, Kenya and China, the more easily you can pick out the Americans on campus. Lemme tell you how to find them:

Step 1: Find the white people who are all clumped together in a tight circle, using a lot of American slang and innuendo (inyourendo!) It's not that they're trying to be clique-ish, it's just that no one else understands what they're saying. As a result, Americans tend to think no one likes them, everyone hates them, and they might as well eat worms. Or they could just do what their mamas told them every time they stuck a bar of Ivory between their teeth: "Watch your mouth, mister!"

Step 2: Find the people with holding the petitions. Petitioning is a long-established American tradition. We were even petitioning things before we started the other long-standing American traditions of voting and getting all mixed up in 10-year wars for no discernable reason. Here in the land of the not-so free and perhaps too brave, we petition things like: Whether students should be invited to the King's big ole party out on the island or Whether we have a right to co-ed salsa classes. Yes, even here we continue to strive to ensure domestic tranquility and sexy Latin dancing.

Step 3: Skim the crowd. It's a proven scientific fact that, without trying, your eye should stop on the Americans, because your eye will automatically hesitate when it recognizes the female form. You won't see that under an abaya.

Step 4: Find the people who are on time to things, weed out the Chinese, and you'll have only Americans left.

Step 5: Find the people who think that bureaucracy is just a matter of organizing a committee, which will indeed be able to make its voice heard over the roar of about a thousand disgruntled-about-something others. When you find the "Green Group," which spends time meeting together to discuss plans to bring organic garlic to campus, you have succeeded in your quest to find Americans. Everyone else is out there meeting influential people, rather than each other, because they know that if they want to get something done, it's all up to "who you know." They have a word for "it's all about who you know" here, it's called "Wasta." Americans usually pronounce it "Whatsthat?"