Well then!

I think that one of the side effects of living as an expat is that your tolerance for oddity dramatically increases. I think there are a lot of factors that go into this (natives don't know the difference between ;normal' American and 'odd' American, incomprehensible local languages/customs that simply cannot be understood as a 'rational American,' etc). One of the missions of the Peace Corps is giving foreign cultures an understanding of Americans and American culture (another is understanding the host country's culture better), and I find the temptation to portray America incorrectly sometimes difficult to resist.

Honestly, I don't abuse the privilege of being an American volunteer, paid by you all (thanks for the taxes!), to spread disinformation about American culture. I may, however, tell our host family that rap videos perhaps are not the best mechanism for understanding American foreign policy, or our culture's relationship to feminism. But there is the temptation, always sitting there, to simply twist reality a little bit, just for boredom's sake.

Frankly, American culture is so far away and so foreign to Georgian culture that some gaps exist that simply can't be understood. Hence eccentricity or oddness. An expats ability to write off seemingly odd behavior is pretty strong. Unfortunately, every expat eventually begins developing their own eccentricities - there's an odd sense of being 'in the middle,' of feeling the pull of both home and host cultures.

For me, this expresses itself through drinking coffee/tea when I first get to the office (awful, I know!) rather than waiting until 10am to have coffee/tea as a social experience. If you put a Georgian in an American office, they'd be the guy sitting in the break room wondering where everyone is. It's an oddity.

Well, I suppose that every adult (now that I'm 25, I can officially claim the title) is entitled to at least some oddities of behavior. But living in a foreign culture allows you a certain freedom for weirdness that certainly wouldn't be tolerated in your home culture. It's both liberating and stultifying at the same time, which accounts for the development of these personality traits that would not manifest back at home.