The wife of one of my relatives grew up in Taiwan and attended college in the United States. When she went home to Taiwan for the holidays, she would tell her classmates, “If you need to get in touch while I’m away, you can send me email.” One of them asked her, “You mean, you have computers in Taiwan?” (Hint: It’s the home of the world’s third largest PC manufacturer behind Dell and HP.) One of her friends grew up in Japan. When she moved to the United States at around age twelve and was introduced to her new school, her classmates were excited to hear about what it’s like living in Japan. One of them asked her, “Do you have television in Japan?”

When I told this story, one of my colleagues added his own version: “When I came to the USA from England, an 11-year-old asked me if we had electricity there.”