I’ve started coming to terms lately with some pretty shocking news. Are you ready? Here goes:

I’m American.

OK. I realize I may be the only one whom this is striking as news, so let me explain my thinking here.

I have never considered myself overtly “American” in any stereotypical sense of the word. I tend to be more comfortable taking direction than giving it. I’m rarely the loudest person in the room. I’ve spent time in more foreign countries than I have U.S. states, and before coming to New Zealand, I was getting a steady paycheck from the French government for telling Americans to go visit a country so many of them seem to hate out of principle. I told my mom I wanted to take French lessons at the age of nine, and a decade later, when the phrase “freedom fries” was coined, I was in Paris interning…