[Rick Lee]

I have rarely, if ever, eaten anything exotic while abroad just to be polite. I've eaten it because I knew it was going to be fantastic and it almost always was. Ok, the dog I ate in China was kind of an experiment and no one cared if I ate it or not.

The secret to getting along with people in other countries is knowing something about the place, its history and culture, so you have something to talk about and don't sound like an uneducated boob. Just do some research. If you go to Nanjing, PRC and can't understand why they hate Japan so much (for example), you need to do some reading beforehand the next time you go abroad. It would be pretty insulting to an elderly person there to show up and have no idea of that city's place in history.

A sen. guy at my company has to travel abroad a few times a year to visit our other offices. I know he hates it, tries very hard to live like an American while abroad, doesn't speak any other language or like non-American food and, well, the folks in our foreign offices thus don't think too highly of him.