"Foreign Things" is a personal video essay that examines my status as an American abroad and a young woman alone during a 5-month-long residency in northern Portugal. I set out every day with a video camera and a mission to visit several cafés and order a pastry and coffee at every one.  I made friends and also had various visitors from the States join me on my outings (all this, by the way, was going on during the Bush/Gore voting stalemate -- a common topic of conversation). The video is meant to be revealing not only of my own search for routine and human interaction, but also of certain peculiarities of sex, gender, and national differences.