Pulling faces

I'm over in Mexico at the moment on a research trip. My son is traveling with me and doing some volunteering. This is my fourth visit to Mexico City, so I'm familiar with the city. On arrival at the airport I bought a pre-paid taxi ride as is recommended (even by the airport authorities) and exited the building. Previously, the approved taxis were just outside the building so I approached a man who was wearing a company uniform. He told me that his was a different company and that I needed to walk up the way a little to get the taxi whose fair I had pre-paid. Tired after long hours of travel I responded with a puzzled expression. A man beside him started to translate in faltering English what the first had just said. When we walked away my son observed that it must feel strange having someone translate from one language I know to another I know. My 'interpreter' was acting out of kindness and it was a friendly gesture, reaching out to a stranger in a strange land, and I appreciate that. What it actually triggers in me is a reminder that I am very much other. It isn't my accent but my appearance that make me non-Mexican and that carries with it a whole load of cultural baggage and assumptions, which make me feel uncomfortable and an outsider.

I would not like my message to be that others should be discouraged from helping strangers to negotiate airports or other situations. This is more a reflection on my own reactions that I need to consider and own. What it does make me think about is how much performance goes into our everyday behavior and how much this can influence how others read us. I wonder whether we need to practice our reactions, pull a face that communicates what we want to say when words don't transmit our feelings/needs. I wonder, is there a face for "I don't understand" what you said, (as opposed to why do things have to change when I am tired, hungry and eager to get to my final destination)? Away from my own misgivings about otherness in Mexico this moment brings me to my thinking about learning Portuguese. Often, that trusted phrase "I don't understand, could you speak slower", that is very useful when you are starting to learn a language, and is a phrase that you may have practiced over and over at home fails you when faced with the confusion of miscomprehension in real life. When the phrase escapes you it needs to be substituted with a face, a pose that communicates a need. I think that my expressions often fail me. But, are these too complicated to determine? Can you learn a useful expression? Or, does looking foreign, the other person's assumptions irrespective of words (correctly pronounced or not) supersede whatever face you pull?

If a learnt expression is possible, what other faces should we learn to pull? Do we become actors moving inside a new language and its cultures needing to be conscious of the audience for whom we are performing? Do we need to think more about the physicality of a language and how we are read and observed? Should teachers and textbooks consider the body in language more, not just as anecdotal window dressing, but as a proper and integral part of learning a language?