I can’t believe it’s October already! Craziness. In Maryland its football, fall and the start of the school year. But here things are a bit different, so with the advice of a good family friend (thanks Mr. Pat J), I’m going to share a bit of the intricacies of life and culture here…Take it with a grain of salt and remember there are strange things about American culture, too.

1.       You can’t flush toilet paper down the toilet- the pipes aren’t strong enough. Also, its BYOTP, or bring your own toilet paper, because you often won’t find it in the bathroom.

2.       Here the school year starts in March and ends in December, but right now the teachers are on strike so they will likely be going through January.

3.       They are all about their fiestas (parties/fairs). Since I’ve been here there have been 2 already, and I haven’t seen the biggest one yet. Parades, dancing, music, and culture. I like that they have traditional dances and celebrations, we don’t really get that in the US.

4.       It’s totally PC to call someone “gordita” (little fat person), “negro,” (black), “china” (if they look like Asian), or “gringa” (white person) if their skin is lighter. They are actually used as terms of endearment. They are very direct here about physical appearance and no one gets offended.

5.       In general, the cultural is more indirect with saying “no”- in fact they don’t often take no for an answer. You have to make up an excuse if, for example, you don’t want to have a drink or eat something with a group.

6.       It is thought that cold drinks are not good for you, but cold showers are okay.

7.       Here they take mototaxis to get around town- Three-wheeled bikes with motors more or less. They have a steel frame but the material of the body is more like canvas, and the sides are open. It’s quite funny the first time you see it. And they drive super fast. They only people that have cars here are the wealthy and they transportation companies.

8.       You can walk almost everywhere, which I really like. I can walk to work in 5-10 mins and find pretty much everything I need in the local stores. They have internet cafes too but the signal is really weak.

For my next post, I’ll brainstorm some more and share more details. It’s starting to seem normal here so it’s harder to point out the cultural differences, but I suppose that’s a good thing J

Until Next Time!