The Little Things In Life

Mexico is definitely different than the United States.  However, it's not too difficult to adjust to living here.  But there are just little things that are different that I thought I'd share here.  Not all are bad.  They are just different.  Well, some things are kinda bad.

Starting at about 7:30 am, men come by and start yelling "el agua!!" (water) at all the apartments.  I've never actually seen anyone in my apartment building buy water from any of these guys.  But they must make some money, because there are several groups of guys driving around with trucks and vans carrying 5 gallon bottles of water.  I hear it several times throughout the day.  Jose told me they charge 12 pesos for the water.  We get the same amount from the women in the store out front for 8.50 pesos.

There are also a lot of vehicles that drive by and have a loudspeaker shouting things at the neighborhood.  At first I assumed these were political messages and thought it was so cool.  Maybe I've watched too many movies or it is wishful thinking.  Instead, they are just selling stuff.  They are typically recorded messages that play over and over.  I don't understand what all of them are saying. I think one was selling a cocoa mix of some sort. I've seen one car with some sort of telecommunications logo on the side that had a loudspeaker.  And one car was actually soliciting people for employment and the driver and passenger were handing out fliers from the windows as they drove by (we were at the tianguis so there were a lot of people out). There is also one gas company that has a jingle.  I think it sings something like "Somebody needs gas" or something like that.  And at the end of the day, if some vendors have tamales left over, they will come around yelling "tamales!!"

There are dogs running around all over the neighborhood.  Cats too, but where I grew up, cats were allowed to run around.  So I guess that seem less weird to me. Jose says that some of the dogs and cats have owners and some don't.  It makes me sad sometimes.  Some of them seem really healthy and friendly.  But others are really skinny and dirty.  Anytime we have food we are going to throw away, we throw it out back.  Every drop of it is always eaten.

There is trash everywhere on the ground here.  I don't think it's because the people here are inherently litterbugs.  I think it is because the trash retrieval system really sucks.  We have no dumpsters for the apartment building.  And if the trash companies would just provide bins or something, I think it would make their jobs a lot easier.  Instead, everyone just sets their bags of trash out by the road the night before trash pick up days, which are Tuesdays and Fridays.  But then the cats and dogs tear into them and trash goes everywhere. So when the trucks come by in the morning, the men can't possibly pick everything up off the ground because it has been scattered around.  This also means that we can't really take out the trash on any other day.  If we try to put a trash bag out back by the boiler, it will get ripped apart by a cat in less than 20 minutes.  Luckily, we fill about 2 trash bags a week so we take one out on Monday night and another out on Thursday night.  It just means we can't miss a trash day or else we'll have trash spilled all over the back porch.

It seems like we have to tip a lot of people.  I don't think you would typically tip a waitress here as much as 20% like you would in the US.  But when we go grocery shopping, we have to tip the bagger.  It's not a lot.  Typically just 2 to 5 pesos.  We also have to tip parking lot attendants.  They have whistles and direct people in and out of spaces, even when it seems like that wouldn't be necessary.  That is also typically just a few pesos as well.  We also have to tip the people at gas stations.  I would say that you should probably also tip gas station attendants in the States.  But there are hardly any of those around anymore in the US.  I'm not sure if I've ever seen a self-service gas station here in Mexico.  Jose says you don't technically have to tip people like the bagger and parking attendant.  But they don't actually get paid by the employer, so if we don't tip them, they don't get paid.  But wages are so low here, that sometimes they make more money in tips than they would if the employer did pay them.

Driving can be a bit hazardous.  I'm not sure if there are no right-of-way rules here, or if they are drastically different than those in the US, or if people just don't care.  This can cause quite a bit of road rage at times for me.

The left turn lanes are really confusing.  I'm not even sure if I can describe them. You sometimes have to know a full stop light in advance that you want to turn left so you can get in special lanes that cut across traffic before you actually get to the road you want to turn left on.  I think you'd have to be here to really understand what I mean.

Mexicans put ketchup on their pizza.  I find this revolting.  But maybe I'm the weird one.  Ketchup and pizza sauce are both made out of tomatoes.  It makes me understand a little bit better the Chicago stance about no ketchup on hotdogs. (Ketchup is my preferred condiment for hotdogs.)

They also seem to really like fruit flavored pop down here.  I don't mind orange and grape pop, but I'm not a huge fan.  Although I have found out that I really like Shasta Grapefruit pop.  It's kinda like Squirt, but better.

As a side note, I made a vegetable and bean chili last night for dinner.  Luis put soy sauce on it.  He does the weirdest things with food.

A lot of people wash their clothes by hand here.  The laundromats never seem to be too busy.  And when I've been in the laundromat, some people will come in, wash their clothes, and then take them home to dry on the line.  Jose seems to think that machine washing is hard on the clothes, which may be true.  However, he hasn't yet stopped me from doing his laundry when I go.

I think that's all I've got right now.  I'm sure Jose has his own long list of weird things that I do.  Like making them take off their shoes when they first come in and claiming that everything is dirty (like the table, the floor, the sink, the fly swatter, and pretty much everything else that hasn't been washed or cleaned that day). Eventually, you get used to most of the little differences. So maybe these little things won't seem odd to me soon.