A Long Way from Home!

There are many things here which in many ways are indistinguishable from the state. For the most part the fashion in the city is the same. Teens and adults here dress very much the same as in the states with one exception, almost no one wears shorts. Even though it gets into the 80's every day, rarely do you see men or women in shorts. Every one wears jeans and the men, even relaxing, often where long sleeve shirts.

The general feeling of the culture is very different. For example, our neighbors tell us that the trash man comes every day. This is largely because no one has garages or places to really store trash in most of the small houses and apartments. They obviously believe this as they put their bag of trash by the curve every day. Despite this, in our two weeks here, what we normally happens is that everyone puts their trash out in the morning the trash man never comes and they pull the trash in at night so the stray dogs don't make a mess of them. We repeat this every day until it seems one or two days a week the trash man actually does come. You know when they come because they ring a big cowbell as they get close. This is the type of organization or lack thereof that tends to be everywhere. At first it tends to drive you crazy since the states are so organized and structured, but you get used to it.

The streets have this same sort of disorganization. Even on large roads there are no lane markers. People generally drive where they want. We have learned that Mexican drivers are great defensive drivers. Everyone seems to just go where they want and so far we have seen no accidents. They also have no cross strees off of their main roads. So if you are driving on the right side and want to get to a place a business on the left side of the road there is no cutting across traffic. You have to drive past the place you want to go (sometimes as far as a mile or two) and looked for a marked "Retorno" or uturn. The main road has occsional bridges or tunnels that allow you to do a uturn. You then drive back on the other side of the road and pull into the place of business you want. If the business is no the main road you just throw on your blinkers and stop that lane of traffic while you get what you need.

Despite these things that we are getting used to, the culture as a whole is much more laid back. People walk slower,they always seem to have time to talk with neighbors. It is very family oriented. The one positive thing we have already noted about this change is that it is clear we spend more time as a family. It seems to pervade the culture. If nothing else come out of this time, (we will trust more will) This alone will make the difficult transition worth all the work.