How Much I’ve Gotten Accustomed to … (part 5)

• 70% – Not driving. This is a policy of the US Peace Corps worldwide.  Back in the days when it started, they didn’t want volunteers using their money to live a lifestyle apart from the locals in the 3^rd world countries where they were working.  That hardly applies to my case since nearly all of my coworkers and contemporaries have cars, but such is life in the Peace Corps.  It takes longer to get places by bus or by foot but the upside is that it’s cheaper and I don’t have to mess with horrid traffic.  Walking/biking to work or using public transportation will be a priority for my next job.
• 100% – Walking in traffic. I quickly accepted a smaller margin of error than I was used to in the US.  Crossing highways or standing on the curb with traffic flying by doesn’t faze me as much as it probably should.  Some kids here grow up working or playing in traffic.
  

  Kids playing on a median while their mother(?) sells candy to drivers at a stoplight in Puebla.

• 100% – Ignoring police lights. They don’t mean anything other than the car belongs to the police and they like lights.
• 84% – Ignoring noise (but not sirens – those mark a real situation … or at least a cop running a red light).  During the day there’s a constant background noise in the cities formed by honking, stores blaring cumbia or banda music, whistling, barking roof dogs overhead (very startling sometimes), hot rod city buses with overpowered engines, screeching brakes, etc.   Honking can mean a number of things and it took me a while to ignore it.  Buses mean “get out of my way” and they say it with ridiculously loud designed-for-highway-speed horns … actually I think those horns can effectively move the smaller Renault and Smart cars.  Taxis honk at pedestrians to tell you they’re available.  Everyone honks in neighborhoods when approaching blind intersections.  It took me many months to stop looking around to see why anyone was honking.  Nights aren’t bad but I keep earplugs on hand in case I need to sleep on an overnight bus or block out neighbors, roosters, fiestas, or a rare moonlight mariachi serenade.
• 43% – Whistling code. I haven’t cracked the code of the whistling done by traffic cops, parking attendants, etc.  They have these overused multi-pitch traffic whistles and they blast out different patterns.  I feel like they have some commonly understood meaning that I don’t get.  Or maybe they’re just struggling to make their presence known over all the other noise.  The average guy on the street can whistle to others in certain codes too.  One of those, as it was explained to me recently, represents an obscenity about your mom.
• 50% – Hearing old pop songs & ballads from the US. The radio stations here love a certain type of old song.  Nothing too heavy or edgy … not necessarily good, either.  They almost always feature singers with distinctive voices:  Cindy Lauper, George Michael, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, The Cranberries, Aaron Neville, and others.  Since most people don’t get the English lyrics, the voice is just another instrument so it better be interesting.  I hear Unchained Melody about once a week.  It’s also funny to me that the radio culture here has picked some old English songs for airplay that I’ve never heard in my life, sometimes even from an artist I’ve never heard in my life.  I’ve had this conversation about old songs that a local has grown up hearing but I’ve NEVER heard even though they’re clearly by recognizable groups like The BeeGees or Queen.  There may even be some artists that were big in Mexico and never even knew it.  So tragic.
• 98% – Hearing Spanish all the time. I’m not saying I understand it all of it, but I’m accustomed to hearing it.
• 55% – Hearing and using diminutive and augmentative forms in Spanish. This still feels a little foreign to me.  I think these word modifications made Spanish harder to learn in the beginning and I wish I’d learned more about them 2 years ago.  There’s a much bigger vocabulary to recognize when you consider 3 or 4 forms of each noun and adjective (e.g. pez/pececito/pecezote, casita/casa/casota/casona).
• 70% – Thinking in Spanish. It keeps the thoughts simple since I don’t have the full vocabulary.  I even caught myself struggling a bit once and thinking, “why don’t I just think this thought in English?  It would be so much easier.”
• 62% – Speaking Spanish. I was pleasantly surprised by Peace Corps’ recent oral evaluation, but I feel like it’s a challenge and will always be a challenge.  It gets worse when I’m tired or when I’ve spent a lot of time reading and listening to podcasts in English.  I’m worried how quickly the cob webs will collect when I leave Mexico.
• 80% – Different phone usage. Calls are expensive and texting is cheap.  I didn’t spring for a data connection on my phone, either. I miss that a lot when I want it … but that doesn’t happen that often anymore.
• 90% – Losing touch. I’ve never touched an ebook reader and have barely touched an iPhone, iPad, or Android device.  I don’t shop the app stores. I don’t tweet nor follow … and I feel fine.  After losing a phone here last summer, I’m back to my trusty Nokia 6682 “wisephone” … that’s my new term for smartphones that are aging and scarred but still spry.  I will always respect and my dear Nokia, but I’m looking forward to picking up a sleek younger & smarter model this summer.

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