Burning the Midnight Oil
Today it was 11 months exactly that I have been in Mexico. It was an uneventful day and at the moment I am taking a break from creating a brochure for my new video production business to continue rambling.
In the past few days I've had many more surprises and impressions, perhaps many of them inaccurate to the true Mexican style since I don't live on the mainland. Even my best friend here says she would experience culture shock going to mainland Mexico! Her kids are afraid to go there because of the reputation of violence there.
Many people move here from various parts of the country. It is interesting having moved from a predominantly white island community to one of brown. I really do stand out in a crowd and no matter how fluent I become in Spanish or how much I absorb this culture, I will always stand out.
One of my English students is half Mexican and half Japanese. Now there is a combination! Here in her own town, strangers come up to her and start speaking to her in English. She has to explain she's Mexican. When she went to school for a year in Japan, she didn't know Japanese and then the people there got all nasty with her because she is Mexican. According to her and the Japanese side of her family, the Japanese like Americans, the English and Australians and that's it. Mexicans are little more than street dirt to them.
I can't help but wonder where it began and where it will end, this appalling difference between peoples. Yes, we share the same emotions but what we do with them varies from place to place.
Since I don't know a lot of Spanish yet (my comprehension rate is about 30% on a good day), I have plenty of time to observe and try to figure things out. Most of the time my intuition is correct. If I don't understand something I will memorize the words and wait until I see an English speaking friend and ask if what I think I heard is really what I heard.
Lots of people say I am very brave for lock, stock and barrel doing a full immersion into a culture so foreign to ours. I don't think of myself as brave. I mean, it's not like I would try to do this in the Middle East or somewhere that is that foreign to me! I mean, I'm a bit adventurous but not crazy!
Okay that's it for today.
In the past few days I've had many more surprises and impressions, perhaps many of them inaccurate to the true Mexican style since I don't live on the mainland. Even my best friend here says she would experience culture shock going to mainland Mexico! Her kids are afraid to go there because of the reputation of violence there.
Many people move here from various parts of the country. It is interesting having moved from a predominantly white island community to one of brown. I really do stand out in a crowd and no matter how fluent I become in Spanish or how much I absorb this culture, I will always stand out.
One of my English students is half Mexican and half Japanese. Now there is a combination! Here in her own town, strangers come up to her and start speaking to her in English. She has to explain she's Mexican. When she went to school for a year in Japan, she didn't know Japanese and then the people there got all nasty with her because she is Mexican. According to her and the Japanese side of her family, the Japanese like Americans, the English and Australians and that's it. Mexicans are little more than street dirt to them.
I can't help but wonder where it began and where it will end, this appalling difference between peoples. Yes, we share the same emotions but what we do with them varies from place to place.
Since I don't know a lot of Spanish yet (my comprehension rate is about 30% on a good day), I have plenty of time to observe and try to figure things out. Most of the time my intuition is correct. If I don't understand something I will memorize the words and wait until I see an English speaking friend and ask if what I think I heard is really what I heard.
Lots of people say I am very brave for lock, stock and barrel doing a full immersion into a culture so foreign to ours. I don't think of myself as brave. I mean, it's not like I would try to do this in the Middle East or somewhere that is that foreign to me! I mean, I'm a bit adventurous but not crazy!
Okay that's it for today.
posted by Triana Elan @ 12:12 AM
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