Things Your Mother Told You...

This is a post co-written by one of my roommates, Ellen. You can find her personal blog through the links on the right side of the page.

This post is a humorous one that Ellen and I decided to write because of some of the funny things we have done since living here in Mexico. This will be a post of things that you might have heard your mother tell you to do or not to do... and we have done the opposite of that. And sometimes we do the opposite once, twice, even three times a week, depending on which point it is.

Don't get in the car with strange people. Here in Mexico, there are vehicles referred to as collectivos. They are similar to buses and taxis. They run on routes like buses, but they are small like taxis. The objective is to fit as many people into it as possible, letting them off whenever they ask to get out. You may end up sitting on your neighbor's lap, even though you've never met them before.

Don't get on sketchy-looking buses. Here, anyone can be a bus driver, so they drive whatever bus they want. There are often times when you get on a bus and wonder if it is really a functioning bus, or if you just got on some bus careening away from the nearest junkyard. They make odd noises and sometimes the brakes don't work. But don't worry too much. There are plenty of fuzzy mirrors to break your fall should the bus brakes fail.

Don't drink the water. I believe there was even a song written about this statement. However, I don't think it's entirely true. I didn't come to Mexico to drink the water, but I haven't had too many adverse effects from drinking it yet.

Be polite and tell them to keep the change. The coins here for pesos run from half a peso, 1 peso, 2 pesos, 5 pesos, and 10 pesos. Buses only take coins here. So, you are always on the hunt in large stores for things that will give you the largest amount of coin change back. You never tell someone to keep the change. You need the change to move around the city. However, this can be difficult because no one here wants to give you change. Everyone asks if you have change after you hand them your money. They do not seem to understand that you just gave them everything they needed to give you change back. This is one of life's greatest unsolved mysteries: how are you supposed to give them change if no one can give you change?

Don't go places you don't recognize/don't know how to get to. Since no one in Mexico, including the Mexicans, know where the buses are going, you pick out the one you think is going where you want to go and hope you are right. This was proven by our outing for tacos on Wednesday. After hopping on a bus that was supposed to go right where we needed it to go, it turned off to the right about two blocks into the journey. So, we quickly exited and walked to our destination instead.... Which leads to the next point:

Don't walk at night where there are no lights. This was also a part of Wednesday's adventure. We walked for probably 15 blocks at night with no lights down the side of an international highway. There aren't many streetlights here, so we just make do with what light we can find. Sometimes, there is no light, and we just hope there aren't any large cracks or missing pieces of sidewalk to trip us up.

Always obey all traffic rules. NO ONE here obeys traffic rules. Doesn't matter how big or small the car or bus is, no one follows traffic lights, lane lines, passing rules, one-way signs, merging rules, turn signal rules, personal space, or any other road rules. Lane lines either don't exist or no one uses them, so you can have six lanes of traffic going one way on a two-lane road.

Don't play Frogger with cars. Because of the aforementioned point, playing Frogger within traffic is both life-threatening and adrenaline-producing. We will frequently sprint across traffic, attempting to beat the cars as they race down the road. Buses are especially impatient as we try to get across the many lanes of traffic, which leads to the next point...

Don't stand in the middle of the road. Our neighborhood is just up the road from one of the larger intersections in Oaxaca, and there are six or more lanes of traffic. If we are trying to get on another bus, we usually have to cross the street. Depending on where you cross, depends on how many lanes you have to get over. Where we typically cross, there are five lanes, and we can't get across all five before the light changes. So we are often stuck standing in the middle of the intersection on a skinny concrete median as cars whip past, waiting on the light to change again so we can finish crossing.

Don't buy food from the back of a van. In our neighborhood, there is a guy who sells baked goods out of the back of his van. It's normal for people here to have small shops or sell things from carts or out of the back of a car, so we will frequently buy bread from him and not think anything about it.

Don't do anything to draw attention to yourself. We are white. That causes enough stares.

Don't talk to strangers. Because we know almost no one here, we are always talking to strangers. We will often have people ask us where in the States we are from because they know we aren't from around here. Also, we four girls all live with each other, and we just met three weeks ago.

Bundle up in winter and wear shorts if it's hot. Here, it rarely gets below 80, which is pleasant, (Except for three days a few weeks ago when it was in the 50's. We froze.) so bundling up for winter would make you too hot. And most women here don't wear shorts. That's how you can pick out the tourists in a crowd. They wear shorts. And they're white.

Don't eat bugs. One of the cultural delicacies here are called chapulines, which are fried grasshoppers. They eat bugs.

Only buy what you need for a few days. You can always but more next time. False. You can see something here one time and never see it again. So, if you see something that looks good or that you want, you better buy it then and buy a lot of it, in case it never shows up again.

Just go to Walmart. They have everything you need, and they will sell it to you. Nope. The Walmart here does NOT have everything you need, and sometimes they refuse to sell you something. Even if it has a price on the shelf. But if it is not in their system, it's not going home with you.

Always wear your seat belt. Unless you are in the front seat here, you don't wear a seat belt.

Don't put more people than there are seat belts in a car. If there is room to sit or lay on someone else, you can always fit one more person in the car.

Don't nickname people based on physical appearance. Here, if you look Chinese, they call you Chino. If you are dark skinned, they call you Negro. If you are overweight, you're called fat. If you are thin, you are called skinny.

Plan your day well and follow the schedule. We rarely, if ever, keep to the original schedule we call out in the morning because there's always something that will mess up or circumvent our plans.

You will always be able to take the same route to and from every place you go. Rarely. If a bloqueo (blockade) happens, you sometimes can't go anywhere, much less to the places you planned. The bloqueos here will sometimes block roads so that vehicles can't get down them, and sometimes they will block major stores like Walmart, Sam's, Sears, the malls, or the grocery store. When that happens, the stores close and refuse to open.

Always flush your toilet paper and never sit on a public toilet seat. No one here flushes toilet paper, and the public toilets typically do not have toilet seats, so you can't really get one of those awful communicable diseases you were always warned about. And public restrooms don't always have toilet paper, so we all carry a roll in our purses or backpacks.

Don't say words that you don't know what they mean. They speak a different language here. We're all the time saying things that we aren't really sure what they mean.

Make sure you learn the bus routes, so you always know where you are going. There are no set bus routes here. They constantly change, and we don't always know where we are or where exactly we are going.

Always be on time. Being on time here means that if you say five, you show up at six, maybe six thirty.

If you don't know the answer to someone's questions, be polite and tell them the truth- that you don't know the answer. Here, if you ask a local where something is, and they don't know, they won't tell you. They will just give you directions like they know and send you on your way.

Don't buy food from dingy restaurants. The best places to eat here are dirty, at least by the States' standards.

Don't get too close to other people. You might invade their personal space. Here, the definition of personal space is much, much closer than the States's definition of personal space. Here, you may be bumping butts with someone on the bus, and that is perfectly normal.

If someone is talking to you, always answer them back. We have had a few times where a local has walked away from us instead of politely answering our questions or even looking at us.

If someone gives you a compliment, acknowledge it and say thank you. Here, compliments usually consist of catcalls, whistles, or other relatively derogatory attention-getters, so we just ignore them.

Wear whatever bag matches your outfit, even if it's a backpack. Here, you cannot carry a backpack into almost any store, so you have to wear a purse. And even if the purse is bigger than your average backpack, you can carry the purse into the store. But not a backpack. Not even a little one.

Think outside the box and be creative. Here, you cannot think outside the box, and if you attempt to convince a local to do that, they usually cannot do it because they can't wrap their mind around that concept.

No public displays of affection. Ever. Here, there are always couples engaging in PDA, usually very heavily and in very public places.

Accept what is on the table and don't question it. Here, always taste your food before adding condiments because sometimes the sauces are hotter than you think.

Never buy anything from someone trying to sell you something at a red light. Here, people wander through intersections at red lights and sell whatever you can think of. It is normal to buy things from the intersection people, and you can sometimes find good deals.

You don't have to tip unless you're at a fancy restaurant. Here, you tip at restaurants, grocery stores, parking lots, and the guy who jumps on your car and washes your windshield at the red light.

Don't dress too flamboyantly, people might get the wrong idea. The men here dress with more style and more color than most men I've seen at home, even in Hollywood.

Don't stand on street corners. Here, that's how you catch a bus.

Always close your doors. Here, we only close our doors at night when we are sleeping or when we leave during the day.

If you get hurt, the fastest way to get help is to call 911. Here, you're better off walking to hospital on your broken leg, than trying to make a call and then possibly getting an ambulance to come get you. The phones we use have a thirty second message at the beginning of every call before it will go through, and the ambulances can't move through traffic any better than the regular citizens.

Never buy food from a place where they use their bare hands. No one here uses gloves, except in grocery stores.

It's rude to save seats in a movie theater. Here, you pick your seat as you buy your ticket, and it is assigned to you.

Don't eat too many tacos. It will make you sick. Here, we eat tacos quite often, and no one has gotten sick of them yet, mainly because they're so good.

Don't play your music loud. You might disturb someone else. If you're having a party, play your music as loud and as long as you want. So what, if it keeps up the neighbors.

So, in conclusion, this post was not meant to horrify my mother or disregard her teachings! It's just part of living in another country. And though some of these things may not be funny to those back in the States, we Americans living in Mexico often find them quite funny.