Having studied abroad in Mexico before, dated Mexican men,
and learned Spanish, I did not think that I would fall victim to the famed
“culture shock.” I could not have been more wrong. The last time I was in
Mexico, I just went for a semester with my American boyfriend to learn Spanish.
I didn’t really get immersed in the culture because I lived with an American
and hung out with the other foreign students.
This time, I came completely
alone. I had the good fortune to find an apartment on the 1st floor
of a two-story house, above which lives a Mexican family who were thrilled to
rent to me and have basically adopted me. I’m also working for a Mexican
school. So right away I was completely immersed in the culture – working for
Mexicans, living with Mexicans, and without any American friends. Never before
have I been so deep in the culture. Add to that the fact that Pachuca is not a
tourist destination and Americans are rare here, so it’s not like there are
stores or attractions catering to my culture. It also means that I get stared
at a lot, which was unnerving at first.
The honeymoon
phase
At first, everything was wonderful. Everything I saw
reinforced my decision to move here. The people seemed so relaxed and happy,
and it was endearing how they couldn’t plan anything or might decide to throw a
random party at any given moment. Every trip out to buy something or get
something done was an adventure. I got lost a lot but didn’t mind it because I
ended up exploring.
The negotiation
phase
Suddenly, everything made me angry.
I think the first thing that started to get on my nerves
were the taxi drivers. In general, it seemed like they either wanted to hit on
me or screw me out of pesos, and in some cases both. I relied on them because I
didn’t have a car and didn’t know how to take the buses or colectivos (communal vans that run a route and will pick
you up anywhere along it for about 5 cents). There I would be, trapped in a taxi
with a driver who, 9 times out of 10, was a sketchy-looking individual. Having
found a rare American, they would be eager to converse with me. It would start
innocently enough – “Where are you from? Why are you here?” and then eventually
it would move towards things like “Do you like to go dancing?” “Do you have a
boyfriend?” “Do you like Mexican men?” I would do my southern girl thing and
answer with a smile, laughing nervously, which did nothing to discourage them
and resulted in my collecting a lot of phone numbers.
Eventually other things began to annoy me. One by one they
gathered at the banks of my self-consciousness, to float in the back of my mind
and nibble at my patience. Around the end of the third month they had grown to
epic proportions, giant monsters that stood in my way and hampered me at every
turn. Here is a list of just some of the things I began to think around the 3
month mark (please note; I’m not trying to bad mouth Mexico here, I’m just
pointing out some differences between it and the US that have created some
frustration for me. I still love Mexico!):
1. Why can’t I drink the water from the faucet?
In the US we
don’t have to think about getting water – it comes right out of the faucet and
we drink it. It’s free everywhere you go. Here it’s like something you have to
plan – at first I would forget and end up at home late at night with all the
stores closed and no drinking water. And it costs money to order it in
restaurants! Now there is no drink I can order to be polite when I suspect
someone else is going to pay for my dinner. Mainly it’s ok because you buy a
giant jug of drinking water for about 3 dollars, which, for one person, lasts
about 2 weeks. The problem comes when you run out of water. If you have a car,
you can take your empty jug to most stores and they will trade it out for a new
one and 30 pesos. If you don’t have a car, however, it gets a little more
complicated. Then you have to wait on the pleasure of the water truck, which
may or may not decide to come on a regular schedule and will most likely come
when you’re working.
2. “Ahorita” – #$@! that word, and the Mexican concept of
timeliness!
So the word “ahora” means now. In Spanish they put diminutives on
everything, so adding “ita” makes it “ahorita,” which translates to “in a
little bit.” They also have “rato” which means “a short while,” and adding
“ito” makes it “ratito,” which means “in a short while.” I soon learned to
despise both of these words. It turns out that “ahorita” and “ratito” can mean
anywhere from 20 minutes to 6 hours to never. So if you ask someone to do you a
favor, or to do anything, and they say “ahorita,” you have no idea if they will
do it in 20 minutes, in 6 hours, or if they will even do it at all. It is
maddening! At first I really thought that those words meant “in a little bit,” which,
to an American, probably means in 10-30 minutes. So I would wait. And wait. And
wonder if they had forgotten. And wonder if I should say something at the risk
of being rude. I can’t tell you how many internal struggles I suffered over the
interpretation of those two phrases! Eventually I learned that they also use
them to get out of doing something. For example, if their friend is having a
party at the present moment and calls them to invite them, and they don’t want
to or can’t go, they can say “ahorita vengo” or “vengo al ratito” which means
“I’ll be there in a little bit.” Then, it’s perfectly acceptable for them to
just never show up. Which leads me to the next point…
3. Mexican reliability – it doesn’t exist.
People tell you
they’re coming and then they don’t come. People tell you they will do something
and they don’t do it. People make plans and forget them. At first this was maddening – every time it
happened I was insulted. Eventually I learned that you should just not count on
anyone. If you don’t expect anything, you’ll be pleasantly surprised if they
happen to come through.
4. Nobody knows how to do anything the right way, AND companies
hate their customers
I started to get an inkling of this a few days after I moved
into my apartment. In the street right in front of our house, an underground
water pipe had broken and water was bubbling up through the pavement and
running in a river down the street. The family told me that it had broken a
while ago and everyone had been calling the water company, but they hadn’t come
yet. About a week after I moved in they came – because everyone had stopped
paying their water bill. Three scruffy looking, disgruntled men showed up and
proceeded to tear up the street with basic tools. They didn’t bother to turn
off the water first, so the giant hole they made quickly filled up with muddy
water. I think they eyeballed the new pipe and cut it where they thought it
should be cut, then ripped out the old one, put in the new one, and proceeded
to shovel the huge amount of dirt they had unearthed back into the swimming
pool they had created. They got most of the dirt back in there, but the guy
driving the dirt-pushing machine was in a big hurry to leave and did a sloppy
job, almost running over one of his co-workers in the process. Then they drove
off, leaving the road a huge, muddy mess with a big hole in it that was full of
watery dirt not firm enough to stand on. Because they didn’t turn off the water
and created a mud pit, muddy water got into the pipes and all of our water was
brown for 2 full days. One of the neighbors cleaned up the street, and like
fools we assumed the company would come back later to put asphalt over the
hole.
It has been 3 months, and today they just came and covered
it up. But everyone agrees that the used the cheapest pipes they could find, so
it will probably break again soon.
5. Everyone here talks loudly and at the same time.
Seriously, that whole not interrupting people thing that your parents taught
you? Doesn’t exist here. People also haven’t been taught to keep the volume of
their voices down, like we try to do in the states. I don’t think they preach
the concept of the “inside voice” to the kids here. I often hear groups of my
co-workers howling at a joke or loudly exclaiming things to one another as I’m
trying to work. As a teacher, I have had to get used to a certain amount of
background chatter. If I were to try to stop the talking, I wouldn’t cover half
my lesson because I would spend half the class making the kids shut up. In movie
theatres people exclaim loudly, make comments to each other, or just have whole
conversations during the movie. Sometimes it can be a bit overwhelming!
6. The truth is highly variable.
I’ve heard it said that in
this culture, making someone happy is more important than telling them the
truth. I would have to agree. If your friend invites you to a party and you
know you can’t go, you just tell them that you’re coming anyway, then don’t
show up. The truth is just not such a concrete concept here. People also tend
to just plain make things up – gossip, news, whatever. At least the gossip you
hear in the US is mostly true or has some true elements. Not so here. People
will just generate completely off the wall, crazy things and tell them
convincingly, as if they really happened. I have had to learn not to believe
things people tell me, and take everything in the light of “this might not have
even a grain of truth to it.”
7. They have strange rules no one tells you about, but
everyone judges you by
I realized this in a particularly frustrating incident. The
family and I went to a small pueblo up in some mountains where Felix was
interested in buying some land. We made a day of it, traveling around in the
back of a pickup truck with the owner of the land, hiking up mountains, and
eventually going out to eat. The whole time I was my normal silly, friendly
self. The owner of the land, Don Ruben, they called him, would ask me questions
about the United States or how I liked Mexico and I would answer him like I
would anyone. Just making conversation. Eventually Alexis came to me and
essentially said that I needed to tone it down. He said that the man’s wife was
getting mad at me for talking so much to her husband. Apparently in the car she
made some comment to Silvia and Alexis about how bold I was. I asked Alexis
what in the world I was supposed to do, because the man was making conversation
with me and I was just responding how I would respond to anyone, man or woman.
Alexis said I didn’t have to give him so much information – basically, that I
should just politely respond with the minimal answer. I should be more reserved
and distant, otherwise his wife would think that I was flirting with him. That’s not fair, I thought, why is it the woman’s duty to maintain propriety?
And why would his wife get mad at me, and not at him? After all, he was
initiating all the conversations. After that I noticed that his wife and adult
daughter seemed cold towards me, though his daughter started at me often, which
made me really uncomfortable. On the way back from the land, we passed a
greenhouse owned by a friend of Don Ruben. He declared that we should stop so I
could see them, and once we were inside he told his friend that he should give
me flowers. So, I stood there in the greenhouse while all the workers stared at
me and this man went around cutting off various colors of roses. He made a
bouquet of beautiful roses and handed it to me. Not sure what to do, but
touched by the gesture, I said thank you and hugged him. I immediately knew I
had made the wrong move because he went as stiff as a board, muttered his
goodbyes, and fled. As we went back to the truck, Don Ruben joked about how the
man would be sleeping alone tonight – apparently the workers in the greenhouse
were his wife and family, and it was a big mistake for a strange, “exotic”
gringa to hug a married man in this small town. So then I felt extra stupid –
like I was just blundering around and offending everyone. I decided to be more
reserved for the rest of the excursion. I felt down and out of place, like I’d
been unfairly judged and no one understood me. Eventually we got back to the
town and decided to have dinner at a quesadilla place. As we ate I maintained
my new distant, reserved attitude. At one point a girl about my age came in and
began to talk to us – she was the daughter of a man we were eating with. She
proceeded to tell us how she just found out she was pregnant. As the story
unfolded, it turned out she had broken up with her boyfriend a couple of months
ago and had no idea she was pregnant with his baby. She proceeded to make
ribald jokes peppered with profanity about sleeping around with different men,
and how she won’t feel anything when the baby comes out because she’s already
so loose down there. And everyone laughed.
Everyone thought it was hilarious. I was so confused… how could they judge me
for making friendly conversation and hugging, when she comes right out and
admits to being slutty, and makes a joke out of it, peppered with language that
everyone tells me pretty girls shouldn’t use? It seemed so unfair. Later I
asked Alexis what the difference was. He said that I was better than her and I
had to act like it. I replied that I don’t believe anyone is better than
anybody else, but Alexis said that that’s not true in Mexico. He said that when
she walked into the room and immediately started with a curse word, she put
herself on a lower level, so it was ok for her to act that way. I ended the
night feeling confused, frustrated, and out of place, like I would never
understand the strange hidden rules of this country.
8. Everything is more difficult here and takes longer.
Going out to the store in the US used to be a simple affair. I would jump in my
car, drive a few miles down calm, well organized roads, and park in the free,
ample parking to walk into a clean store with plenty of helpful employees.
Here, it’s a different story. You get in your car and drive down degraded roads
through a maze of poorly designed roads with bad drivers. If it’s been raining,
you probably have to take a special route to avoid the flooded zones, because
there is basically no street drainage here. Even if the store is a few miles
away, it might take a while to get there. When you arrive you dodge around the
random people who have parked in front of the entrances and go through the gate
to get your parking ticket. Then you must navigate the perils of parking –
people going up the aisles the wrong way, random parking attendants with
whistles, lack of spaces, and people absentmindedly walking in front of your
car. Once you have parked you go into the store/mall, which is undoubtedly
crawling with people who walk at a snail’s pace in front of you. The stores can
be chaotic and it’s hard to find an employee to help you if you need something.
When you’re done, you take your parking ticket and have it validated (if you
purchased something from a store in that complex, parking is free or reduced.)
Then you take the parking ticket to the parking ticket machine, insert it, and
pay whatever you need to pay so that it spits it back out stamped. Then you
navigate the parking lot again, refusing the help of the random people who want
to help you carry your bags for a tip. You go out through the gate, insert your
parking ticket (which hopefully works) and escape. Then you drive back on the
poorly designed, degrading roads to your house. This whole process takes 3
times as long as it does in the US and is infinitely more frustrating. In the
US I would never say that I’m “too tired” to go to the store or “just don’t
feel like it.” But here, it’s such a hassle that I really have to be feeling up
to taking it on before I can go.
This is just one example. Literally everything else takes
longer and is more complicated than in the US. Getting your laundry done.
Getting pictures taken. Getting gas for your house. Ordering internet for your
house. Getting a bank account. And ANY government process like getting a
license takes FOREVER and you probably didn’t come with the correct documents
because the person that told you what to bring had no idea what they were
talking about and every attendant you go to tells you something different.
Yeah.
9. Their educational system leaves a lot to be desired…
I am teaching at a school that is regarded as the most prestigious,
expensive private school in Mexico. Naturally I assumed that my students would
be geniuses, having had the benefit of top quality private education their
entire lives. Not… so much. I have kids in my college class that never learned
how to write. Not only am I teaching them English, but also the structure of a
paragraph and an essay. Personally, by the time I finished high school I was
capable of writing large papers with well-developed introductions containing a
thesis statement, body paragraphs/sections that developed the thesis and
transitioned into each other, and a conclusion that summed up the paper and
drew conclusions about the findings. So I was shocked to discover that most of
these college kids cannot even structure a paragraph. They also complain
mightily when I assign them small things, like 150 words on a topic or a
worksheet. It seems like they’re not used to doing any kind of work at all…
When I was in college, I was up long nights writing papers, living in the
library, or doing extensive projects. A lot of them will completely fail to do
any homework, then at the end of the semester will be shocked by their low
grade and beg me to let them turn the homework in late. Is this how college
works here?
I was also surprised by the strictness of the rules for the
college classes. I was told not to let them have their cellphones out, and that
they had to ask me for permission to use the bathroom. If they have their
cellphones out we are supposed to take them at least until the end of the day,
but we have the option of taking them away for 48 hours. We’re also not
supposed to let them in 5 minutes after the start of the class. In the US
you’re pretty much responsible for your own college education. You can be on
your cellphone the entire time if you feel like it, you can go to the bathroom
at will, and you can walk in late. As long as you don’t disrupt the class you
can pretty much do anything. But when it comes time to take the final, you’re
responsible for the information, and there is no whining to the professor that
you weren’t there or it’s too hard. So, I decided to treat them like that:
adults. Well, that was a mistake. These kids are not used to being treated like
adults. I find that children grow up a lot slower here than in the US; their
mothers make their meals and do their laundry into adulthood, and they don’t
generally move out of their parent’s house until they get married. So they take
a long time to learn personal responsibility, because their parents are always
there to make them do the things they should do. It turns out that in college, they still
haven’t learned much about personal responsibility. Allowing them to have their
cellphones out and letting them leave the room at will kind of destabilized the
discipline in my classroom. A lot of them would be on their cellphones the
whole time and not pay any attention, and a lot of them would just come and go
for no real reason. At this point a lot of them will show up 15-30 minutes
late. I’ve found that without the strict rules, they don’t take the class as
seriously. Now I know that I need to start next semester treating them like 1st
graders, and I will have a lot more respect and productivity from them.
10. Their road systems and neighborhood designs don’t make
any sense
I often like to go out walking or running to get outside and
explore the area. I have a lot of fun and it’s great therapy, but I began to
get annoyed by the general setup of the roads and neighborhoods here. First of
all, there are walls and fences everywhere. You see a point in the distance and
decide to make your way to it, but along the way you hit a wall or a fence. So,
you turn to take a different route. Eventually you hit another wall or a fence.
Then you continue with that pattern until you either get frustrated and give up
or start climbing over said walls and fences.
When driving, you’ll notice that the road patterns just
don’t make sense. If you know the general direction you want to go, you might
think that you could find your way there. Not so. Roads end in those cursed
walls for no apparent reason. Neighborhoods are not set up in grids, so it’s
not always easy to find your way back to the main road. And if you miss your
turnaround on a one-way highway, good luck finding another. The next one might be
5 miles away!
There is a distinct lack of signs to tell you important
things, such as when a road is one-way and you can’t go up it. I’ve turned up a
few one-way roads already. The solution seems to be that everyone beeps at you
until you realize it and go back the way you came in reverse. They also
sometimes fail to put any kind of stop sign at intersections to let you know
who has the right of way. Basically, driving in Mexico is one big game of
chicken.
11. TOPES
Tope is Spanish for “speed bump.” And there are 1,000 varieties
of them in Mexico! Even when speaking English, everyone still uses the Spanish
word “tope.” I feel that this is due to the fact that the speed bumps here are
nothing like their kinder, gentler, and far scarcer cousins in the US. They
need their own word! There are small topes that appear in rows together, called
“vibradores” – vibrators. There are the big wide topes. There are the thinner,
taller topes. There are topes made out of bumps of metal in a line. There are
topes that people create out of thick rope and lay across the road. There are
sooo many kinds of topes that you begin to wonder if these people think that
topes are a magical solution to every traffic ailment.
I’ve been told that they are so numerous because “no one can
drive in Mexico” and they need the speed bumps to force them to slow down. This
is all well and good, but most of the time the government fails to put up any
sort of notification that a tope is coming, and most of the time the yellow
paint wore off long ago, so you wind up with surprise speed bumps on main roads
and highways. Add to that fact that these speed bumps are absolutely sinister,
and you come up with an equation from which no car can benefit. On the main
roads the topes are pretty standard, but in neighborhoods and back roads it
turns out that anyone who feels that traffic goes too fast through their area
can just create a tope, so they are not regulated. This causes you to end up
with topes that are rectangular in shape instead of rounded – seriously, just a
tall block of concrete sitting across the road. They also make them waaay too
tall, so a lot of cars scrape the bottom no matter how slowly or diagonally
they go over the tope. At least this type of tope does not normally appear on
the main roads, but the low visibility is a problem. It has happened numerous
times that I have been driving along, confident and content, then suddenly
slammed into an invisible tope at a bone-jarring, suspension-ruining speed. To
avoid this you really just need to learn where the topes are in your area,
which doesn’t help if you like to travel.
Where am I now?
All that being said, I think I’m beginning to see some light
at the end of the tunnel. For a couple of weeks I was angry a lot and yes, even
slightly depressed. Everyone told me that the quickest way to get over it would
be to accept that I can’t change anything about this country and learn to live
with everything without getting so worked up about it, and I think I’m starting
to do that.
This past weekend I was reminded of why I love Mexico so
much. Pachuca is known for being very windy, so I’ve been looking for a kite,
because what else do you do in a windy place? This past week I finally found
one, so on Sunday I decided that the boyfriend and I should go to a field and
fly it. As we were getting ready to go I went upstairs and chatted with Felix,
who was bored. He wanted in on the kite action and suggested that instead of
merely going to a nearby field we should drive 30 minutes to a mountain town
and fly it. Within minutes Silvia and her mother were in on it to, so we all
piled into the car. Along the way it was determined that we should buy beer, so
we stopped at an Oxxo and stocked up. Of course, we began drinking in the car
(because it’s Mexico). Vicente put on some classic Mexican music with plenty of
screaming and ay ay ay-ing, so we drove through the scenic mountains, drinking,
singing our lungs out, trying to outdo each other on the screaming, and just
having a grand ol’ time. We stopped at a park area in the mountains where tons
of children were running around flying kites. As it turned out, my kite was too
heavy and wouldn’t fly without more wind, so the main point of our trip was a
bust. Instead of being annoyed, everyone found it funny and we still sat around
and laughed and enjoyed ourselves. On the way back we commenced with the
singing and drinking once more, until we passed an overlook where Felix
declared we should stop and try the kite. We parked and got out of the car and
Felix started messing with the kite. Meanwhile, Vicente noticed a path up a
mountain, so we started up it to see what we could find. At the top we
discovered a breathtaking view of Pachuca, surrounded by gorgeous mountains as
far as the eye could see, with the setting sun reflecting off the buildings. We
sat down and watched the sunset together. We hadn’t even told the others where
we were going or how long we would be gone, but we were unconcerned. Finally,
as the sun sank below the clouds, we decided to head back for the car. There we
found the women hanging out inside the car and Felix outside the car, eating an
orange he’d scavenged from Vicente’s trunk. They weren’t annoyed that we’d
abandoned them and made them wait; instead they made jokes about how love makes
people lose track of time. We got back home just as darkness fell, then spent
the rest of the night hanging out, drinking more, and playing cards.
I love the spontaneity of this lifestyle. That would never
happen in the US – the whole family piling into the car to go fly a kite on a
whim. Buying beers along the way. Shamelessly singing your lungs out together.
In the United States everyone already has plans, or even if they don’t they
shun spontaneity and don’t like to have a day’s activities sprung on them
without notice. They would consider the whole day wasted if the main purpose of
the trip couldn’t happen. Nobody stops the car on the way home to fly a kite.
And if you wandered off from your friends and didn’t come back for 30 minutes
in the states, they would be upset when you got back. It’s completely different
here – people just enjoy passing time together. It doesn’t matter if what
you’re doing has a real point or is productive.
