Adapting

I knew that living in a new country with a different language would be challenging. I knew that it would be harder than traveling. I had already gotten to a point where I was pretty comfortable with traveling in whatever Spanish-speaking country, but living somewhere is a different thing.

It's not the language challenges so much, although people are more forgiving when you are an obvious tourist or are in touristy places. Really, the main challenge is just not knowing how things are done. A simple example? Weights. Everything here is in kilos and grams, as opposed to pounds and ounces in the U.S. Then there is the challenge of how lots of stores here are not self-serve, so you have to know what you want to ask for, which of course is harder given that I don't know the names for everything here. Farmacies are like that.

One time I went to a store that sells electronics and home items—sort of like a small Best Buy—and just wanted to buy a mouse pad. So, I took it off the shelf and stood in line to pay. When I got to the register he asked me for some sort of receipt. I was like, "What? I just want to buy this." Seems I had to go see a salesperson who went to a computer and entered my order and printed something for me to take to the register where I finally paid. Then, I had to take that receipt and go to the pick up area to get my mousepad. Actually, there used to be some stores that did everything like that in LA, but it's those kind of things that can be frustrating and just a pain in general.

Hey, one thing that is cool though is that you can pay your bills through an ATM. Basically, nobody trusts the mail service here so there is no such thing as paying bills through the mail. Your options are using little local bill pay services like PagoFacil (EasyPay) OR using the ATM at your bank. It's pretty cool, you just have to enter a number from the bill, or sometimes your latest bills are already listed.

The streets here are crazy. People don't ever stay in there traffic lane. I don't even really know why they paint lines for the lanes, nobody pays any attention to them. And, as a pedestrian, you better be alert. Cars will generally swerve around you (they won't slow down or anything like that), but buses—if you see one bearing down on you, you had better step quick—they think that they rule the roads, and they actually do.

That said, it's pretty cool that you can get buses to all parts of the city, and during the day they are running constantly. You hardly ever have to wait more than 10 minutes for a bus. There's an extensive subway system too.

Okay, that's all I can write for now. It's late.