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Thursday, June 29, 2006

How different is Mexico?

Here are some interesting things I have learned about Mexican culture and language:

1. This weekend we have the presidential elections. That means that Friday at midnight through sunday the bars and clubs will be closed. Just to make sure that everyone can make it to the polls on sunday. Interesante, no?

2. There are many words in Spanish that sound the same in english (cognates). However excited is not one of them. I tend to get excited over the little things in life, like having floss once my bags arrived and being able to take pictures of the pyramids yesterday. So I wanted to express my emotion to others in Spanish. Luckily I asked my teacher before I said something I would regret. Apparently estoy excitado, means excited in a sexual way, and estoy emocional, means excited in a happy way. How embarrassing could that situation have been if I told Lulu (my mother here) that I was excited in a sexual way to see the pyramids?!

3. In mexico the water and the gas in the houses works very differently. There are two containers on the roof, one holds gas the other holds water. It´s not very often that you are on the roof, so sometimes the houses run out of gas. This can be discovered when you take a cold shower. Now, to get more gas, you don´t call the gas company. You wait for the gas truck to drive by. But how do you know when they are coming? Each one has its own jingle that it plays really loudly as it drives by. If you want that company´s gas, you run out of your house and yell at them to fill your tank. So far I know two of the gas company´s jingles.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hee heeeeee! Oh it sounds so much fun. Can't wait to read more in the coming weeks! <3

Bill said...

Good tidbits; I had the same reaction with "el gaaaaaas!". Does your truck play a trumpet and then a rooster noise? It sounds like you're having a lot of fun so far!

Anonymous said...

I like this blog a lot. I think if you wanted to flirt (and then some) you could do the sexually excited thing and then play dumb like, oops, that meant happy excited, right?