Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

Moving to a new culture requires a lot of changes. Some of the big changes you face are: location, weather, language, food, and cultural expectaions. But there are smaller things, things which you sort of take for granted in your usual place and only realize you have to adjust to once you are in the new changes. Things like: driving a car, how you dress, how you act, the sheer visual differences of your surroundings, how others react to you, how the environment (water, air, etc) will affect you. Every day I am running into new and different things here. Some of them distract me, some of them I barely notice until they are pointed out to me.

I was thinking about all this the other day when I was the one to drive the car to Guzman. It was the first time I had driven outside of Tuxpan. I didn't think much of it until I was on the Libre highway to Guzman. This is a two lane road that is fairly well traveled, and there are plenty of opportunities to pass slower cars. As I passed my third car, Luis told me that I was driving too close to the opposite side of the road - I was giving the car I was passing too much lee way. At first I thought this was a rather obnoxious thing to tell me - I mean, I've been driving cars for 22 years now! But he explained that there isn't as much of a shoulder on the highways here as there are in the States and that rubbish (which there is more of) can collect on the edge of the road. Should you hit a bit of it - Blam! - you can have a flat tire in no time, or you can get pushed off the road. Oh, ok, I thought. That's just good advice, not criticism. Later when we were driving out of Guzman, he gave me grief for not honking at another driver who pulled in front of me with little awareness of my existence. "People here don't care about their cars, or about anyone else around you. They will pull out without looking or pull in front of you and not give a damn. You have to be more aggressive here than in Tuxpan." Again, I was a bit miffed, but realized he was trying to give me good advice, and not trying to piss me off.

After I drove to the gym two days in a row, I decided that I wanted a break. My arms hurt from the workout I had been getting (who am I fooling - my whole body hurt!), and I just wanted to be a passenger. That day I realized another reason why driving was so difficult - there is so much to look at! Most of it probably seems like nothing new or exciting for Luis, but it's all new for me, so it is all distracting.

At that point I realized that I should go easier on myself for not being fluent in Spanish yet (I mean, after two months shouldn't I be able to chat like a local?!). There are so many things I'm absorbing, whether or not I realize it, that my brain can only handle so much. And being a visual person, the only way to minimize the distractions would be to sequester myself in the house or wear blinders when I go out. And, being a visual person, there is no way I can do either of those things.