Cultural Differences

I don’t think I fully understood the cultural differences between us and our host family until this weekend. We have taken Jaunita to Taxco with us. We are having a great time, but I think she is experiencing cultural overload. She didn’t want to buy a swimsuit because she has never seen or been in a pool before. At home, they swim in the river in their clothes. She asked David if there are this many cars everywhere. She is mesmerized by the tiny T.V. in our room with 20 color channels. She has never used a shower or a bathtub, though I tried to teach her this morning it my broken Nahuatl/Spansih. It is just so crazy to me that seemingly every experience I grew up with as “normal” is so foreign to her. For instance, she didn’t grow up getting raisin fingers in the bath tub! Of course, she had her own experiences that I know nothing about. No wonder they laugh at us so much in the village, if we are as out of place there as she is here! This is what I mean when I talk about the difference in moving to another big city in a different culture, and moving to a village. The former is unarguably a huge shock, but living to a village, albeit only for 6 weeks—I don’t even know what to call it!

I will try to post a picture of Taxco later today if I can. It is a really beautiful city.

Home in about a week :)!