Algunos Aspectos de la Cultura Mexicana

This blog is dedicated to a few of the cultural things I have learned about Mexico.

I would first like to talk about "time" here in Mexico.
In the United States, (and Europe) we have a very different view with regards to time. There is a time to wake up, a time to eat breakfast, a time to be at work, a time to be at home, a time to relax. And when you are at work, presumably working, that is all you do; work. We have internet blocks and tracking systems in companies to make sure that employees aren't spending much time checking personal email accounts, or attending to personal matters online while at work. When you are relaxing, you are realistically only relaxing. It can really ruin a vacation day if you receive a call from your boss, or you have to go to a meeting for an hour. There are specific times to do things, and usually we only do one thing at a time. (more or less, obviously this is a huge generalization.)
Here that is definitely not the case. All the activities in a day are very much blended. It is okay for your spouse to show up at work to talk, and it is okay to talk with your teachers about your homework while they are eating their lunch. An example: I had a meeting with a lady in the finance department of my university to make my final payment. I walked in, and she was eating. She told me to sit down, and started talking to me and filling out the paperwork while still eating. Then, while she was waiting for the credit card machine to warm up, her son called and she talked to him for 10 minutes while I was still in "my meeting."
There is also a huge difference in the idea of being "on time." With regards to being appropriately on time, I have only just begun to understand when you should be on time (in the American sense of the word) and when, and how late you should be. I know that classes start at the exact minute on the schedule. If a taxi says it will be there in 10 minutes, it means 20. And when I showed up at a pool part 2 hours late, I was the first one to get there. I also learned that there are many situations where if you show up "on time" it is actually considered rude, because your host will not be prepared and will feel embarrassed and rushed.

The second topic I would like to cover is food. I have never been anywhere in my life where food has been as important as it is here. Here are a few helpful hints if you ever plan on hanging out with Mexicans:
1. The food is always "muy rico." It is essentially a requirement to talk about how good the food is, even if it's obvious. If you are invited to someones house to eat, it is important that you say all the compliments you can possibly think of to the host. I was at a dinner last night where the guest talked for 10 minutes about how the host could sell her food and become a rich woman, that's how good her food was.
2. As a follow up to #1, you can't not eat a food. It is considered incredibly rude to leave one part of the meal on the plate, or only finish half the portion. If you really can't eat it, it is necessary to think of a really good excuse. And NEVER say you don't like it.
3. The idea of a food allergy is foreign to people here. Let's say you are at a restaurant, and order enchiladas without cheese because you have a cheese allergy. When they bring you enchiladas with cheese on them, they fix it by scraping off the majority of the cheese. If you were to tell them that no, really, you can't eat cheese, and that they will have to make new enchiladas, they look at you like you are a crazy person... As if to say "How can you be allergic to this? Its FOOD!"
4. Meals often have a fairly heavy meet.. Pork and beef are most common, by far. Followed by chicken and very rarely fish. Often times, especially in the southern part of the country, a vegetarian meal is chicken. It's almost as if it's too light to be considered meat. So if you order vegetarian tacos, there is a 50% chance you will be getting chicken tacos.

The last topic for the day is the idea of community, (or group.) Forming relationships is by far one of the most important goals of people here. I will explain this by means of a few examples.
There is a small drug store down the street from where I live, and in order to buy a coke, I have to talk to the clerk for a few minutes first, about the weather, how long they are open, if they have had a busy day, and how my Spanish is improving. After that, I can ask for my coke. Or, let's say you are at a nightclub, and you see a friend standing in a large group of people you don't know. You can't just walk up and say hi to your friend. You have to say hi to him or her, get introduced to every single person in the group (with a name exchange and a kiss, at least,) talk to the people for a little while about what you are studying, who you came with etc, AND THEN you can talk to your friend for awhile. Or if you want to dance with a guy, it is much more polite if you dance with all of his friends, and then him. The last example, let's say you want to do contract out part of you business to another company, and you have established a 30 minute meeting to decide if you want to use this other company. You spend the first 28 minutes chatting, deciding how you feel about the person who works for this company, and the last 2 minutes to talk about prices and logistics.


Okay I think that's all for today. More to follow soon :)