Not So Much as Culture Shock: Things I've Noticed

1. Probably the first thing I noticed was that my host family always wears their shoes in their house. My Minnesotan soul finds this extremely strange.

2. Water's always out of a bottle here, never really out of a tap. At lunch time, my family goes through at least two 2 liter bottles of water. The only exception are the water fountains that are all over the place--in nearly every plaza, and even on the mountain I hiked up the other day.

3. There aren't many cars here. Well, no, that's not it. There aren't that many cars on the streets here. Every family has a car, but everyone walks. Compared to what I'm used to, the streets are silent.

4. The food. It's great, but so different--next week I'll elaborate more on what I've been eating, other than Gelato.

Breakfast is small--coffee with some tiny accompaniment. Lunch is huge: a salad, some bread, a hearty and meaty main course, and desert. It's not unusual for people so sit down for a snack at about 6 to tide them over until dinner at 10. The size of dinner varies from family to family, but for me, it's a decent sized meal. But there's SO MUCH food. And it's a VERY good thing that I decided to be not-a-vegetarian during this trip.

5. The daily schedule is essentially delayed by two hours. The afternoon doesn't start until 2. Dinner's at 10 or later. Does this mean I'm staying up later than I ever did before? Yup.

Been here for just over a week now. Eeeek! Reminds me of how quickly this time will go by.

As I mentioned above, I went on a hike over the weekend. That'll be the subject of my Wednesday/Thursday video.