The cultural divide... there is no escaping it sometimes.

If you do any reading about Mexican culture or if you live here and aren't cocooned in an expat enclave, you will come up against the differences pretty quickly. Most of the time, they are just interesting or the cause of mild misunderstandings.

There are times though when it takes a lot of restraint to try and do things the way they are done here. Mexican society is a lot more polite than the US version, it takes longer to say hello and goodbye and no one wants to be the bearer of bad news or to show anger or cause embarrassment. My culture is more direct, less accommodating, more likely to spit out dissatisfaction, quicker to anger and, I like to think, also quicker to let it go. We put great value on 'plain speaking' and here it is not seen as a positive, it is rude and causes discomfort.

Unlike many ex-pats, I don't see an inherent advantage of one over the other. If you are quick to anger then you need to be quick to let it go. On the other hand, if anger is deep and held close to smolder then you need to avoid it when possible.

I do recognize though that I am like a cookie from a mold and that it is unlikely that I will ever change my initial reactions or the comfort of my way of reacting. So, I try to keep a rein on my reactions, try to blend in better, try to not say exactly what I think right when I think it. I think that if I miss anything about my old homeland it is that I miss speaking directly, showing my irritation and then moving on.

There are things that I don't like and that I have tried to accommodate or understand or plain wait and see if they get better or start making sense to me. It's hard for me to figure out the line between letting things go and feeling unhappy about it and being too abrupt or rude and making what seems to others to be a scene over something unimportant. It's the not knowing how to both stand up for what you want and also not damage the relationships involved that is a huge conundrum for me. I can't find the sweet spot, the path to getting my point across but not being abrasive about it.

When I think about being fluent culturally, it is finding this sweet spot that I mean. I think that language is just one part of learning to live in another culture. As other bloggers have mentioned, you can be fluent in the language and still not at all fluent in the culture. Moving to another country involves learning both, the language and the culture. It's tough, it's fascinating and I think it is the real draw for me. I have no idea what it feels like to be fluent in either but I ponder it a lot and I over-analyze it constantly.