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Last week was spring break and my friend Callie and I ventured down to Puerto Rico. I forgot how much I have missed Latin culture and also all the frustrations that come along with it... I was really excited to get to practice my Spanish, but almost everyone on the island spoke English as well, so when I did try to speak Spanish, they would look at me like I was retarded and answer me in English. Why is that such a source of pride for some people? You really and truly aren't even speaking your true native language, but rather one of the oppressors. Why is there room to be prideful about a gringa speaking your so-called "first language"?

Puerto Ricans were the most on-time Latins that I have ever come in contact with. They try to be on time to events and things like a ferry leaving the port. I was very surprised by this. Not everyone held true to this though.... they say, "I am not slow, you are just in a hurry." True. It is so interesting to take a step back and look at culture: my own and someone else's. America is such a culture of instaneous reactions and results. Time moves faster here in the States.

Another thing I had forgotten about Latin culture is how social everything in life is. You can't just read a sign for directions, you have to ask someone. Then that person gives you directions to a half-way point, where you find another person to get you a little further along the road. You have to ask people for anything and everything you need, and nothing is ever as easily found as it would have been labeled at home. So along the way, you meet people. You interact with them, learn their names, and enter into their world, if only for a glimpse.

All this makes me excited and ready to be venturing into a new culture. I am ready to begin forming new relationships and live in a culture with so much social interaction, that I am probably going to be screaming for solitude.

95 days until packing up my life for Honduras.