And together we learn

The sounds of Mexico

So you're going to have to be a little patient with me here. Due to an unfortunate spill a few months ago, the E, R, S, G, and C keys are...fickle. Capricious. They either don't work at all, and I spend many minutes jiggling them, caressing the keys, hoping they'll work. Or they hyper work--giving me a steady stream of rrrrrrrrrrrrr's, when all I wanted was one! Now is a good time--things are moving nicely, but who knows how long this will last? And let's face it, e,r,s,g and c are kind of important letters!

So I'll take advantage of the good keyboard moment to actually post.

Let's talk about the sounds of Mexico for a minute. The sounds of Mexico are...loud. And there are lots of them. For starters, there are the horns. Every time our assistant starts or stops her car, the horn beeps 4 times. This is entirely normal, and no one thinks anything of it. If I try to get into my car by *unlocking the door with the key*, then opening the door--the car alarm goes crazy. You have to use the clicker to unlock. Anything else and you're a car thief. Once I was inside the car in the passenger seat and needed to get out to open the trunk. Bad idea. Loud, long honking ensued for my audacity.

So the horns. There are lots, and they're loud, and it's kind of funny.

There are other great sounds, too. The flag raising ceremony every morning at 7, with drums, bugles, and singing. Raucous, exotic bird calls remind me constantly that we are very far south. The sounds of people calling out what food or services they're selling. Bells from the cathedral ring every half hour, then sometimes for no reason at all (that I can figure).

I live on a little street with 14 row houses-7 on each side. I can clearly hear my across the way neighbors (who speak Cantonese at home, and Mandarin with me, btw) in casual conversation. I hear the small baby kitty corner from us who cries in the evening. I hear tantrums of the 3 year old Chinese girl.

Do you realize what this means????? That every. single. noise. that my preshus ones make can be heard. By everyone out there. And people, they make a lot of noise. Wild rumpuses that would have been normal at home are amplified by our close proximity and tile floors. I nag and plead and hiss and fuss at them, but the noisy is still with us, and that means with our neighbors, also. Sigh. At least they're normally quieter than the car alarms!

posted by Becca at 9:26 AM