Cultural Moments

So, there have only been a few strange cultural moments so far where I've thought, "What am I supposed to do in this kind of situation? Agh, I don't quite remember..."

Some of it has just been not remembering English words or realizing I have just either spoken in Spanish to someone who knows no Spanish, or used a phrase that is not English... or mixed idioms from Spanish, English, and who knows what.

For instance... there is something you say when a situation can change "in the blink of an eye" or whatever that goes something like... it's balanced on the edge of a sword or knife or something like that, yet I still can't quite remember how it goes and tried to say it the other night talking to some friends and messed it completely up. :-) And I think there was some other kind of thing I said the other day that sounded fairly illogical or completely unintelligable.

Other moments include the other night at some friends of my friend Becky's house. She introduced me to one of her friends and I paused not knowing quite what to do. I almost gave him the 2 spanish kisses, but paused and thought, "What do I do here? Besitos? No. Um.... um.... it's something else... oh yeah, shake his hand (helped by him putting out his hand). It really was a bit awkward, so I then laughed and told them how incredibly confused I had been for a moment. Craziness... when you can't remember what is normal in your OWN, native culture.

Some other oddities have been... in the line at the grocery store or at Target when they expect me to know what to do if I'm paying with a credit card. It's not hard, but I tend to just look at the lady a bit clueless or like a deer caught in the headlights. And the lady acts like I'm a complete freak. Oh well...

... in the produce section of the store I feel completely wrong picking up the fruit with my bare hands and inevitably want to look for the plastic gloves that don't exist. And then I want to look for the machine to weigh them or a person to weigh them and give me a sticker with the price, which again don't exist.

... my first day driving, after about two years of not doing so, and I might add a bit jet lagged. So I got in the car to go on a few errands. I made a wrong turn and had to turn around, so I got off the highway, stopped at the red light, looked both ways and then went straight through the red light. Halfway through the intersection, which fortunately had no cars in it, I realized what was happening and thought, "WHAT am I doing???!!! I just ran a red light!" I obviously continued through it and then came to a green light, which I then stopped momentarily and then realized again that I was a bit messed up. Since then I have stopped at several green lights, but haven't run through another red one.

So, other than my urge to speak spanish way too often and not remembering english words, these are the main cultural blunders I've had thusfar.