• We drink evaporated milk- the first time my host family gave me milk I just poured it from the can into my cup, it wasn’t very good. When they saw me do that they were like no (and one of the kids was like, “you don’t know how to drink milk?” haha), and they showed me the proper way. You put some milk from the can in the cup, then hot water, then sugar. (I actually just found out not everyone does this, there is actual milk…it comes in a bag)
• We drink hot lemonade (and most juices); I think this might be because drinking water right from the sink isn’t a good idea, at least not for me, so they boil it.
• Animals walk in the streets. Especially dogs, they are everywhere, and all different breeds of dog. I also tend to see flocks of sheep, cows, and bulls walking on non-busy streets. On Sunday a bull started walking right towards me. I was kind of frightened, but I just moved out of its path and it didn’t bother me at all. The animals tend not to. Sometimes the dogs will bark at you, but mostly if you leave them alone they leave you alone.
• In case you didn’t know, they eat guinea pig here (it is called cuy). Generally it comes like the whole thing (head, face, and all) on a stick. My host family gave me some for breakfast one morning (luckily just a piece, not the whole thing), I did not like it at all. It’s really tough and I did not like the taste at all. It’s a delicacy here though.
• The normal greeting/farewell is a hug with a kiss on the cheek.
• We eat breakfast in the morning, but they call it drinking breakfast, because it tends to be more like that. We eat lunch around 2 or 3 (now more like 3, because we eat lunch when we get home from school. The kids don’t eat lunch at school, but they do have a snack time, where they can bring or buy a snack). And lunch is generally large, it is the biggest meal. We eat supper around 7 and it is generally very light, just like some tea and bread or sometimes they eat a little leftovers from lunch.
• You know in the states if you are crossing the street and a car turns the corner or something it will generally stop for you? Or how sometimes cars stop and wave you to cross? Yeah, not here. The road has to be very clear for you to cross because they won’t really stop for you.
• One day when we went to a polleria (like a chicken restaurant), there was a chicken foot in my soup. They eat the skin off of it. There was also part of the neck.
• You can’t flush your toilet paper. Something about the pipes being too small or something along those lines. You put it in a garbage can. You also generally need to carry toilet paper with you because most bathrooms don’t have it.
• The mountains are gorgeous! There’s nothing like them in the U.S.
• Most have washers but not dryers. But the washers don’t really get the dirt out of your clothes, so things with dirt on (usually socks and the bottoms of pants) you have to scrub by hand before you put it in the washing machine. You hang your clothes on a line to dry. The only problem with that is that it rains a lot, randomly. So, it’ll be like, oh no, it’s raining, go get the wash off the line, it’s sunny, put it back out, it’s raining again, take it back down, etc.
• If you are in a group setting and have food it is rude not to share. I learned this almost right away when Megan (another English teacher here the same length as me) brought her breakfast with her to our teacher prep time. Bethany (English teacher that has been here for three years) told her about this and she cut up her mango and passed it around so everyone could have some. I really do like the idea of it, because it shows you care about the others around you.
• The movies here are pretty much all American, just dubbed in Spanish. No movie theaters though.
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