In a few short months, I will be hitting a milestone--one year of life as an expat! This is crazy to me. On the one hand, it seems like just yesterday that I first stepped off the plane. On the other hand, at times my difficulty adjusting to this new way of life has made it seem as though time has slowed to a crawl. Through the good and the bad, I have stuck it out this long. Everyday life is considerably easier now than it was in the very beginning. Still, there are some things about life here that I haven't quite gotten used to yet.
Motorcycles/Motorbikes
Due to the cost of purchasing and maintaining a vehicle, many families, even "middle-class" families, can't afford to own one. Most people can afford to purchase and maintain a motorcycle. For this reason, these things are everywhere! Not only are motorcycles all over the place, they follow their own "rules of the road." They're sneaking up to pass you on the right. They're shooting up the dotted line between lanes toward the intersection ahead. They're riding up onto the sidewalk to avoid traffic. Some are carrying a few full tanks of propane for delivery. Most people do wear helmets, but they are often riding in shorts, tank tops, and flip flops. The part that is most difficult for me is seeing children, sometimes as young as 4 years old, holding on for dear life on the back of a motorcycle. It's so hard because I know that people are just doing what they have to do to get where they need to go. Still, in my previous job in the States, I worked on enough personal injury cases involving motorcycles to know just how badly injured motorcycle riders are when an accident does happen.
I'm actually still getting used to the road traffic in general. Roads are often in disrepair so you have to be on the lookout for huge potholes. Many of the highways around us are one lane in each direction. There is a big problem here with something they call "ultra passing." This is when a car, truck, or motorcycle, crossed the double yellow line to pass one or [oftentimes] more vehicles ahead of them. We have seen some close calls as cars swerve back into the lane to avoid oncoming traffic. There is a significant fine for this activity but people do it all the time.
Shopping/Personnel
Both grocery stores and clothing stores have a ton of staff scheduled to be working at any given time. The grocery store is often super crowded, and a lot of times it seems as though there are more employees than customers clogging the aisles. When you enter a clothing or toy store, an employee typically pounces on you immediately to find out what you are looking for and if they can help. Even when you say you're just browsing, they quietly follow along a few feet behind you, just in case. This is really irritating to me, as I'm a huge fan of window shopping. Back home, it was a real stress reliever to just head out and browse stores on a Sunday, often not buying anything. The stalking shop clerks take the fun right out of it.
Strays
I saw a news report recently that the population of stray dogs in my city is not far from starting to rival that of the human population! Every time I am out on a walk or we are heading downtown, I unconsciously start playing "Count the Strays" in my head. It's not uncommon to see a pack of 8 or more dogs roaming the streets together. Most of them seem friendly, though I always keep my distance, especially if I have my son with me. I was bitten in the abdomen by a neighbor's dog as a young child, and I'm very wary of strange animals. It's not super common, but there have been news reports about people being attacked and bitten by small gangs of dogs. A friend of mine who is an animal lover told me it is because there are no laws about purchasing and then abandoning animals in Brazil. Most are not spayed and neutered, so once they are on the street, it's a breeding free-for-all.
Noise
Before we moved here, we lived in a very quiet section of an apartment complex. We were up from the street and away from the parking lot, so it was a relatively quiet atmosphere for my new baby to sleep in. This neighborhood, not so much. At any given time, there are dogs barking, children yelling, roosters crowing, large construction trucks going over speed bumps, motorcycles gunning their engines, cars blaring advertisements for pharmacies and grocery stores, the milk truck making its run through the streets (at 6 & 9 a.m.) incessantly honking a bike horn. Nearly every other building on our street and in our neighborhood is in some stage of construction/renovation, so the buzz of electric saws and banging of hammers is an "all day, every day" thing. Even the birds, the beautiful birds, can be too much at times. On the weekends and during holidays or soccer championships, people play loud music and randomly light firecrackers. Even though the nights are colder now, I still have to sleep with the ceiling fan on to drown it all out.
Summer Year Round
Even though people recognize different seasons here [i.e. all the stores are featuring their fall and winter lines right now], to a girl from the Northeast US, it's all varying shades of what I call summer. Sure we have to wear socks and sometimes long pants around the house these days, but it's still getting up into the 80s outside, and you'll still get a mean burn if you head outside unprotected around midday. My goodness I miss the leaves changing, the snow falling, and the thaw in the spring.
Differing Concepts of Personal Space
Brazilians are very warm people. Greetings, even between people who don't know each other super well, involve hugs and sometimes kisses on the cheek. I come from an affectionate family, so this isn't a huge problem for me. However, Brazilians don't seem to have a concept of a person's "bubble" [I think most Americans will know what I mean when I say that]. I have been raised to believe that I have a so-called "bubble" of personal space around my body, as does every other individual on the planet. It makes me uncomfortable when people, especially strangers, get inside my bubble. This most often happens to me when standing in lines. The person behind me is standing so close that I can practically feel their breath on the back of my neck and hear them swallowing. I inch up to give myself the most minuscule of buffers, and they immediately fill the gap. It gives me chills just thinking about it.
So those are some of the silly everyday differences I have noticed and continue to try to deal with/accept as I go about my life here.
Disclaimer: I really don't mean to offend anyone with these observations. I know that the things I've talked about in this post could easily describe any number of places/people in the world, including the United States/Americans. I'm just comparing my own personal experiences in my old life with those in my new life.
