More Mexican salsa

I'm continuing towards my upcoming trips to Mexico. I am in the process of locating suitable lodgings, taking out ads in local newspapers where I will be, getting business cards in spanish.

My "spanish for gringos" cd's are now a regular part of my day..I try to spend at least 20 minutes with them and also in dialogue with other spanish speaking people. Today I ordered my lunch in spanish and did OK. I still get wierd looks from spanish speaking people. Does my redneck heritage shine through in spite of carefully curled r's? I swear, sometimes I can't understand some of the english speaking folks of my fair state...we tend to talk in the farrr baaaack of the mouth, which makes us sound like hicks.

I think one thing that I am very aware of is that I don't want to impose my ways of business upon spanish speaking people. I don't want to be an "ugly american" of which I usually see whenever I travel. In fact, I'm becoming quite an american anti-snob when I travel. It seems that it is painfully obvious to me how we as americans get such an awful reputation among other countries. We get impatient at customs. We get loud when we get impatient. And we just aren't very nice to others who don't always understand our ways.

One thing that I notice is how american always complain...we complain about the food, about the lodgings, about EVERYTHING. It is understandable, we are use to the good life...clean restrooms, clean rooms, good food, hot coffee, ice in our drinks.

I'm not sure having these things has advanced our culture much. It seems that we could be grateful for what we have and realize that going into a new country will mean, well, going into a new country and not having some of the same things that we have in the good ol' USA. In fact, why go to a new country if you are going to shop and dine and do everything just like you would in USA?

It seems to me that we can really cheat ourselves out of the richness of a new country when we stick to the tourist places, when we forget that we are indeed visitors in a country that may have been around longer than our country has. There is so much we don't know and so much we don't even KNOW we don't know...we are the ultimate unconscious incompetents...unaware of how much we lack when we don't embrace other cultures and other people.