Not bad, Just Different

I wanted to share with y’all some of the little differences I’ve noticed over here.. I thought you may find it interesting!

1. Gas Stations – when you pull up, you leave the car running and someone fills up your car, washes your windshield and you pay them out of your window.
2. Air Conditioners – There are 3 units in our apartment and 5 in the villa. They do this because of the extreme heat here, having more units lightens the load and it is totally awesome to be able to control the temperature in different rooms.
3. TV – although we have E! and Food Network, Disney etc.. the stations are not the same.  For example on the Food Network I only ever see Paula Deen and sometimes Guy Fieri (sp?) – on E! Fashion Police just plays again and again.
4. Produce section at grocery store – you have to go and get produce weighed at a station and they put a barcode sticker on it.  they get very irritated if you forget to do this.. I know from experience!
5. The names of things - They call cookies, Biscuits and Shopping carts, Trolleys. Food “to go” is called “take away”  Even on the Oreo pkg it says America’s favorite Biscuit.. ha.
6. Drinking - The only place you can drink adult beverage outside of your home is in a Hotel.  The hotels here have TONS of restaurants in them since lots of expats choose to eat dinner at the hotels vs. the local restaurants so they are able to enjoy a glass of wine with dinner there.
7. Conversions -In the deli section of the grocery store, none of the workers know what a pound is.  I have learned it is around 1/2 a kilogram?? it is tricky ordering lunchmeat or ground meat.  So confusing at first! I ended up figuring it out while I was at the store by picking up a pkg of meat that looked like the same size a pound was and checked how many kg’s it was.
8. Water - You cannot drink tap water here. They have those large jug dispensers pretty much everywhere – we use it for everything – even making coffee. The tap water has a lot of chlorine in it since they convert the salt water into tap water.  My hair dresser told me about this b/c he said the chlorine amount in the water damages the hair quickly and then convinced me I needed a deep conditioning treatment.. hmm.
9. Temperature - I think it is hotter mid-morning here and cooler in afternoon. Kinda opposite of the US.
10. Buying Alcohol - You have to have a special license to buy beer and wine (all alcohol).
11. Buildings - The floors in buildings are done like this: Ground Floor (G) , Mezzanine Floors (M1, M2), then First Floor – on up.. so for example in the mall the 3rd floor is called the 2nd floor and the 2nd floor is really the first floor and the first floor is really the ground floor.
12. Streets - All the streets are numbered East/West streets are Odd Numbers and North South streets are Even Numbers – BUT, they also have names.. makes it a bit confusing since the taxi drivers don’t know the numbers on the streets, only the names, but many of them cannot read the names.
13. Gas Stoves – In our villa we have a propane tank in a cabinet out in the carport that is connected to a hose that runs inside the house.
14. Drainage - There are little to no drains in the streets since it never rains here.
15. Delivery - Most every restaurant delivers… even fast food places.
16. Disease Screenings - Before you can get a drivers license here, they require blood work and x rays to check for AIDS, Hepatitis and Tuberculosis.                If you have any of these.. BU-BYE.. you go back to your country.
17. Old People - They send old people (elderly) back to their home countries… Well, we were told the government kindly asks them to leave – not sure if this is true, but come to think of it, I’ve never seen an old person here. At least we know we won’t be expats forever. ha!
18. Honking - It is very common to honk (A LOT) at cars if they are taking too long to turn, just parked in the middle of the street, or whatever.. the honking is all the time.. I love it, since I’ve been known to honk at irritating drivers.  Now that I know it is custom here, watch out!
19. Pedestrians - They do NOT stop for pedestrians, move it or lose it…(we saw a guy right after he got hit by a car the other day..) The driving here is nuts, really – when there are two turning lanes you can bet at least 4 lanes are going to try and turn. 
20. Parking – most places have paid parking, but instead of a meter, you have to go to a tall box thing and pay the fee – in coins, it prints a ticket out and then you go back to your car and put the ticket in your windshield.   If you want, you can set it up on your phone which will link to your credit card and you send a text message to the parking company and it will automatically charge your card and be on record in the system. Charles has this set up.  The parking ticket guys are everywhere..

We’ve learned so much in such a short time.. I’m sure there are many many more differences to come, but hopefully these entertained you!