MUNGO EATS Latin America

Today we started Spanish classes.  Unlike  the previous classes that we took in Mexico, these classes seem a lot less formal.  We have been split into three groups.  Kevin and I each have our own teachers, the kids share one.  There is no formal book that we follow.  My instructor and I basically spent the 4 hours talking.  We did a few exercises, but the majority of the time, she asked me questions about myself, my family and my life that I answered.  She got a few unexpected answers to the questions she was asking.  More than a few times I shocked her. 

Initially she asked the usual questions, where I was from, what I did for a living, how many children I had…etc.  She asked if I had traveled to many places, and slowly we got on the subject of this particular trip.  She was extremely shocked to hear that we had driven here from Canada.  Eventually we found a map of North America and when I outlined the boundaries of Canada and the US, she was even more surprised.  She really had NO idea how big Canada was and she thought that the US was bigger than Canada.  She was even more shocked to hear that the population of Canada was only 1/10th that of the US, despite our large land mass. 

Eventually, the conversation turned to household chores, who cooks, who cleans, who washes the dishes.  When I replied that  the dishwasher washes the dishes, she looked at me dumbfounded.  A machine that washes dishes??  I explained that you put the dishes in the baskets of the dishwasher  and turn it on.  Then I explained the wand that turns under the baskets, that sprays water and thereby cleans the dishes.  “Oh”, she said “in my head I was imagining hands inside a machine washing the dishes!”  Then she found out that we wash our clothes by machine too, and had to ask, “Do you have a machine to wash yourself as well?” 

She has never been out of Guatemala, but now she says she wants to visit Canada, just to see all the machines, especially the dish washing type!!   It is amazing to me that something so ordinary, so every day like a dishwasher, could be so amazing to another person from a different culture.  What would someone like her think if she was ever to visit my country?  How can you explain that most houses are large, have large yards, the roads are wide enough to fit four cars side by side??  These things are beyond their comprehension.  How do you explain that you have four distinct seasons, that houses need to be both water and air tight, that it is necessary for homes to have heating?  I am reminded of a question our good friend Lucho from Peru asked us on arriving in Canada.  He arrived early in the spring, before everything had a chance to green up, and wondered why we didn’t plant green grass instead of brown.  Totally different world!!!