hey everyone welcome back to Eat Baila travel i'm Jenny and this is Kevin and in today's vlog we're
going to be talking about some culture shocks that we've experienced as mexican americans in Mexico
We've been here for 11 months now going on 12 and we grew up in the Chicago area so to give you a
little bit of context we grew up in chicago in a predominantly mexican neighborhood and so we grew
up with very mexican households traditions with the language but there are still a few cultural
things that we've experienced in mexico that are a little strange to us since we grew up in Chicago
so here we go we're gonna share our Top five culture shocks with you
number one the consumption of refresco, soda, coca-cola, sprite whatever you want
to call it is our very first culture shack in Mexico we're really surprised to see how much
soda people drink here and we had heard we had read the statistic that mexico is
the leading consumer of coca-cola in the world which is impressive i'm surprised that it even
beat the united states it's sad too it's sad because we've seen people consume coca-cola for
breakfast for lunch for dinner and it's a culture shock for us and for them because we don't consume
any like refreshing people we've met and family included have said that we're not
strange but i think they think we're strange for not drinking we don't drink soda really
ever unless it's in a paloma or some sort of drink but i'll never reach for a coke i'll never really
reach for a soda but here the amount of sugary drinks that are served is insane like there are
lots of meals when you go out to eat for lunch that are that have a beverage already included
and they always offer a coke or some sort of sugary soda and we always ask for the water bottle
because it's pretty much all just us yeah that's all we do and it's become a big problem chiapas
san cristobal de las casas is the leading consumer of coca-cola in the entire world the city consumes
more coca-cola than anybody else in the world and it's leading to some serious health issues uh
but yeah it's just a personal choice of us that we don't like to consume coca-cola and
it's been a culture shock mostly because when we visited family
uh we go out to eat and it's like wait you're not gonna have coca-cola like how do you even burp
like what do you mean how do we burp like yeah like how do you burp after you eat and it's
like well the cook is essential i was like how do people before coca-cola right but yeah that's one
of the culture shocks culture shock number two is the use of plastic the use of plastic varies
throughout mexico and we were impressed to see that many grocery stores no longer get plastic
and that's definitely a trend in the united states as well it's pretty awesome actually you go to
places and they look at you like sorry we don't we don't give out plastic we haven't been doing
it for like six seven years supposed to bring yeah they've been doing it for a while you're supposed
to bring your reusable bag so that's one cool thing but on the other hand we've noticed that
street food vendors use a lot of plastic sometimes even restaurants one of my biggest pet peeves
of the plastic consumption here in mexico is when you go to a restaurant and they give you a plate
and on the plate they put a plastic bag so that they put the food on top of the plastic bed and
they don't have to wash the plate they just remove the plastic and put another plastic over it that
is super super common out here and you know while the grocery store thing is good the street vendor
plastic use is not so good and i guess it's understandable because if they're selling food
from a street stand they may not have access to a place to wash their dishes right then and there
so i mean it's understandable but also a little backwards when grocery stores are reducing their
consumption way down if plastic and street vendors are kind of the opposite so it's just
a little strange to us there might be something behind it or not or that we might not know maybe
there's restaurants that don't have access to water or maybe just to wash maybe just the
the bills to pay water are really expensive that it's so much easier to just use plastic um which
is understandable but we're just speculating yeah we don't really know it's just an observation
number three access to seasonal foods and meal times here's the thing in chicago we had access to
just about any grocery item we wanted year-round strawberries year-round mangoes year-round granted
they might not be as fresh if it's not in season and they might be more expensive but they're there
and they're accessible in mexico think food runs much more on a seasonal basis so if it's mango
season you're gonna have some amazing mangos if it's not mango season you may not be able
to find one pretty much anywhere because food doesn't travel very far and i actually kind of
appreciate that about here because the less food has to travel to get to you the fresher it is the
better for you it is um so this is not like a pro or a con in any way it's just different the
only seasonal foods that we get back in Chicago are girl scout cookies and pumpkin spice lattes
but speaking to freshness of foods another example is seafood
seafood in the coastal areas you normally consume seafood in the morning and for lunch
they don't usually sell seafood pasta afternoons no because what they say is that the the fishermen
go out to get fresh shifu caught caught on that day and they sell it to you that day yeah but
when it runs out it runs out whereas in Chicago because our seafood was traveling pretty far we
could go out for dinner and have seafood at dinner and that's not the case here well in certain place
like certain cities metropolitan cities like monterrey queretaro mexico you can find seafood
at night as well but it's the same they're you're not going to get the freshest seafood
at night or just in general as other coastal towns or or tropical caribbean areas
another part to this culture shock it also includes the meal times so in the us we're used to
having dinner be the largest meal of the day and in mexico the largest meal of the day is lunch or
la comida del dia is the college usually between 2 and 4 p.m but as i'm working remotely full
time it's difficult for me to go out for lunch whenever we don't have access to a kitchen to cook
we would have to go out and find food so depending on the day and where we were sometimes i was able
to go out for lunch and come back within the lunch hour but there are other times where i couldn't
you know wrap up my day until five o'clock and we hadn't if i haven't had lunch yet it's gonna be
really tough to find yeah lunch or big meals after five o'clock because people are that's not in meal
time and then they're getting ready for dinner later around seven or eight so for my kind of
schedule because i'm used to having a 12 o'clock or one o'clock lunch in the u.s um and people's
lunch in mexico are from two to four that kind of made things a little challenging yeah for meal
times but i like eating the big meal in the middle of the day if i feel more energetic i feel like
it's healthier and it's something that i want to get used to i think we're starting to but and it's
it's serious like la comida so serious that they have children go to school earlier yeah like high
school children start school like at 6 30 7 a.m 7 a.m and then the other children also start at
7 7 30 and they're out by two to three o'clock for lunch for lunch at home so like some serious stuff
culture shock number four is the difference in experience of going to the doctor i'm impressed
by the number of pharmacies that have consultorios medicos which is the medical consult offices
meaning there's a doctor's office right next to or right inside the pharmacy you've got pharmacia
similares or just a bunch of different kinds of brands of pharmacies that will have their doctor
on site so that if you need advice on a medication or you just need to see a doctor
you can go right then and there at the pharmacy i know that walgreens has been doing that for
for some years now but i still i'm impressed by how easy easily accessible it is you don't need
to make an appointment it's just you just walk right in if there's someone in there then you
wait there might be a short line but i've never waited more than a few people in front of me
it's usually very affordable i've paid 45 or 50 pesos to see a doctor and they spent way more than
five minutes with me and i just say that that hasn't been my experience with every doctor in
the us i've had some wonderful doctors in the u.s but the culture i feel like the systemic culture
in the u.s is in and out see as many patients as possible in a day and doctors you know it's very
common for them to spend less than five minutes with their patients so they can get to the next
one um and i think that's just like a cultural systemic thing in the us whereas in mexico
and every doctor i've been in i think it's been at least a 30 minute visit and it's super holistic
super personalized treatment and very personal like relationship the i have the whatsapp phone
number for every single doctor i've seen here in mexico we've seen a ton we've seen a ton for
many different reasons which we'll tell you about shortly but it's always been such a smooth process
i've always been so grateful to have access to a doctor and medicine pretty much anywhere and
of course we're very lucky to be able to afford it but it's been great quality treatment all around
and another one another thing for me is that there there's some cities that have
a ton of pharmacies like two or three pharmacies on the same block uh that's that's you have
so many options and you can shop around for your medicine so you can get it for cheaper
well we've mostly visited the consultorios medicos at the pharmacies we've also gone to
see specialists at hospitals um i think what we paid like 500 pesos for different they they tend
to range so we've seen doctors related to urology issues related to musculoskeletal issues i've been
to the dentist so we've we've had a variety of experiences with the health care system here
and i've had nothing but very good experiences it was but most most recently we went to a doctor for
montezuma's revenge do you know who montezumas is o you know what his revenge is about do you know
why he's mad oh we got that check out our upcoming video on revenge where we talk about very common
ailments that happens to foreigners as well as how to go to the doctor when that happens to you
at number five the mexican blue-collar working class works a ton we thought we worked a lot in
the united states but as we've traveled and met a lot of people who work for big companies foreign
companies from the us from europe we've learned that they work a ton we've we've met people who
work six days a week eight to twelve hour shifts and the pay is not always that great there aren't
as many protections as there are in the u.s so if we thought people were overworked in the u.s
and poorly compensated well it's probably worse than mexico what's crazy too is that people attend
universities and get a college degree it's very similar to the united states you're not guaranteed
that with a college degree you're going to have a good segment a good salary so some people have
to hustle and work a lot if that means working weekends and tourism or working in restaurants
but even then we've met people who've worked both in the u.s and in mexico and decided to live here
and these are mexicans i'm talking about they've said that they still prefer life in mexico because
it feels like there's a little bit more time for everything even if you are working a lot
there's that slower paced lifestyle that they still appreciate and that we're hoping
we can enjoy too so those are our five culture shocks of our 11 month experience in mexico let
us know what you think in the comments down below let us know if there are any culture shocks that
you've experienced that we didn't talk about or if you can relate to any of the ones we talked
about i'm sure there will be many more this is only our first year living in mexico the first
of many i hope so thanks again for watching we'll see you at the next one sequitas ciao