{"id":123,"date":"2014-10-05T23:46:41","date_gmt":"2014-10-06T05:46:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/?p=123"},"modified":"2016-09-07T15:22:10","modified_gmt":"2016-09-07T12:22:10","slug":"a-little-cultural-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/a-little-cultural-research\/","title":{"rendered":"A Little Cultural Research"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve done a lot of research about Mexico over the years, confident in my belief that I’d eventually live there, if only as a snowbird. But now that it’s really real<\/em>, I’m having a burst of panic thinking that I really need to know<\/em> things I take for granted in Canada and the US, like tipping and how the currency works, never mind all the cultural etiquette!<\/p>\n

My only experience traveling in a country that doesn’t use dollars was a month-long trip to Scotland in 1998. I remember my first night in Edinburgh (third night in Scotland) like it was yesterday. A fellow backpacker, Michael, and I decided to go have dinner together. I ordered penne in a ros\u00e9 sauce and was shocked to find meat in it (I was a vegetarian back then). But even more clearly than that I remember paying the bill and Michael asking me three times if I really mean to tip what I was tipping. It was only later that night that I realised I’d given a nearly 30% tip on a mediocre meal with poor service! I had a good laugh at myself about it.<\/p>\n

This is how I’m going to approach my first trip into Mexico proper (I’m not counting the two trips I’ve taken to border towns). I am going to make mistakes. I will likely get scammed more than once. It’s just part of the experience and I will do my best to keep my sense of humour!<\/p>\n

Living in another country that does not use dollars and whose primary language is not French or English has been a major dream of mine. I can’t believe it’s about to come true!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve done a lot of research about Mexico over the years, confident in my belief that I’d eventually live there, if only as a snowbird. But now that it’s really real, I’m having a burst of panic thinking that I really need to know things I take for granted in Canada and the US, like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[646,636,14,635,18,3,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-edinburgh","category-europe","category-mexico","category-north-america","category-scotland","category-travel","category-uk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}