The Midnight Train to Mexico
I am actually enjoying my night shift schedule so far. Unlike my first week, this week I have every other night off. This is awesome, because I get to sleep tons! My current schedule works like this: I stay up for 24 hours, working about 14 of those. Then I sleep for 24 hours. And then I get up and do it again. It’s really not too shabby.
The only downs are that my curtains aren’t quite dark enough, and they let a lot of light through, which makes sleeping during the day a bit challenging. In addition to that, there is some sort of construction going on literally RIGHT outside my window. This construction includes jackhammering, drilling, hammering, and a number of other incomprehensible sounds. Also, the guys who are doing the work are constantly screaming in Spanish. It’s so loud that it actually sounds like they are inside my apartment. I try turning my music up to drown them out, but it’s not working.
I’m realizing that it might actually be worse if I spoke Spanish. Then I would actually know what they are saying, and it might keep me up more. Since I don’t really know enough to understand what they are saying, other than the occasional “punto” and “fuuucking guy!” it’s not all that annoying. Actually, it’s entertaining at times, and I always know when a girl is walking by because it turns out that catcalls have a universal sound to them.
Now, the reason for the word “Mexico” in the title of this post… I have been trying to figure out all morning where these guys are from. I even walked out on my fire escape to shake out my rug and have a look at them. To me, they look Mexican. But given the fact that this neighborhood is so chalked full of Puerto Ricans, it seems more likely that they are in fact Puerto Rican.
The fact that I’m not sure is annoying me. I feel so white, racist, and ethnocentric. Is it because I’m used to seeing more Mexicans, that I think that they look Mexican? I really need to be schooled. It makes me feel awful that I can’t easily recognize the difference. In my defense, I wouldn’t necessarily be able to identify a German, from a French, from an American on sight alone. However, if I heard them speak, I probably could (even if they were speaking English). And if I looked closely at their habits, I could probably also tell a difference.
Can anyone out there please school me on how to tell the difference between a Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Mexican, by sight, habits, accent, etc? (Or Cuban-American, Puerto Rican-American…..you get the picture.) Those are the most common latino folks in my neighborhood. I’m sick of being the girl who can’t tell the difference. It makes me feel terribly racist and horribly ignorant. Thanks and have a good day!
Signed,
Loser white chick
My name is Kendra and I am a fourth-year medical student attending
about accents, Puerto Ricans and Cubans don’t pronounce their “r” at the end of their words and speak more quickly then Mexicans… at least in my opinion. That, however, is difficult to know if you don’t speak the language. I won’t even bother about “sight” considering that where I come from, the stereotype is short, dark, with stick straight hair, and although I’m short, I’m always considered the girl who needs the tan, and curls that are just impossible to control, LOL.
Oh, and being born in New York, you can’t forget the large Dominican population in the area… and there’s also people from all over Central and South America as well! Also, to make you feel better, acknowledging that there are hispanics other than Mexicans proves that you are not the “terribly racist and horribly ignorant” person you claimed you were, and even hispanics don’t know where other hispanics are from. Shoot, everyone thinks I’m either Cuban or Columbia when I’m neither!
BTW, I love reading your blogs! I’ve had my Ross interview and waiting to hear whether or not I’m in
Best of luck!