When in Rome

or in the deep south, you do as the locals do. Or so the saying goes. Having been on the move every few years since I was probably around two years old, adapting to local customs and traditions has become second nature. So over the years I have developed an interesting array of habits, from the French love for sitting in the street and watching the world go by, to the Dutch penchant for being far too honest, to the German-like punctuality. And over the past few months, I've been able to add several characteristics to that list.

Liking tinted car windows is one of the characteristics I adopted surprisingly fast. This doesn't come as much of a surprise, since summers here are hot enough to make pavement melt (or at least get really soft and squishy). I'm not talking about the light-green tinting you will see in most cars nowadays, I'm talking about the deep-almost-black tinting that is mainly seen in programs like "Pimp my ride" (or Georgia, apparently). Back in Europe, tinted windows used to, at best, make me think of really important politicians, and at worst, of some form of criminal, so needless to say I did not have a very positive attitude towards them. Funnily enough, I never noticed that husband's truck had tinted windows too - perhaps that was because the whole huge truck with quad cab thing was enough of a rarity. Anyway, the new car that we bought last August did not come with tinted windows, and my first response was "oh great, I don't want my car to look like that anyway". My second response, after about a day of feeling like I had driven around in a sauna, was, "Oh crap, where can I get my windows tinted, and how dark can we go?"
So much for my dislike of tinted windows.

And how about saying "Thank you" and "oh that's great!" when you're doing someone a favor? I think this falls into the southern-discourse I blogged about earlier. Now don't get me wrong, I have always been a polite person, I was taught to say "thank you" and "please", and I like to think I have been doing pretty well in that department. But here in the south, we take politeness and gratitude to the next level. You thank everyone. And I mean everyone. You thank the person who bumps into you and then apologizes. And guess what, it's contagious too. Whenever I would just visit the south, I would shrug it off as an ancient idiosyncrasy. But now that I live here, I find myself doing it more and more. So when a student calls me with a question, I end up thanking them for calling. When I call, say payroll, to correct a mistake they made, I tell them it would be great if they could get that fixed, and thank you so very much ma'am. Now I have to be honest, but I have also gotten the feeling that perhaps my adaptation here is more of a survival mechanism than an additional layer of politeness that I just picked up on (even though I'm sure my mother is proud of me). I have begun to realize it is a way of life, and you had better adapt, or else you will not get anything done.
So, thank you for reading my blog today:)