My mini-me!

Just what is a “Mini-Me” you ask?  Try it, it’s fun!

This was designed by Monica Custodio; take a look at her beautiful website and fall in love with her dolls!

Culture Shock: “Hola!” “Hola!”

You might wonder, what the hell is a New Yorker doing here when she could be in NYC! Well, it all started with love! And 6 years later, here I am happily married and still in love!

It hasn’t been easy though, the culture shock is striking, but as my grandma  from Puerto Rico used to say: “always look at the bright side”. Intelligent woman she was.

This is what this section (Culture Shock) will be all about. The day-to-day incidents that can, and actually do happen to a person who moves abroad or overseas. This person could be you, your partner, a relative, a friend, your neighbor, you name it!

All in all, I promise to make it entertaining… 🙂 Ready? I’ll start by sharing with you: “Hola!” “Hola!”

“Hola!” “Hola”!

It took me almost a year to get it! I just couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong, and why the heck people kept hanging up the phone on me! My husband would explain it over and over, but it didn’t get through to me. You see, when I called someone on the phone, the first thing I did after singing “Holaaaaaa”, was to introduce myself. What else?!

As you know, in English when you call somebody, you say: Hi! This is Delia (in third person). The thing is, when I translated it literally into Spanish it came out like this: “Hola! Es Delia” (singing of course). But people would answer: “No, wrong number!” and would hang on me! I would then call back, saying: “Hey, you just hung up on me! And they would simply reply: “I just told you, you had the wrong number, stop bothering me!!!”

Aggggh! It was so frustrating!

I do it much better now, but sometimes I still make the same mistake, and they hang up the phone! hahaha! The difference is that I laugh now. In other words: I look at the bright side of life (singing).

Thank you grandma!