Episode Summary
In this episode of The Expat Files, Johnny Mueller explores the complexities of forming first impressions in Latin America, discussing how language, appearance, and cultural norms shape expat experiences. He highlights the challenges of judging people based on speech, dental aesthetics, and social behavior, offering insights into adapting to a new cultural landscape.
Johnny begins by reflecting on how expats often rely on first impressions to judge others, using examples like judging people in a store or at a cafe. He notes that these assumptions, common in the first world, can be misleading in Latin America, where cultural norms and behaviors may differ significantly. He emphasizes the importance of adapting one's expectations and understanding that first impressions of Latin people may not align with preconceived notions.
He then moves on to discuss how speech and language can reveal a person's background, but this is more effective in the United States than in Latin America. He notes that expats often struggle to judge socioeconomic status through Spanish accents, and even native speakers have difficulty understanding non-native accents. He highlights the limitations of using appearance, like teeth, to judge someone's background, especially in the U.S. where dental care is more accessible.
Johnny also touches on the social implications of dental aesthetics in Latin America, contrasting the assumptions people make about someone's background based on their teeth with the reality he observes. He notes that in the West, poor dental hygiene is often linked to lower socioeconomic status, but in Latin America, this generalization doesn't hold. He recounts an experience at a wealthy party where he noticed many well-dressed individuals had poor dental health, challenging the assumption that wealth correlates with good dental care.
He further discusses the cultural differences in Latin America, particularly how people are not judged by their appearances. He contrasts this with the first world, where aesthetic standards are high and self-critique is common. He provides examples of how Latin men, despite physical imperfections, are accepted and even admired for their personality and charm. Johnny also highlights the importance of status symbols like luxury cars, which are often acquired through unconventional means, such as buying wrecked cars from the U.S. and having them repaired locally.
The episode concludes with a segment on an encounter with three small, rural coffee farmers in Latin America who bought a new vehicle using cash. Johnny discusses the cultural context of these individuals, their distrust of banks, and their preference for cash transactions. He also highlights the economic impact of the coffee industry on small farmers, the lifestyle of these rural communities, and the cultural significance of machetes and pickup trucks. The segment ends with a discussion on the social dynamics of these communities and the reluctance of these individuals to seek medical advice unless absolutely necessary.
Finally, the episode wraps up with Johnny reminding listeners that they can email him with any questions or comments about living in Latin America. The segment ends abruptly with a mention of the next episode, though the exact phrase is cut off.
Topics
First impressions, Cultural differences, Expatriate experiences, Adaptation to new cultures, Speech and language as indicators of background, Challenges of judging socioeconomic status through accent, Differences in language comprehension between native and non-native speakers, Appearance as a marker of socioeconomic status, Dental aesthetics and social perception, Socioeconomic status and dental health, Orthodontic treatment accessibility in Latin America, Dental hygiene practices in Latin America
Chapters
00:00:00 Opening 00:01:02 First Impressions and the First World Perspective 00:04:11 Ditching First World Preconceptions 00:05:06 Speech and Figures of Speech as Indicators of Background 00:08:41 The Difficulty of Forming Accurate First Impressions Through Speech 00:09:34 Teeth as a Marker of Socioeconomic Status 00:10:09 Dental Aesthetics and Social Perception in Latin America 00:10:40 Contrasting Generalizations About Dental Health 00:11:06 A Shocking Observation at a Wealthy Party 00:14:16 The Growing Trend of Orthodontic Treatment in Latin America 00:16:11 Latin America's Attitude Toward Physical Imperfections 00:17:33 The Bottom Line: Judging People by Appearances in Latin America 00:18:24 Status Symbols and the Car Culture in Latin America 00:21:44 The Coffee Farmers' Purchase of a New Vehicle 00:22:56 The Cultural Significance of Cash Transactions and Coffee Ranches 00:25:04 The Health Risk and Cultural Reluctance to Seek Medical Advice 00:27:38 Closing Credits and Listener Engagement Reminder
Transcript
Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.
[00:14] Hello there all you expat wannabes, I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to the Expat Files, living in Latin America. The show that tells you just what it's like to live, work, play and or retire down here in Latin America. It's a mix of the good, the bad, the ugly and the great and it's all right here so let's get started. Now since the name of this show is The Expat Files, living in Latin America, where we talk about what it's really like for expats to live, work and play, start a business and or retire down here, well right now it's time to talk about something we think we have a handle on when we're up in the first world but once you get down here you'll know the whole concept could be absolutely ass backwards. So what I'm saying is in this department you really have to pay attention because you've
[00:59] got a few things to learn, more than a few things. So let's talk about something we've never talked about before, I'm talking about first impressions of people. Now you know up in the first world they say first impressions are everything because if you screw it up you never get a second chance and most of us who are average or above average think we're pretty good judges of character. I mean let's face it none of us think that we'd ever make a bad first impression, just like we all think we're slightly above average too, even though it's statistically impossible. Yup and maybe we're all from Lake Wobbegone instead of Cleveland. Anyway any of us who are average or above average we like to think we can size up a person in about 10 seconds. For example you walk into a store and you stand in the checkout line at Costco, don't tell me that within 10 seconds you haven't sized up the guy or gal right next to you.
[01:49] Your brain's already done the analysis and you think you know a thousand things about that person. And if you're good 80 to 90% of the time you're going to be right. After all it is a survival trait right? I mean if you're next to a guy who's dressed up in tattered leathers and he's got a mohawk, a dog collar and neck tattoos, well the last thing you're going to want to do is take cuts in front of that guy or even make eye contact. I mean think about this, suppose I gave you a test and said hey you've got 30 seconds to size up the next person that you meet. I'm sure you'll be able to tell me with reasonable confidence about how old that person is what he or she weighs if they have a lot of discretionary income and their general socioeconomic bracket. All that and much more just by checking out the clothes, the jewelry and the smartphone
[02:37] and you'll know even more if you get a peek at the car they drive. And if you're in Costco and you see what they put in their shopping cart you'll have a good idea of their level of education too. Not only that if they're using coupons you might assume they're a tightwad. Not to mention you'll know if they're uptight, relaxed or the nervous type by the way they comport themselves when they're standing in the line and you'll even have an idea how fastidious they are, their attention to detail, if you were to check out the hair, the grooming and the fingernails. And better yet if you hear them say something like a couple of words or a phrase or two you'll get a few more solid clues as to that person's level of education. So all in all I have to say expats as a rule are very good people watchers. Actually it's part of the fun of being an expat. In fact you know there's nothing like sitting for a few hours each day, sitting at a little
[03:24] outdoor restaurant or cafe, sipping espresso or tequila, your choice and watching the people go by. But you know a lot of brand new expats are just too antsy to do that. So many people who've just jumped off the treadmill. Even though they're down here in Latin America for good and they know it, they just have to have some place to go and something to do all the time. After about 15 minutes in a situation like that, somehow they've just got to get up and keep moving. And by the way that's one easy way to tell green expats and tourists from seasoned long term expats. After a while you just kind of give in, slow down and go with the flow. And along the way you become a very good people watcher. And that in turn helps you adapt to the way you should be judging first impressions of Latin people. Because as I'll explain, you have to ditch a lot of your first world preconceptions in
[04:11] that respect. You'll find out soon enough when you live down here, your first impressions of Latin people can be way off base. And of course in our heads we profile every new person we see. That's a built in survival mechanism we can't change. So the ACLU says ban profiling. Well you can't ban human nature. Expat Eddie has an answer for that one, he says ban the ACLU. And when you get down here to Latin America first thing, you'll of course continue your profiling. It'll kick in as soon as you board the airliner. As soon as you realize there are Latin pilots and stewardesses and you see that the plane is mostly filled with Latin passengers. Now as far as first impressions when you see a first world person and first impressions when you see a Latin, many times you'll get taken right down a dead alley.
[04:59] Because down here things aren't exactly as they seem at all. But there is one direct correlation and commonality you can count on. And that's regarding speech and figures of speech. What I mean is, if for example you're in the States and you're talking on the phone to someone else in the States and you've never actually seen that person before. Well you know as well as I do, just by the way they say their words and their figures of speech you can get a good idea of what that person's background is. With that you could easily make a dozen generalizations about a person you've never even seen before. By the slang and perhaps by the way they clip their words and of course by the size and breadth of their vocabulary. Or lack thereof. Now that works pretty much exactly the same when you're talking to someone who speaks Spanish. But since most expats who come down here don't know much Spanish at all, in fact I'd estimate
[05:47] only about 5% of green new expats come down knowing enough Spanish to get around with confidence just using that language. And it'll actually take some years after you learn decent Spanish. For you to judge a person's socioeconomic background just by listening to the way they say and phrase things. And here's another thing. Even when your Spanish gets pretty good and you can read the newspaper and understand quite a bit of what people are saying and even understand the telenovelas. That's no guarantee at all that you'll be able to know the Latin accents and pick out which country a person comes from. Because you see if you take the average born and bred Latin person, a young adult let's say, they can easily tell the different accents within their own country. Like for example a Texan can tell what part of Texas another Texan comes from.
[06:34] Well of course a New Yorker or a guy from Illinois could never do that. He just might get the guys from Texas but that's about it. Anyway the average Latin person can distinguish about 10 different country accents and can easily identify someone for example from Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Costa Rica, Colombia, Honduras, Salvador and Mexico. And some Latins with a very good ear can distinguish even more country accents. Now take me for example, been here more than 20 years. My spoken Spanish is okay and I can understand most Spanish speakers as long as they're not drunk and as long as they don't talk as fast as I usually do. As a matter of fact most native Latin people who do learn their English pretty well often complain that people from the US speak way too fast for them.
[07:20] That's their number one complaint when speaking English with us. And by the way the very same complaint we have when speaking Spanish with them. Though they can understand Canadians much better than people from the US. And get this, most Latins who speak English quite well have a very hard time understanding people from the UK. And I always tell them don't worry, gringos have the same problem. But anyway the point I'm getting at is that no matter how well you learn your Spanish, you're never going to know the language as well as the locals. And two, you'll always retain your gringo accent. And yes, Latins tell me we do have a solid gringo accent. And yes, Europeans have country accents that Spanish people can detect too. So when a German speaks Spanish, they can tell in a second he's from Germany. Same goes for Italians and French and Russians too.
[08:08] In fact I've been told over the years by a number of Latins that the toughest person to listen to speaking Spanish is a person from China or South Korea. From what I've been told when they speak Spanish, no matter how good it is, Latin folks listening have a difficult time overcoming the accent. And in fact sometimes the accent itself bothers them so much that they can't concentrate on the words. And Russians speaking Spanish have an accent that's no treat to listen to for a native Spanish speaker either. Okay that preceding little bit of mumbo jumbo was a warning to gringos and expats that it's very difficult to get a good first impression simply by listening to the way a Latin person speaks. Since Spanish is a second language for us, we'll just never have as good a handle on it to be able to make accurate generalizations about native speakers.
[08:56] And vice versa. So what about the rest of those little subtle people watching clues? How can they help us gringos and expats when we're trying to get an accurate first impression? Well I'm telling you right now, except when it comes to the ultra wealthy classes of people in Latin America, that tiny less than 1% of the population who have the money to pretty much fashion themselves as gringo and gringa clones, the fact is, looks and actions can fool you every time. For example, let's talk about one thing we can generalize about quite easily up in the first world and be right about our generalizations and snap judgments nearly every time. So let's talk about your choppers, your teeth. And it's true, when you see someone up in the states who smiles and has a brilliant white picket fence smile, you automatically assume that he or she is at least somewhat
[09:45] educated or the parents were somewhat educated and at minimum that person is middle class American. Now there is a chance that person comes from a lower socioeconomic background but had good luck at the draw with his genetics. Now unlike Latin America, up in the states it's so common for kids who are middle class or upper to have braces these days as well as any number of expensive cosmetic dental procedures even at a very young age. Now that means up there, when you run into some poor snaggle tooth guy or someone with dingy yellow gray cracked broken or missing teeth, aside from the fact that when a person like that cracks a smile it could be a social deal breaker, the first thing that goes through our minds is he or she either came from a lower socioeconomic background where things
[10:33] like nice teeth were not a priority or that person was born in the UK or a former Soviet satellite country. But down here in Latin America you cannot make that kind of generalization. Now I'll tell you at first I was thrown by a two because like I've said before often a gringo off the tourist trail will get invited to many social events and of course as soon as you start meeting people and shaking their hands and giving that double peck on the cheek to all the ladies because that's what they do down here so you better get used to it. Anyway in your mind immediately you start profiling people and making generalizations and I'll tell you one of my first big shockers was when my lawyer invited me to his brother's birthday party that was being held at his aunt and uncle's very palatial country estate. In fact the place would have gone well over a million bucks in the states and I'm not
[11:21] talking about a million plus south beach dollars I'm talking about a million plus Cleveland dollars. Anyway I don't have to tell you there were a lot of high rollers at this party. There were bodyguards and SUVs parked all over the lawn and for two or three blocks up and down the highway and on my trips up to the buffet table I couldn't help but notice a group of decked out 50 and 60 year olds who were very well healed judging by their expensive suits and dresses and this smart looking group was making their way back and forth to the buffet table and bar just like I was so I got a real close up look at some of these guys and gals and the first thing that I noticed was many of these guys when they cracked a smile were basically dentally challenged train wrecks and if I wasn't in Latin America and didn't know any better I'd have thought they were Texas trailer trash
[12:09] I mean we're talking neglect and real bad dental work I mean talk about color mismatches you all know what I'm talking about there's nothing more obvious than when a person's got a porcelain cap on a front tooth and it's so bulky and mismatched that it looks like a chick lit when the person smiles I mean we've all had a friend or two like that or a drunken uncle who had a glowing headlight tooth back in the 70s or 80s maybe but you know where we come from that's no way to make friends or influence people is it not to mention a blazing headlight glow in the dark chick lit tooth is about a minus one on the aphrodisiac scale but we won't go there now in the smile department there is something worse than a glow in the dark headlight tooth and that's a missing front tooth but there was none of
[12:54] that however many a big grin revealed missing upper molars and bicuspids and big open black spaces like that where teeth once were also smacks of trailer trash and Carnism in the first world but yet these folks were wearing real Rolexes and designer shoes jewelry clothes and sunglasses yet at the same time the $250 a month maids and servants handing out the drinks and serving up the food at the buffet well 80 to 90 percent of those chicken bus riding folks had perfect straight white picket fence teeth of their own these are perfect teeth that any middle-class parent in the states would gladly drop five grand on herself just so her own kids could have the same and I should know four of my brothers and sisters
[13:42] went down that road themselves as well as three quarters of my nieces and nephews oh and by the way just a little cost of living update here I recently spoke to a young legal secretary in my lawyer's office who just got her own braces herself they were costing her about twelve hundred dollars spread over three years on the pay as you go plan she added if they weren't on the payment plan it would have been eight hundred for a treatment that would cost a cool five grand up in the states and here's a mystery that dentists up in the first world and dentists down here in Latin America just can't explain it turns out unlike Western first world societies where perhaps 50% or more of children and young adults have crooked crowded or twisted teeth so they end up needing braces the number down here that would qualify
[14:28] for braces is only about five to ten percent so in fact it is a growth industry because there are more and more people who can afford to pay for braces which is something that was virtually unheard of in the general population just a few short years ago in fact 20 something years ago when I first got down here to Latin America even in Costa Rica back then probably the richest Latin country per capita I don't remember seeing anyone with braces not to mention in the last few years for the first time some employers mostly transnational companies like Sears and Starbucks and Office Depot they're offering dental insurance to their employees which for Latin America is a whole new concept anyway no one seems to be able to explain satisfactorily why so many Latin Americans have
[15:15] nice straight beautiful teeth and I'll qualify that by saying young Latin Americans because since most of them do not have good dental hygiene no matter how nice their teeth seem to look there are always greater problems lurking I mean come on like my own dentist told me only expats gays dentists and educated women floss in Latin America and that's why he says by the time a Latin American is 30 years old nearly everyone has lost some teeth by then and that's in every socio economic class so why do so many young Latins have such beautiful white straight teeth well is it all genetic is it diet is it environmental nobody seems to know but sounds like a good master's thesis now doesn't it and you know us first worlders with our severe aesthetic demands I mean these
[16:01] days you've got first world guys using all kinds of expensive cosmetics and hair products and how many young first world women do you know who don't critique themselves every time they pass a mirror well the thing is down here in Latin America although Latins love to dress to the hilt as a rule they're very forgiving about visual defects like for example ear and nose hair bad breath and bad teeth and it's women who forgive their men with those defects because so often you'll see a beautiful Latin woman dressed to the hilt made up and looking like a million bucks even if she only makes three or four hundred a month and she'll be with a guy who's well let's be kind and say a mismatch and here's an example expat Eddie lives in a wealthy guarded community in Salvador and one of the guards that lets you in when you drive up to the gate is a potbellied 50-something guy
[16:51] who's missing a front tooth and he's a smiley happy-go-lucky guy and it doesn't seem to bother him a bit and you might say well that must really put a dent in his love life however Eddie says he's on his second wife and she's a young pretty thing and one day I saw her bringing him his lunch at the guard shack and she did look like she could be his good-looking daughter now of course they're both from the poor just making ends meet lower classes but obviously you could see that at least with some classes of people there doesn't seem to be any fatal stigma attached to a guy with a pot belly and who's missing a front tooth obviously as they say in the states he must have a good personality and he does like I said he's smiling and laughing all the time so again the bottom line is in Latin America like nowhere else you cannot judge people by appearances for example
[17:39] why is it when you're in a high-end restaurant or a bar and you see a well-dressed Latin guy with a nice car and he sits down alone at a table and orders Johnny Walker red and when his friends show up for his next drink he automatically switches to Johnny Walker black of course his friends don't know he was drinking red but you know if you keep your eyes open you see little switcher ruse like that all the time because you see Latin men like to put on a show and demonstrate their class and their ability to pay for it even if the wife and kids at home go without and here's another example why is it that three out of four BMWs and Mercedes Benz autos were not bought at BMW or Mercedes Benz dealerships in Latin America and the next question is how can that be well that's because
[18:24] you know down here it's the biggest status symbol in the world for a guy that is to drive a Mercedes a BMW or an Audi in that order but you see most people down here with those kind of cars can't afford to buy them at the dealership so there are companies all throughout Latin America whose sole purpose is to allow a Latin person to buy a wrecked car at an auction in the United States and you view those wrecked cars on the internet before you put in a bid then the company will ship your wrecked car down on a flatbed and have it repaired down here by body men who work for third world wages like 300 a month not first world wages like 3000 a month so that way you could roll around town in a high-end car just like the king of the dirt pile and the tits of the rits
[19:12] for maybe half the price of a similar car bought down here at a dealership and of course being that these cars were generally heavily damaged again appearances aren't what they seem and don't get me wrong they look nice on the outside and the inside body guys do excellent work but never forget they were wrecks and speaking of cars and dealerships try this one on for size the other day i was with an expat friend of mine at a big Toyota dealership in San Pedro Sula, Honduras and he was there having some routine service done on his high lux pickup and we were only supposed to be there an hour but since this is Latin America we were in the little waiting room lounge for two hours and still they hadn't even started on his truck yet anyway we were sitting there shooting the
[19:57] breeze and cutting up on the bad soap opera on tv in the lounge when suddenly three little campesinos walked in they looked to be 50 or 60 ish weather warned heavily tanned from the sun wearing that signature central american white cowboy hat and obviously they were brothers they looked like they came out of the same mold oh and did i tell you all three of them had machetes in beautiful leather tooled sheaths with a lot of little metal stud work typical for the average guy living on the sticks in Latin America the design and the tooling on the leather sheath is a point of pride for these guys just like a nice tooled saddle is for a cowboy anyway these three guys sat on the black sofa next to us they were the usual polite and happy type and of course they said buenos tardes to us gringos and they all three went for the free coffee and just
[20:44] absolutely loaded it up with milk and sugar it's what all latins do to this day i've never met a latin american person who drinks his coffee black and i never met one that took less than two spoons of sugar in fact it's not unusual to see him toss in four or five so here they are with the best coffee in the world and they're just killing it with milk and sugar but i digress as usual anyway one of the three guys got up and went over to the little news stand and pulled out one of the promotional pamphlets for the pickup trucks and here's the thing as one of the brothers was flipping through it he'd occasionally stop and softly read out loud to the other two something or other about the truck it was obvious the two brothers couldn't read and the brother holding the pamphlet and reading wasn't doing gangbusters himself but he was getting by then after about 10
[21:34] minutes one of the Toyota salesmen walked in and he said to the three guys in spanish of course we have a green one a red one and a white one all with full equipment and a blue one with manual windows and just air conditioning and then he said the green ones right out in front in the parking lot we can take that one for a ride right now so they left and a half an hour later they were back in the room again and sitting down next to us then the little guy who could read he grabbed this little beat up duffel bag sack off the floor and i recognized it was made out of the same kind of material they make hundred pound coffee sacks out of a kind of a burlap canvas material anyway when the salesman popped back into the lounge the little guy opened his bag just a bit and said to the man we have cash the name was effectivo so the three little guys walked out of the lounge
[22:22] and the salesman ushered them into his little cubicle on the main floor so meanwhile an hour later finally my ex-pat friend got his service work done and that salesman was walking around and he stopped up at the cajero that's the little cage the window where you pay anyway he reached into the window right in front of us and grabbed some paperwork and i asked him because i'm a curious guy do you have many customers like that you know coming in from the compo and buying cash for a brand new vehicle then he said without batting an eye oh a couple times a month and then he grinned and added by the way they bought three so just to reinforce what i said before down here in latin america appearances can be very deceiving so you might ask what's the story
[23:09] on those guys from the compo obviously that's proof guys like that don't trust banks these little guys and i mean they were little like about five three anyway it's obvious these guys had themselves some kind of coffee ranch and as i'm sure you guys know ever since starbucks took off maybe 10 years ago and made gourmet and designer coffees ever so cool with the yuppies and the frappa chuppies well prices for the good coffee has gone up 500 to a thousand percent since then and when that happened any small farmer as long as his piece of land was at least 4 000 feet or above that combined with volcanic soil makes for some of the best coffee in the world that's why when you're driving around in the boonies in latin america you'll often see brand new pickup
[23:54] trucks with a lot of fresh gaudy aftermarket chrome and silly extra fog and spotlights on them because you know once one of these guys buys a brand new truck he wants everyone in the neighborhood to know it so it's true you'll see a lot of tricked out new and late model pickup trucks with short little guys with cowboy hats and machetes driving them and believe it or not some of these little guys and their families have a lot of money cash money and they don't drive pretentious suvs or have bodyguards or rolexes or any of that crap it's not their style they have pickup trucks and they actually use them for work every single day and you might ask why not bodyguards i mean after all some of these guys that don't trust banks do have shoeboxes full of cash under their mattresses well let's just say these folks out in the boonies have little faith in
[24:42] banks or comps or any authority no more than anyone in the big city however these guys have machetes and they know how to use them when by the way the expat friend that was with me he used to be an emt back in the states and those three guys walked out of the lounge and sat down in the salesman's cubicle my friend said to me johnny you know what i hate to be the bearer of bad news but the little guy with the money sack has a nice little cancer growing on his face and i said what how do you know that and he said trust me i know and i said well you think he knows about it and my friend said probably not you know cowboys and campesinos like that doesn't matter how much money they have they don't go to doctors unless they're dying then i asked well you think it'll kill them and my friend said probably not but when he finally does something
[25:30] about it they'll have to take a nice chunk of his nose with it so then comes the dilemma i said you're gonna tell him and he said well i don't think that would be a good idea and i said what no friendly advice now my expat friend's in the oil business and he said he's had a lot of experience dealing with campesinos and old-fashioned cowboy types like that he's had to deal with a few of these guys on oil leases and stuff and he said they're not likely to take any advice from gringos or anyone else that's not a local boy or some elder or someone with stature in the community and he said chances are if you'd said something like that to him you'd surely embarrass him in front of his brothers and these cowboy guys are really macho and you wouldn't want to see him lose face like that the fact is my friend said if i were to tell him to have it checked he'd probably
[26:15] never go to the doctor just to save face with his brothers and prove that i was full of crap it'd be like a stranger telling oprah to stop eating or lindsay lohan to stop partying these are the kind of guys that almost never make it to the big city only for very big special occasions like for example buying a car and in fact my expat buddy said i'll bet you those three guys not only never spoke to a gringo before i'll bet today was the first time they ever saw two of them in one place at one time then finally my friend said johnny what if you were up in the states sitting next to a guy in a barber shop and the guy had a suspicious lesion on his nose would you say hey bud you ought to have someone take a look at that now i ask you how many people who could spot something like that would open their mouth and stick their neck out for a stranger
[27:03] now i have to admit i haven't been back to the states in over 20 years so i didn't have an answer for them but maybe you guys out there can tell me what would you have done i mean not just hypothetically i mean in real life what would you do okay and before i wrap up today remember i've still got a couple places left for my latin american seminar which is coming up fast in the third week of june so just go to expatwisdom.com and click on the seminar link for all the details you've been listening to the expat files living in latin america coming to you each week from somewhere south of the border and don't forget you can email me on anything at all about latin america the expat files at gmail.com see you next time most famous