25.6.09

Supermarket.

So far, the biggest surprise I had was the supermarket. Apart from a fleeting memory of Sam's Club, I've never seen such abundance. For instance they had four or five brands of Oreo-style sandwhich cookies, and each took up its section of shelf, floor to ceiling.
There didn't seem to be anything particularly good, but a huge quantity of ordinary packaged branded food. Everything was in English, too. There were things like 'Aunt Jemina's Home Pancake Mix,' marked "EXPORT ONLY" in big yellow letters. Most was not export only, but even what was was not labeled in Spanish.

Also, to call there's no need to type in 011, but the number works as dialed.

On a similar note, the people who work in the office at Souriau are completely bilingual. Many of them have lived in the United States, either as children or for school or at any point, and in their conversation they switch very easily from one language to the other.

I almost feel as though Spanish here were the indigenous language and English the colonial tongue.

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