To be honest, the cultural differences - the immense weight of two separate histories, perspectives, assumptions, myths and surroundings - didn’t strike me as particularly significant at first. I felt surprisingly at home in Spanish, which seemed to express and accentuate my personality like a just-right pair of jeans hugs the hips, and Mexico was a natural fit – the casualness and the intensity, the reckless abandon and the human warmth, the coffee, the food, the mezcal. I’ve never eased into a community as comfortably and naturally as I did in Oaxaca; first I was here, roaming, out of it, the classic bumbling gringa, and then I was suddenly a part of things with a tight-knit group of friends and a serious boyfriend. There was a social revolution when I arrived; the streets were full of burning buses, and I went running on a highway barricaded by scorched tires and heaps of scrap metal. Nearly everyone I knew when I arrived left in a matter of months. I fell in love. I stayed through the months of federal police occupation and the fires in the streets at night, Jorge and I moved in together, and in spring of the following year we suddenly had plans to move to Beijing – I’d gotten a position as an English Composition Instructor for the coming academic year.

Throughout this whirlwind first year and throughout our year in China cultural differences seemed the least prominent factor in our relationship. Our socio-economic differences stood out more. We have different givens – college, for example. He was the first in his family to go – I took college for granted from grade school on, and though I loved it and squeezed every inch of experience out of it, I never thought of it as a particularly extraordinary opportunity, and never would’ve rejected the thought of studying photography as hopelessly impractical, as he did. Our upbringings were diametrically different – he grew up in a small village of five hundred inhabitants in the mountains of Oaxaca, and walked those treacherous three miles old-timers famously like to brag about to school and back every day. He studied agriculture, planting onions and chasing bulls. I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, a quintessentially middle-American city of several million people, going to a small well-respected high school, driving around town on the weekends, eating brown rice casseroles and hummus. My family was not rich, but I certainly felt we were the first time I came back from Oaxaca.

There are other differences, too – I love being at the bottom of a learning curve and could switch countries every six months, starting out clueless again and again on a dusty street corner in some distant land where I don’t speak the language or know the customs; he gets a look of immense relief on his face when it’s clear we’ll stick around somewhere for at least a year or two. As in many relationships, in ours there are the myriad differences that smooth the machinery of couplehood or send it coughing to a stop. But I wouldn’t say that culture – his Mexicanness, my Americanness – is among the most important. Perhaps this is because of that year in China, where in the face of Confucianism, Communism, “saving face” and the host of other inscrutable, impossibly foreign ways of thinking, the differences between our countries seemed laughingly miniscule. Perhaps its because there, outside of both of our native countries and cultures (a good friend in Japan once told me that all intercultural couples should live in a third country, a neutral country neither of them are from) we could have a relationship that didn’t conform to particular stereotypes or swing back around to cultural explanations for differences of opinion.

I think perhaps the hardest thing for me has been to assert my own culture while immersed in his; we’ve lived the majority of our time together in Mexico, and this means sometimes I sense my Americanness has been eclipsed. It is an intense pleasure to let loose with a “Dude, WTF?” following an episode of “Lost” with a couple of American friends. I imagine it will be similar for Jorge when we move to Pittsburgh this summer – I’ll be starting an MFA Program in the fall and we’ll have switched roles, with me at home and him fully immersed in U.S culture. I see why my friend made her point about third countries (she is Australian, her partner is British: they live in Japan); it is hard being the one in the privileged role of the native, and it is equally hard being the one in the limited role of foreigner.

But all of this seemed to be part of a distant backstory in our relationship until my friends Susy and Mauricio got married. Their wedding was not simply a union of two people but of two cultures; they are Mexican-American, and the wedding emphasized the otherness and belonging they feel in both cultures. It occurred to me in a rush of emotion that this is the legacy I will leave in the world. My children will be caught up in that otherness and belonging; they will be of two cultures and two languages. They will grow up with Mexico and the United States in their blood, their history, their way of seeing the world.

We have considered ourselves married by common law for quite some time now, but with the pressing need for a fiancé visa for Jorge to immigrate to the states, we’ve decided to go through with an actual wedding. We’ll have a ceremony in English and Spanish, we’ll play the The Magnetic Fields and Celso Pina, we’ll dance with a turkey and give Polaroids as gifts. We will blend our families, our stories, and our cultures. This, as I’ve come to see, is an extraordinary thing. But it’s not everything – it’s one part of us, and one part of the commitment we’ve made to say, “Hey, let’s make this journey together.”

Sarah Menkedick is editor in chief of Glimpse.org and contributing editor at the Matador Network. She’s currently based in Oaxaca, Mexico. If you liked this, head over to Sarah’s blog Posa Tigres for more exploration of life in Mexico, travel, identity and culture.

Read more:
A truly Spanglish couple: learning Spanish in Cancun
Meet the parents and make an impression
Meet the couples: interviews with cross-cultural readers

Kelly (Canada) and Jorge (Mexico)

When I arrived in Mexico five years ago, I spoke nary a word of Spanish, “cerveza, baño, cenicero, cigaro” and the all important “por favor” and “gracias” were about all I had learned for my “vacation”. I met Hubby on the beach after only a couple of weeks in Mexico, not realizing that he would be the reason for me to stay. Hubby spoke English well and that is how we communicated, there was no need for us to speak Spanish to each other. In fact, there was no need to speak Spanish at all on Cozumel, everyone I met spoke English and that was the language of the community we played and worked in. My first six months in Mexico didn’t require me to study at all, though I certainly picked up phrases as I went along.

When we moved to Cancun, things did change. We were now in the big city and living downtown, if I was going to survive I needed to be able to communicate in Spanish. Hubby was working all day and I was on my own to take care of grocery shopping, etc., so I was forced to really begin sucking in the language. And suck in the language I did, I was terrible! Hubby certainly didn’t make things any easier, he is not the most patient man in the world so having him try to teach me was not working out. Often my attempts at the language were mocked, he still reminds me to this day of the funny mistakes I made that caused his ribs to hurt with laughter.

So, I was alone in the city, no money for Spanish classes, no computer for internet lessons, nothing but a dictionary and newspapers. I would sit with a paper and the dictionary and do my best to try to understand what was happening in the world. This was valuable, until I tried to pronounce the words, they all came out with French pronunciations! I realized that all my years of French in school in Canada was both a detriment and an advantage. I could understand the meaning of the words as they were often quite similar, but the pronunciation was a disaster, French and Spanish are quite different and my “Frespañol” was quite ugly. And so our relationship continued in English.

Over the years I have learned a lot from taxi drivers, co-workers, students and web sites like www.studyspanish.com, but still haven’t had a formal class. My Spanish has improved immensely and I am able to not only survive but I can discuss politics, tell a joke, deal with household service providers, etc., etc.. In the last few days I’ve been listening to our conversations in the house more closely to see what we really use with each other. I realize that we are truly a Spanglish couple. It’s really mixed up, I’ll throw Spanish words into English sentences, ask him a question in English and he’ll reply in Spanish or vice versa, we very rarely have a conversation that is solely in one language, though English certainly is still the prevalent tongue in the house. He still laughs at my Spanish, but I’ve built up a tough layer of skin so I can laugh along with him now.

The one place that we do not mix is with Max. When Max was born we read a lot about raising a bilingual child and we decided to use the “OPOL” (one parent, one language) method. I only speak English with Max and Hubby only speaks Spanish. This method is working wonders, Max’s language skills surprise me everyday. He never, ever speaks Spanish to me and he won’t speak English to Hubby, no matter what language we are speaking to each other. If I do speak Spanish to him, he really doesn’t like it and he says “English mommy, English” and the same is true with his Daddy. He thinks it’s pretty funny when Daddy speaks English to him, it just doesn’t fit his world even though he knows that Daddy is bilingual and he usually only responds in Spanish.

Language has certainly caused some problems in our house, misunderstandings, miscommunication and even jealousy. The phrase “te quiero mucho” has been a source of angst for a long time. It means “I love you a lot”, for me a phrase reserved for my romantic partner, letting them know that they are special and different from everyone else. Hubby will use that phrase with others and it makes me very angry, I no longer feel special and I feel that it’s inappropriate for him to say that to friends (particularly female friends). He insists that the phrase can be used for both friends and romantic partners, no matter how often I tell him that it bothers me. I guess you can’t change old habits. I wish there were an equivalent to “love ya” in Spanish, I use that phrase with non-romantic friends, “I love you” feels too strong for me and doesn’t fit a friendly relation. I’ve asked Hubby to try to use “Te amo” with me, it also means “I love you” but it would make me feel that I was different than the friends he so casually uses “te quiero” with. Of course, being a man, he used it a couple of times and forgot so I am relegated to “TQM” once again. I’ll take it, being told “I love you” in any way should make you feel good, I’ve got to get over it I guess. As Hubby says, “Es tu pedo”, “it’s your fart”, meaning deal with your own issues!

I’m looking forward to the next few years to see how our language relationship develops. I have noticed that more and more Spanish is making its way into our home, in chat and text messages and in conversation as well. I don’t know if it will ever be the main language of the house, I think after five years of being primarily English speakers, we’re probably set in our ways. I do wish we had a secret language, something we can use to speak when we don’t want Max to know what we are saying, the spelling game just gets confusing for both of us! “Don’t give Max any more “C A N D Y”". “Que dijiste?” “C A N D Y”. “QUE?” “D U L C E S”. “Oh, candy!”. Great, Max heard that one, sigh, give him the damn chocolate bar……

Kelly writes about life with her bi-cultural family in Cancun, Mexico on her blog A Canuck in Cancun. This story was originally published on her blog here.