Daily sounds of Mexico

About every morning I awake to the crows of a sickly sounding rooster. The first morning I heard him I was very confused. In my half awake state, I tried to think of what on earth could make such a horrid sound. He kind of sounds like hes dying... but, I have grown kind of fond of the sickly croons. I hope to find where he lives sometime. In Mexico, I have noticed that the doors are VERY loud. Most doors here are made of metal and have metal sliding latches for locks. EVERY door I encounter in my day makes loud clanking and screeching noises no matter how hard I try to silence it. Our walk to school is along some noisy and busy streets. The buses are very loud and they are Everywhere! They remind me of angry elephants stomping down the street, pushing and shoving to fit in a spot of the road. There are also cars that make noise intentionally to draw customers; like the gas tank truck. The one that comes through our neighborhood has chains with pieces of various metals attached to them dragging from the underside of the truck. Another car sells fried bananas, and it has a loud steam whistle that goes off periodically as it drives through the streets. Some sellers use megaphones attached to the top of their cars to get peoples attention. I am not sure what they sell. I have tried to figure out, but it is hard to understand static-y fast spanish. Once we are at school, we have a nice big wall that blocks most the street noise. Our school has a nice courtyard with trees that attract birds regularly. The birds are quite chatty. They make slightly different sounds than the ones at home. Their soft clicks and chirps are a nice relief after having you ears beat by the grumbling of the street cars. I enjoy the birds. A different kind of chirping I hear many times a day is the whistling of the Mexican men as I walk by. Being a white girl, I have gotten a great deal of attention in the streets. I don't think it is because I am exceptionally pretty, I am pretty syre its just because I am white... Males of all ages (even their 'cops') call after us as we walk down the street. I am not sure it this is meant to grab our attention, or to alert the whole street that white girls are coming. Their favorite call is yelling "Guerras! Guerras!" which is a more 'polite' version of Gringa. Other lines we have heard include: "I lohve yew" o "te amo", "beyutifull", "que guapa", "waaooooow", "deliciosa", "precisiosa", "candy", "barbie", "hola chicas, quieren un latin lover?"...the men here really know how to enchant a woman... Some girls enjoy the supermodel-like attention. Others get rather flustered. It doesn't bother me so much. I find it rather funny! At night, I notice I often fall asleep to the barks of the neighborhood dogs. They all seem to feed off eachother. If one gets alerted, a wave of barks starts. It eventually settles down to wait to the next reason to cause a fuss.