Some things that are pretty different than what I´m used to-

- street vendors- almost everything at your fingertips
-juice stands, fruit stands, both mobile and on almost every street corner
- no seat belts in the back seats of cars
- most of the cars are manual
- the taxis have a chirpy sound for horns. Whoever came up with that was brilliant, because they use them all the time, and a loud horn would be too too annoying....
- not really any lines in the roads, and for sure none that people follow. just sorta go where your car/bus/truck fits in...
- photocopier shops EVERYWHERE. Who needs that many photocopies?
- also everywhere - internet/phone cafe´s, liquor shops and tiendas-sort of like gas station stores...
-broken glass and bottles cemented into the tops of walls. Hey, I wouldn´t want to climb over that!
-bar and grates on all the windows and doors. Some of them very pretty and ornamental.
-coconut palms in the front yard (one of his aunts has mangos in her back yard, she made us mango juice - yum!)
-all the doorknobs are wooden... but the middle part for the lock is metal....
- the soap dispensers in the bathrooms- a lot of them are sort of like a glass apple with a little opening on top, and you tip it over towards you to get some soap. pretty cool.