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25 days traveling abroad, and it was on day 23 that I contracted homesickness. There are differences between Latin culture and American culture. Some of those differences we take for granted until you go without. Some of them turn out to be really good things. Here are five.

Speaking English

I spent a year practicing my Spanish. The minute I got off the plane in Mexico City, I became completely retarded. I was able to get by with service staff, but conversation would remain a fool’s errand for the whole four weeks I was traveling through Latin lands.

At bars there was a 50/50 chance of landing a conversation with a local. Most of those were just those paleolithic grunts that only fellow drunks can understand. Occasionally you’d find a new best friend who speaks decent English.

I started going through sarcasm withdrawals. One gets really lonely when unable to crack wise or express complex thoughts. All you can do is order a drink and stare sullenly at the wall. Your brain starts to wither, and after two weeks it’s just sitting uselessly in your skull like a sun-dried starfish.

That triumphant return to the United States was met by being grilled by Immigration- in English! Reverting to the mother tongue is as relieving as taking your belt off after Thanksgiving dinner. I hounded every barista at ATL with so much pent-up chit-chat that I was probably being watched by security.

Baseball

I wanted to see a soccer game. It didn’t happen. My one chance was a Boca Juniors match which had been sold out for hours before I got there. I did the next best thing by joining the crowd and marching toward the entrance amid a swarm of drunken and riled Argentines. They chanted and sang in unison as they advanced through the streets, while the glowing blue stadium loomed in the rain like Godzilla. It was an energy unlike any sporting event I’ve ever attended. Missing that game was the biggest loss of the whole trip.

To make up for it, I got back stateside just in time to see the emotional ending of a historic baseball season. The Dodgers’ darling dollface Shohei Ohtani landed himself 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases, the first to ever rack up numbers like that. Meanwhile, the White Sox sucked a record amount of ass. My beloved San Francisco Giants ended their 2024 as mediocre as ever, but made up for it by giving World Series winning catcher Buster Posey a set of keys to the front office.

Then came the heartbreaking moment when the Oakland Athletics shut the doors of the Coliseum for good. They won their final game in front of a full house. Distraught fans tore out the seats and took them home, gathered field dirt into their water bottles, and shed tears over the grass. Thus ends the story for one of the most storied teams in the league.

Baseball may not be the most exciting sport in the world, but it is the most romantic.

Bourbon

Good whiskey is hard to find in South America. Bars down there don’t have much variety. Fancier places will offer Jack Daniels, but most of the time you’ll have to settle for wheat flavored paint thinner. The sweet, delectable magic of Jim Beam was scarce. Of course, there are other options, and traveling is all about getting away from the cultural vices you’re used to. The rum in Colombia was incredible. The wine and beer in Argentina were second to none. Nothing quite compares to the silky smooth sting of a bourbon and a Budweiser to chase it with.

Driving

Everyone dumps on America for being so “car-centric” or “unwalkable,” and “how dare Texas have a freeway interchange larger than most European cities.” You don’t know how good we’ve got it until you see the roads below the border.

The streets of Latin America look less like commuter traffic and more like a feeding frenzy on the Great Barrier Reef. Everyone is in such a damn hurry to get to the next traffic light that they’ll bulldoze your grandmother to get there first. Lanes are painted on the road and wholly ignored. Motorcycles weave around moving traffic like water trickles through stones. Driving a taxi in Bogota should be an Olympic event because of the skill involved.

Argentina is an exception where civility in the roadways is almost on par with the United States. They have their own problems. Streets are narrow and paved with five-hundred-year-old cobblestones, so kiss your tires goodbye. During times of busy foot traffic, you’ll find yourself driving at one kilometer an hour so you don’t plow through the pedestrian hordes. Once you get through those streets, you’ll find yourself on an avenue so thick with traffic that you can barely move anyway. You can stop at a red light on Av. 9 de Julio, get out for lunch, and come back to find that traffic hasn’t crawled an inch.

I never did rent a motorcycle, as per my intention, but all of these cities have really good public transit, so it wasn’t an issue. I like seeing the city through a train window, anyway. Returning to the US and road-tripping out of Phoenix reminded me how liberating it is to be in control of your own transportation, free from the shackles of schedules and the nasal assault of urine on a public bench.

The road trip is a very American thing. Just you and your buddies on the open road, with no rules other than the speed limit and a rough idea of a destination. Way out in the middle of nowhere, seeing all the natural beauty this country has to offer. It appeals to the cowboy instilled in every American, a chance to explore and conquer in our own little way. It’s fun as hell, and it’s made possible by the Interstate Highway System.

The Interstate is the 8th wonder of the world. It’s massive, yet well maintained. It’s intuitive enough that the dumbest troll could navigate his way from New York to L.A.. It’s scenic, offering hour after hour of beautiful views. It’s practical enough to allow anything to be shipped anywhere, and in a hurry. It keeps the supply chain moving and the adventurous spirit of the American public alive. Nothing like this, at least to this scale and ease of use, exists outside of the United States. It should be the envy of every large country.

Lastly, a word on pickup trucks. No other piece of machinery combines utility, style, and comfort as effectively as a pickup truck. I saw next to zero of them south of Mexico. This incredible vehicle is not just a cultural statement of your Americanness, but a pure necessity in most parts of the country. God bless the Ford F-150.

The… Grind?

Yep, I missed work.

I noticed that folks in Latin America don’t talk about work. One guy I talked to even dodged the subject, as if it were a shameful thing to discuss. They talk about anything else. They are more curious about what you do for fun than what you do for a living. This may be appealing to folks who are tired of the American Hustle, but I kind of like the American Hustle.

It’s a common claim that we’ve been brainwashed into working so many hours and feeling shame if we aren’t working hard enough. It burns out the worker and pays the Man, they say. The number of dollars in your bank account is your status, not what you do or how much fun you have. This is all rhetoric of people obsessed with Marxist power theories. It quickly falls apart if you talk to actual people with actual jobs.

Take, for instance, the After Work Beer. When the crew gets done after a rough day and shares a couple pints, it’s more than just a kvetch session. It builds camaraderie. Discussing things that went wrong, things that went right, and telling jokes along the way shows that everyone is on the same page. They share a mission of making a better workplace. Getting to know each other better is a byproduct.

This holds true whether it’s a crew of restaurant cooks, business partners, or a baseball team. The 1986 New York Mets were raucous partiers, getting out of control between practice sessions and even between innings. The result of all this workplace mayhem was a World Series Championship. The legend goes that they were forbidden from getting beers together the following season, and haven’t won the championship since.

Most people find jobs just to pay the bills and don’t really care what the labor is. I think this is true most everyone on Earth. That’s why they don’t like to talk about it outside of work. In America, we recognize that if you spend so many hours at a place, it should probably be something you like. This leads us to want to talk about it in our free time. A fry cook with dreams of becoming a chef will be happy to talk to you about his trade. I love telling cab drivers about writing. I’m noting making tons of money, but it’s fun, and I like talking about it.

It’s even better that people in the United States like to hear a guy chirp about his career ambitions. We get excited to hear about someone whose career is on the rise. We’re happy to meet people with weird jobs that we’d never thought of before. Even passing small talk on the subject can strengthen a man’s will to succeed.

Latin culture and American culture are both about people’s relationship to the greater culture, but in different ways. Latin culture is focused directly on the people who make up the society, while American culture is focused on the society being made up of people. The former is curious how the person is. It’s emotional. The latter is curious how the person adds. It’s practical. Neither discounts anyone’s feelings or status, but they are looked at in very different ways.

This work culture is what made America into the Land of Opportunity. It wasn’t the guy flipping burgers that built an empire, it was the guy who started the restaurant- the guy who sunk his life’s savings into the project and worked 7 days a week. He has a dream and a will to win. He’s talking about his day every night at the bartop. His fellow flies are interested. They ask questions, encourage him, even offer suggestions. They want to see him make it because it adds to America. On some deep level we understand that when one of us wins, we all win. ■