This is a country of extreme dichotomies. Lisa and I were walking down the road in front of the school the other day. The sidewalk was filthy with a thick layer of dusty, grey dirt. There was litter sprinkled about the sidewalk (note…the city is much cleaner than our part of town). But every 10 meters was a tree planter. In each planter, poking there heads up through a layer of dirt were a variety of colorful pansies. The personalities we see are similar…at one moment, you see drivers dangerously competing to gain a couple feet in front of others…at other times, the people go out of there way help you. You simply cannot make a generalization about the people here. Are they jerks? Yes. Are they good and kindhearted? Yes. It’s much easier to overlook the things you aren’t familiar with…it makes the bad tolerable because you have no point of reference for the human condition here. Oddly, it’s with people we are most similar to who we wish to punish for not being more like ourselves.
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