Estamos acostumbrado a...

We are accustomed to...

For better or worse, we are now used to the following:

• Looking both ways before crossing a one-way street
• Hedges of blooming star jasmine that stop me in my tracks with their amazing fragrance
• The best home-made lemonade ever, with mint or coconut or just plain (it's green - there isn't an actual lemon in the country)
• Pulling out my cedula (national ID card) for the simplest, even cash, transactions
• Massive thunder storms and gulley-washing rains
• El trancon! The traffic!
• No warmer than 67; no colder than 50
• The flowers and plants that were blooming in July are still blooming in December
• Thinking about what time of day it is before greeting someone (buenos dias, buenas tardes, or buenas noches)
• Heavily armed soldiers on the street corners, under every overpass and in front of any building with a gov't official living inside
• Scented everything (for example: vanilla-scented trash bags, cinnamon-scented floor cleaner, pine-scented toilet tank tablets)
• Seeing street performers stacked three high juggling fire batons in front of the line of cars at the red lights
• The nicest malls with the best food courts I've ever seen
• Beautiful leather goods, especially shoes, boots and handbags
• Military funerals in process each time we walk by the chapel at the batallion near our apartment and realizing that these young men are still losing their lives fighting guerillas/FARC/narcotraffickers every day 
• No bugs
• Appreciating the breaks of sunshine all the more when they come
• Getting second looks in stores and on the street for being a gringa; having store owners call out the teenager who speaks English from the storeroom when they see us walk in
• Chit-chatting with the friendly porteros (doormen) and doing our best to understand what the heck they're saying
• Realizing that we're on a different continent
• Christmas starts before Halloween
• Buying OJ, milk, sour cream, mayonnaise and ketchup in a bag
• Delicious fruits we'd never before heard of or seen
• No national (functional) postal system!
• In general, people wanting to try to speak English with us, as they can
• Every radio station playing latin music (really?)
• Sun rising and setting at the same time all year

Looking forward to adding to the list!