I'm gonna go ahead and jump on the bandwagon and write a post dedicated to the crazy questions I'm asked while here. Let me preface this by saying, it really makes me feel like I need to brush up on my history or just general knowledge of the U. S. of A. Every single time I have to basically respond with "umm..I don't know" or "Es depende" (aka it depends). I'm sure this is very frustrating to the asker because they simply want to the answer to something they'd probably be able to answer if the tables were turned. Oh well.
-how does Facebook make money?
-how many people live in the U.S.? your state? Your city? (I did sort of know the answer to these, mas o menos)
-how many neighborhoods are in Madison, WI? (what?)
-what is Obamacare and how does it work? (literally cannot explain this in English practically)
-can you please explain time zones? (interesting because I guess they never needed to know, since there is only one time zone in Py)
-why do places like Mississippi and Louisiana, who have hurricanes and tornados, have houses made of wood?
-how much does a sports ticket cost? (expecting a specific price that I was unable to give considering it depends on so many factors like which teams, time of year, which seats you get, if the teams are big rivals, etc.)
-how do certain businesses work? (what? I have no idea.)
-how warm is it in you state? (in Celsius of course)
-how much money does the average family of 4 need to make to live "normally"? (that's a loaded question. What is normal? What is average? Where does this family live? Etc)
-can you explain the Civil War? (not as tough, but in broken Spanish... not sure if the message came across)
-how much do you weigh? (this is apparently not a taboo question here. Luckily I can rely on the fact that we use pounds and they use kg so I can just use the excuse that I don't know.)
And finally I want to give you an idea of one of my convos:
Him: how does a person usually get to work?
Me: typically, a car.
Him: well what about people who don't have cars?
Me: well... then probably a bus or train or something
Him: how much does riding the bus cost?
Me: I have no idea because I had a car, and during college I had a free bus pass so didn't need to pay for the bus.
Him: can you guess?
Me: not really.
Him: well then how much does the train/subway cost?
Me: I don't know.
Him: why not?
Me: because (again) I had a car. Also there aren't trains or subways in my city. Those are mostly in the big cities.
Him: so how much do they cost?
Me: I really have no clue because I've never taken the train.
*then he continues to give me a skeptical look like I'm simply withholding this info from him.
So yeah. That happened. Weird.
I do have to say that while these questions can be incredibly frustrating, for both parties (me- because I don't know how to answer them. And them- because I don't know how to answer them), I think it's really incredible that the people here have such a fascination for knowledge. They simply want to know about many things that we take for granted in the states because we don't really need to know the answers. While I sometimes loathe the 20 questions game, I also love it because it makes me feel like people are actually sort of interested in me (or at least my country). It's a good way to start dialogs with people and this is quite helpful.
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