Salinas, Mexico

In the approximately three and a half years that I have lived here in the US, I have never felt more like a foreigner than I do here in Salinas, CA. Make that Salinas, Mexico. The city is full of Mexicans/Hispanics/Latinos. Suffice to say they all speak Spanish, and many of them are probably of dubious legality, having slipped across the southern border.

All stores and government offices (like the Department of Motor Vehicles) cater to Spanish linguistic requests. Most of the city is bilingual, with a significant proportion monolingual - in Spanish. Seeing a brown man, most people assume that I am a Mexican and start in Spanish. Until I reply to them in Kannada with a big smile on my face.

The kicker? I had called maintenance to fix the hot water supply to my bathroom sink. When I returned home, I saw a sign hung on my door knob without a single word of English in it, probably telling me that the maintenance man had entered the apartment to fix the problem. I called the leasing office to ask them about it, and the manager (a Mexican) explained to me that they had stopped ordering English signs since everyone in the community spoke Spanish.

I must say however that Senor Kote sounds a lot better than Mr.Kote.