Why did the person cross the road?  To get to the other side.  Crossing the road is something most children are taught at an early age.  Look both ways, walk behind cars on cross streets, use a crosswalk if it’s there, press the button and wait for the light at intersections with lights and if there are sidewalks use them.  Did you know that everything we do from learning to cross streets, thinking of the consequences of our choices (if I cross in front of a car I could be hit), risk, etc… are learned things and are cultural in the way we are taught those things.

Living outside of one’s familiar country there are things you’ll never understand or get or get used to or accept.  One of those things for me (DeAnna) is crossing the street.  Something that seems so simple yet is not.  Here it’s like playing Frogger, but with your life, to cross the street.  It ups the ante when crossing with the boys in tow.  Even though Joshua is 10 years old, I still have him hold my hand to cross the street here.  One would think with the stop and go traffic it would be easy, but then you have motorcycles weaving in and out of cars, other cars passing on the shoulder (if there’s a shoulder), other cars passing each other creating another lane of traffic and oncoming traffic needing to swerve to the opposite shoulder to avoid a head-on collision.

Yesterday I needed to cross the street.  The lane of traffic closest to me was at a standstill.  I crossed between two stopped cars and looked and waited for the motorcycle to pass, so now I’m standing in the middle of the road.  I look the other direction at the on-coming cars and could cross at a quicker pace than just walking, so I did.  Now I had my back to the on-coming traffic walking down the shoulder near the gutter.  There are 2+ feet deep concrete gutters on the side of the road because during rainy season it rains buckets in minutes so the gutters are needed.  Usually if a car is swerving it lets out a beep to alert the pedestrian to move or cross the gutter for the dirt.  Either this particular car didn’t have time to beep or misjudged their size and the side mirror grazed my left hand.  It spooked me a bit to know it was that close, but I was also thankful it was just a graze.  I’m not scared to cross the street, just extra alert.