Mexico 2.0

I'm in San Miguel de Allende now. It's a mid sized city about an hour or two from Queretaro (where I was yesterday) and about three hours from Guanajuato in Mexico. If you know where any of those places are. It's pretty nice, with lots of old Gothic style church and cobbled streets; very European, but a little too sanitized for my tastes. Its like the Disneyland version of la Republica. I think it would have been cooler to be here in the 1960s when beer cost 7 cents, the houses were falling down, there was garbage everywhere, and no refrigeration (everything made had to be consumed in the same day and drinks were cooled with cold water) and nobody spoke any English. Which brings me to the main topic of today's blog. The English speaking Mexican.
I have a love/hate relationship with people I've met who speak English. On one hand it's kind of welcoming to hear my language being spoken in a foreign country but on the other it can be grating on the nerves. Especially when I meet the people who meet me for the first time and decide that since I'm from Canada, they should have the right to use me as their own personal English teacher. Whenever I speak to strangers here I always address them in espanol, and I expect them to answer back in kind. So it is with great unease when I ask for directions and the person tells me to "go straight straight..." when they could easily say, "sigue derecho." I find it rude when I ask somebody perfectly clear in their language where something is and they feel they have to use broken English to explain it to me. When by addressing them in Spanish I've made it obvious I don't need help with translation.
Then there are the times when I ask how to say something in Spanish and the person tells me and then repeats the question to me as to how to say it in English. I suppose it may seem like a bit of a double standard, but I feel being in Mexico if I take pains to try to speak the native tongue, the native people should be gracious enough to help me. If I were in Canada I would do the same for a person trying to learn English. And have on many occasions. But I digress...