Cultural differences

It is very sad to read that people go back and give up on their initial dreams. Mostly, it is because of wrong expectations, reading wrong material, asking wrong people maybe... Let me break it down for all newcomers.
You are going to:
1).LATIN AMERICA, meaning latin culture. Latin culture is
- a loud culture. Everything is done here louder that you might consider comfortable in US or most part of Europe: talking to each other and on the phone, music, parties, car horn honking, dogs barking etc; you might think that they are ignorant, they don't think so;
- a culture with a very small personal space. Meaning people will be sticking to you in lines and public transportation; touching/pushing you when passing by, etc etc to the level that you might find uncomfortable; you might think that they are impolite, they don't think so;
- a culture that speaks ONLY Spanish! Meaning that although the locals will be looking at you as you were gods and try to cough up a couple of English words, do NOT expect to communicate with anybody in English on the streets;
- a macho culture. Meaning people are extremely proud and not taking critisizm all that well. Proud to the point that to an average North American could seem like a complete impoliteness: proudly never let NOBODY pass (or hold a door for), be you a woman, a child, a criple etc... and when they do, they do it like a huuuuuge favor... Women "worship" is in their blood, so please disregard those occasional whistles, "wow's" or just staring looks at your wife... be like them: proud that someone else is still looking at her old ass;
If you think you had some spanish speaking neighbours in NY or Miami, never mind: you don't know nothing about them. The point is that your neighbours there were trying to be like you, here you're gonna have to be like them.
That's how most of them are, that's how their parents and grand and gran-grand parents have been.
2).THIRD WORLD, meaning EXTREME POVERTY. If you think you've seen some poor souls on, say SS in US, you have seen nothing.
Poverty means:
- beggers EVERYWHERE! Everybody begs: from completely criple to completely normal. Here they beg like you owe them. A word of advice: you won't be able to escape the beggers, sometimes it is unsafe not to give, and a nickel that's all most would want, so have some nickels with you all the time;
- relatively low security anywhere, which is amplified by a useless police force. I'll post a separate topic about security here;
- low level of education. From there, a whole bunch of issues comes out on a level unimaginable for the first world, for example: not very sophisticated clothes and manners, some not very clean or taken care of, and others...;
- believe in leftist/socialist ideas, being rich is bad, taking from the rich and spreading among the poor solves everything... stuff like this;
- I'd say 80% of the population survives on a budget of your Florida summer monthly electric bill. They are not cheap, and, actually pretty generous, but $20 is a huge amount of money for them;
You can talk about the subject for days and days, but I hope that you got the picture, and if you didn't, here it is: here, you have to stop being what you have been "there", and start being "new" you: you "the Ecuadorian", and you have to do it right away, without waisting a couple of years trying to change something here. Getting angry at them won't help. You can talk for days and days about how they should change to live better... Ha-ha... like you came here to change something... everybody is here for their own reasons: warmer climate, cheaper living, screwed up government etc etc, I've never heard that someone came here because they just loooove Ecuadorians. But, there is no ideal place in the world, is there?
Let me give you a small example of how different things might be. You all know of course the OK sign, when you make a small circle touching your thumb and point finger, shake it and say "OK!!!" on a very positive note. You probably know that in Brazil that means "assh..le". If you go around Brazil showing this OK of yours left and right, you won't win any friends and, most likely, get your ass kicked sooner or later. Then you leave the country with your ass still sore cursing them for not being polite, understanding etc etc... Got my point?
Well, I hope it was pretty neutral and informative.
Looking forward to your questions.