Top ten things I've learned in the first 6 months of living in New Mexico (in no particular order)

1.) Balloon Fiesta is the coolest thing ever! We watched both from our house and at the fairgrounds this year. It was really cold, but a lot of fun to go through looking at the different balloons and how they set them up.

2.) Green Chile is AMAZING. New Mexican Food has a different kind of taste entirely because of it. The salsa is traditionally made with red chilies. The best Green Chile Stew is at Golden Pride and for only $4.50 you get more of it than you can handle. Jalapeños are a commodity you must request at most restaurants even with nachos. On the flip side you get a free sopapilla at the end of your meal in any New Mexican Restaurant! Yummy goodness with honey!

3.) I need to know Spanish here even more than I did in Texas! I am horrible at pronouncing Spanish names and butcher them daily at work. People laugh at my attempts or get mad when I can't understand their accent. I never knew Roybal, Cerillo, and Trujillo were such common last names.

4.) Thunderstorms aren't as big and scary as they are in Texas. I have yet to see a really really bad storm yet whereas in Dallas we'd see one every three weeks in the summer. Lightning storms are more common here. Because you can see so far into the distance we can see lightning storms that may be 50 or 60 miles away. This freaked me out at first because I thought it strange that they weren't coming our way.

5.) It's crazy cold here!!! Lows are normally in the 20s during the winter and highs are in the 30s. My windshield does not like the cold and frosts over like crazy so we've been trying every remedy. We've finally found a chemical spray in the auto isle that works well...only problem is it fogs up the windshield. Good old fashioned scraping is still a necessity. On the flip side at least my car doesn't stall out when it's cold anymore!

6.) There are only 4 roads that lead across the Rio Grande River. This really screws things up at 5 PM when you're headed home from work. And if an accident shuts just one route down be prepared for your 30 min. commute to turn into 1 hour or more.

7.) Lovelace is a hospital you should never ever ever go to unless the other hospitals have burned down or the roads are impassible. Upon my “lovely” ER visit to them (I say “lovely” because it was really 101 of what not to do to a patient!) I heard so many horror stories I'm never going back ever. Presbyterian downtown is a bigger hospital that has much better care.

8.) Roadrunners are the cutest bird ever!!! I wish I could keep one as a pet, but Paul for some reason doesn't think it would be a good idea. They are really fast and somewhat friendly if they suspect you have food.

9.) Hiking is fun! Living in Dallas I never got the opportunity to go hiking, but it's very rewarding to climb up 11,000 feet. This summer we're going to try camping when we go to Colorado Springs.

10.) People expect you to know exactly where they're from! I have people all day long at work who just spout off zip codes with no city attached. I'm getting pretty good at knowing which are Rio Rancho, Albuquerque, and Santa Fe, but the other zip codes I think to myself “I'm not psychic tell me what city you live in!!” It also threw me off at first that the state only has the area code 505 (with a few people being in the new area code 575).