Rules of Visiting Others

In Queretaro, anytime I make a time/date to go somewhere with someone, if it's more than 24 hours before the event I will contact them to confirm our meeting.  People expect it.  If a friend and I decide on Sunday that we'll meet for coffee on Thursday night, someone must confirm that on either wednesday or thursday or it won't happen.  I usually text a "see you tonite at 7!" on thursday afternoon, and shortly get the reply "Starbucks in Jardines, right?"  That means we'll both be at Starbucks in Jardines at 7ish.  The majority of our outings are sponaneous in Queretaro - 9:30pm on Wednesday night after church, whoever is still there when the church is being locked up may hear "we're going to tacos in Tejeda, see you all there in 15 minutes!" and some people show up.  Or sometime between getting to church on sunday morning and the time the service ends, we're magically set to go to the "Airport Corn and Gorditas" (about a 40 minute drive into the countryside for the best corn on the cob and gorditas EVER).  Sometimes a 8pm phone call for something totally unrelated ends up in us going to friends' house for snacks and a movie immediately after hanging up. 

So, because I know that pretty much everyone who isn't a college student in the USA plans outings in advance, we've been calling people maybe 3 to 10 days in advance of meeting with them.  Then I call them the day before the event.  And most of the time I get, "Oh, can you guys not make it?" or "Did something come up for you?"  Maybe the fact that I call to confirm raises questions in their minds about our availabilty?  I'm confused...  So then we quit confirming and just showed up at peoples' homes when we hadn't spoken with them for a week.  And they were expecting us!  Amazing!  If I asked someone in Queretaro to come over a week from now, and I didn't hear from them and I didn't call them, I wouldn't expect them be there. 

I guess I'm just in the process learning my own culture all over again, this time as an adult, as I'd never been an adult in the United States before!