You know you’re starting to set down roots into Honduras when:

1. You wouldn’t dream of writing an agenda for a meeting that didn’t start with “open the meeting”, then “pray to god,” and end with “close meeting.”

2. You feel a weird emptiness when a bus isn’t decked out with at least three of the following: silhouettes of impossibly busty women, bitchy instructions to passengers (“ask for security not speed” and “if you miss the bus it’s not the driver’s fault”), stickers of sinister-looking punk kids or Calvin peeing on something, soccer paraphernalia, the Honduran and American flags, signs deferring blame for accidents to religious figures (“This bus is protected by the blood of Jesus”), stuffed animals, or, my favorite, a sign that says “don’t vomit on the floor.”

3. To avoid getting sick you refuse to bathe after exercising or eating.

4. You chalk all illnesses up to “changes in climate.”

5. A meal without tortillas is like jam without bread.

6. Your bottom lip has taken the place of your index finger as the body part of choice for indicating location.

7. If you’re female, you decide you must look awful today if you pass more than 5 men and don’t get a single catcall.

8. You understand the dirty doble entendres in many of Honduras’s most favorite songs, such as El Gusano (The worm) and Arriba y Abajo (Above and Below).

9. Within seconds, you can identify a song as merenge, salsa, bachata, cumbia, or punta and know how to dance it.

10. You refer to a person with a bachelor’s degree as “el licenciado” (the licensed one.)

11. You carry an umbrella in every season, using it as a parasol for shade on sunny days (I’m never giving this one up!).

12. Upon meeting older women you know, you put your hand on her upper arm and kind of pat her a little.

13. When your tummy aches or you twisted your ankle, you go to someone who can “sobar” you. It’s a special type of massage for the affected area that sometimes requires the use of lard.

14.You can distinguish between the “ch!” noise used to shoo away dogs and the “ch!” noise used to get a pretty girl’s attention and make her fall in love with you.

15. You say things in English like “We realized a capacitation on Friday and it passed tranquilly.”

16. The remedy for a bad smell is to spit on the ground.

17. You have learned to do the dead fish handshake, and no longer crush unsuspecting Honduran mens’ hands when you greet them.