Happy Easter!

Well, so much for my 3.5 day weekend… 12:30 rolled around and JD asked me if I was going to be staying and eating lunch at the office.  This broke my little heart since I was supposed to have lunch with Jennifer and Andreea today.  But, having the extra time will come in handy when visitors arrive.  So I ended up staying at the office until after 6:30, which gets me an extra 5.5 hours.

After work, I met up with Maria at Nacional to do some grocery shopping.  I had hoped that the home store above would have been open still, but it wasn’t.  So I couldn’t buy a shelf and rug for my room.  I doubt it will be open tomorrow.

The power was out when we left to walk to our respective homes.  Which meant, it was VERY dark outside.  I asked Maria if she would mind walking to my house, since she had planned on taking a taxi anyways.  She was okay with this, which I appreciated, since I was kind of afraid to walk home by myself with all my bags.

I made sweet potatoes and some pasta for dinner.  I also bought a bottle of Malbec at Nacional.  I was very excited, but soon realized I shouldn’t have cheaped out.  It is Telteca 2007.  It cost me just under RD$400 which is about CAD$11.  Considering, I usually spend CAD$18-25 on a bottle of wine, this one doesn’t really measure up.  It tastes like a plain house wine.  Quite disappointing; especially for a Malbec.  But I know for next time!  However, it is still wine, and it is still making me happy.  And yes, I am drinking it out of a mug.  But I thought that given my options of plastic cup or mug, mug was the best choice.

Most importantly was the fact that sweet potatoes here are red on the outside and white on the inside.  You can tell when you eat them that they are a sweet potato but they are more dry (starchy) and not quite as flavorful as the variety we have in Canada.

Also, because the power was out, the internet was not working.  The lady who has the router in her apartment was not home, so we couldn’t have the router restarted.  It stayed out for quite a while, and got to the point where Bart actually called me on my cell just so we could have our daily talk.  Midway through, the internet came back on though!

Pavol also had me try two more of his “infusions” tonight.  One was rum infused with gummy candies and the other was infused with raisins and lemon.  The gummy candy infusion was interesting, left a slight sweet and kind of comforting aftertaste.  The lemon and raison one was very good.  Just the right amount of citrus and you could just get a hint of the raisins.

I was thinking about going to Bahia de Aguilas this weekend but I think I’ll take the time off to rest and relax and perhaps get out and see more of the city.  I’ve still got months to get myself to the “most beautiful beach in the Dominican!”  That and my skin could use a break from the sun...

Here’s hoping the construction workers are taking tomorrow off too, which will allow me to have a nice relaxing sleepy morning!