Held Hostage by the Rain

Overall, yesterday was not that great of a day for me.  Luckily my mom promised me that today would be better.  I'm glad she did, because it was!

Yesterday, I had a great plan of leaving work a bit early so that I could catch a carrito and be home quicker with less rush hour traffic.  Taking a carrito in rush hour is not useful because 1) they can't drive fast enough to get a breeze going and 2) it takes longer than walking.  However, I was told that I needed to stay until we were finished with a small project.  Luckily it started raining and then Sr. S told me that A, the driver, would take me home!  Yay!  He doesn't speak any English so our drives home are very quiet.  Other than a quick greeting, and him asking me if I was too cold with the A/C (me? too cold?), and me saying thank you and bye when we arrived, we drove in near silence.  Near, because he decided to break out into song a few times.  I don't think I will ever get used to this - how people here will just sing outloud without a care in the world.  Now A, he is a classy guy.  Always dressed sharply, polite, etc.  But when he started singing, I knew I would never view him in the same way.  It was kind of cute actually, he was pretty out-of-tune, but it was all good.

My evening consisted of talking with Bart and then mom, eating dinner and going to bed.  I was so incredibly tired!  I slept really well, which I was thankful for, got up early and even had time to make myself some coffee this morning!  That and my carrito drive was nice, the seats were comfy, it was quiet and everyone in the back was skinny (I was in B1 today).  I also brought my Spanish verb conjugation book with me today - so far, I've been quite happy with what I have learned!  I was also quite pleased with my lunch today... I got rice with a bean sauce and a tomato and cheese salad, plus a coke, for RD$105.  That's CAD$3!  It was quite yummy too.  Although the bean sauce was more sauce than beans.  I counted a total of 5 beans... I felt kind of gipped.

This afternoon, I walked to Nacional to get some groceries.  It was quite sunny and hot today but shortly after I left the office it started to just drizzle.  I wandered into Nacional and got my groceries, and when I went to leave, I looked outside and realized that there was a thunderstorm and a heavy downpour!  So I stood with about 20 other people at the entrance and waited, hoping it would only last a few minutes.  It lasted longer and I decided to call Pavol to see if he and his boss had left work yet (since his boss drives and lives in our building).  They hadn't yet, but they weren't planning to leave for 20 minutes still.  I told Pavol that I'd see how the rain was, if it died down I might make the trek home.  About half an hour passed and I called Pavol to see where they were at.  He said they were just about to leave and that they'd meet me at Nacional.  Right after I got off the phone, the rain died down a bit.  Then I felt bad for asking his boss for a ride.  But just before they arrived, it started pouring again.  I no longer felt bad.  We ended up dropping David off at his French class first and then heading home.  I had a productive evening, which I was quite pleased about.  I completed a Spanish lesson on Rosetta Stone, did the meditation that Bart sent me the other day, and I still have time to read a bit before bed!

Another thing I have been meaning to write about is the ambulances here.  When I first arrived, I read somewhere that people don't move for ambulances because normally they are used to transport people that have, well, already died.  Usually when people need to get to the hospital quickly, they take a taxi or get someone to drive.  Of course, this seems absurd to me.  Anyway, because I am used to people having to do whatever they can do, within reason, to let the ambulance through, seeing an ambulance stuck behind one row of traffic when it has its lights and sirens on makes me uneasy.  On one particular occassion, I was waiting to cross 27 near Nacional, and there was an ambulance about 2 rows back from the intersection with its lights and sirens on.  No one moved.  Then someone from within the ambulance came on a loudspeaker thing and said something in Spanish.  I assume they said something like, "Move out of the way! We have a live one!" because for the first time since I arrived here, traffic actually moved out of the way for the ambulance.   Today, I saw another ambulance moment that made me laugh.  While the rain took me hostage at the grocery store, I watched an ambulance trying to cross Lincoln.  There was a bus in front of it, so the bus ended up crossing the street with the ambulance.  The funny/sad part was when a bunch of the cars surrounding the ambulance took advantage of the stopped traffic and went through the red light with the ambulance.  This caused A LOT of honking from the direction that had the green.  Whenever I see something like that, I can't help but think, what would happen if someone did that in Canada?