No Sushi & Jiu-Jitsu For Me

It has been an insane week.

Rewind to Wednesday.  In the evening, we all headed over to the colmado.  It was a great evening!  Several large bottles of Presidente were consumed and the Snickers bars were back in stock (although I should mention that they are still not available in the supermarkets).  I also decided to try the Grilled Cheese and Tomato Colmado Sandwich.  WOW.  For something that was made at the colmado, it was REALLY good.  As always, we had quite an international crowd gathered together: Canada, Wales, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Colombia, Portugal, Norway, Slovakia and the Dominican Republic.

The crew, minus David (photo credit: Mari)

Me and Robert

David, Gerardo and Manuel

Mari and Pavol

Grilled Cheese and Tomato Colmado Sandwich

Snickers!

Yeimy, Paula and Sylvia

Thursday was hectic at the office.  We're still trying to finish a couple reports that should have been done about a week ago.  I ended up getting really frustrated with J.  I thought he was busy working on doing an update on one particular aspect of the report, and then near the end of the day, he comes to me and asks me if we still have to do that aspect.  I couldn't believe it!  I had no idea what he did all afternoon!  One funny part of my day was at lunch.  Robert, Mari and I met up with Ozumy at Pola.  We were there quite early and the pasta wasn't ready yet, so I went with rice and bean sauce.  When I sat down, I was telling Ozumy how I hoped there wouldn't be any meat in the bean sauce today.  She opened hers, and was like," nope, should be good.  Mine is all vegetables."  I was relieved.  Then I opened mine up and found this:

Eeew

Yep, a huge chunk of gross meat.  Needless to say, my bean sauce sat on my tray while I ate the rice plain.  Since I felt obligated to run back to work to continue working on the projects, I didn't join Robert and Mari at Sweet Bakery.  Turns out, our favorite employee was asking where I was.  They also found out that she is learning English.  When Robert and I got home from work, Mari was out taking pictures of lizards in the garden.  She then mentioned how the watchman has a shack in the back.  I had never actually ventured into the back garden before so I followed Mari in.  Sure enough, he has this little hut, with socks and a shirt hanging up, shoes inside, a chair, and other miscellaneous items.  It is kind of creepy.  We also realized that we have papaya and guava trees in there!  And what appears to be bananas!  Going to have to keep an eye on that fruit!  Later on, I headed to pilates with Mari.  It was a good class and a good workout!  I found it funny that on Tuesday, we had essentially all the class there, and then on Thursday, there was only 6 of us.

Today was insane.  I started it off well, with a now daily trip to Sweet Bakery.  They had the giant cream cheese filled croissants which was awesome.  The girl we like, tends to always give us "extras" - whether it be a double espresso for the price of a single or putting some of the free samples in a bag for us to take.  We also realized today on the bill that she told the till lady that Robert had gotten only 1 chocolate croissant, when in reality, he had two.  Anyway, it was a great way to start the morning.  I still can't get over how good their pastries are (and thus why I talk about this place so much)!

MMM

More MMM

I spent most of the day working in Sr. S's office on those projects that we'd been working on for days now.  He was very frustrated with J and said so openly in front of me.  I feel bad for J since he has to sit there and take his boss putting him down with a less senior employee (me) sitting there listening.  I'm not saying he doesn't deserve it, but it's still harsh.  I was able to sneak away for lunch to meet up with Pavol, Robert, Mari, Gerardo and Paula at Quizno's.  Robert, Mari and I have sort of started a Friday lunch thing, where we splurge and eat somewhere more expensive.  Anyway, back at the office, I spent more time with Sr. S and J.  I ended up staying until 7:30.  It was a long day.  We still aren't finished though so I have to be in early tomorrow to help finish it up.  We'll see if J did his part of the work in time for Sr. S and I to finish.

Due to my extra time at the office, I didn't get home in time to make it to the Sushi and Jiu-Jitsu night at the pilates studio.  I had thought that I might make it back before Robert and Mari left, but I missed them by a few minutes.  The taxi driver that L had called for me at the office was late showing up, and then proceeded to hit on me when he dropped me off.  Good times.  Except not.  As it turned out, staying home and eating a big bowl of pasta was pretty enjoyable.  But I'm also out RD$250 for the event.

Finally, Paula taught me a new saying today: Pancita llena, corazon contento.  Which means "full stomach, happy heart"  Although technically, pancita means more like little tummy - which is cuter.