Anyway, Monday was "yellow day" where people wore yellow or sported something yellow to support the request for the Dominican government to spend 4% of its GDP on education. The way it was explained to me, is that the Dominican government had promised to do just that, but recently it was discovered that only 1% was going towards education. The President said that it wasn't about how much money was put towards it but how the money was used. Yep. I was sure to put on my only bit of yellow that I have here, a little tank that is white and light yellow striped, under a sweater with my dress pants. It was really neat to see so many people wearing yellow. There were also umbrellas sporting the 4% for education phrase and all the carritos (on the Lincoln/Lope de Vega route at least) had signs on the back indicating that their drivers union supported it as well. All of this made me quite happy.
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| Supporters in the park between Lope and Lincoln |
The day in general was good. In the morning I had some laughs with A and one of the security guys at the office. Like I do everyday, I walk right by the office to go to Sweet Bakery to pick up my breakfast. After my little chat with A the other Saturday, he now knows what I am doing when I walk by. Anyway, as I'm about to pass by they found it funny to be like, "Aqui! Aqui!" (Here! here!), indicating that I am forgetting where the office is. I had a good laugh and replied, "si, pero..." (Yes, but...) and then A interrupted and said, "Tengo Hambre?" (I'm hungry?) and I said, "si, tengo hambre y Sweet Bakery es muy bien." Robert met me for lunch. I hadn't seen him in several days which is kind of odd. After eating at Pola we went to Sweet Bakery. The girls were so excited to see him. He likes the attention he gets there. After work, I picked up my dry cleaning and mending and headed on home. I spent nearly the entire evening reading my book... I got really into it and didn't realize how late it had gotten. Now, I only have about 150 pages to go (it's a 500+ page book).
Tuesday was a good day overall. I had a chance to chat with Sr. S about a few things, including when I am leaving and whether or not Robert could move into my position when I go. He was receptive to both which was awesome! Mari also got some good news yesterday as well, she received the teaching position at one of the private schools starting in January. Interestingly, they sent her for blood tests and such in order to finalize her job offer. She has written more about that process on her blog, its worth the read (and a quick Google translate from Norwegian to your desired language). Because we were all happy about our futures, we decided to spoil ourselves with lunch at Pizza Hut. It always makes me laugh when I think about how I go to these places as a treat. In Canada, I never go to Pizza Hut - especially not as a treat! Anyway, lunch was good and it was nice to hang out with both of them again. After work, I headed home to have a quick nap, before meeting the gang at La Vecindad. Mari and I decided to go together, but since I live in a different location now, we decided to attempt to catch the same carrito. The original plan was for me to pay for two and tell the driver my friend was up ahead. But the carrito only had 3 people in, including myself (room for 3 more) so I figured it would be okay. And it was. Mari ended up sitting in F2, but the girl in F1 was odd and didn't move over at all when she got in and then fell asleep on Mari's shoulder. So weird. We then walked a few blocks over to Tiradentes to get to the restaurant.
When we arrived, Gerardo, Yeimy, Alejandro, Paula and Robert were already there. We ordered some drinks and then food while waiting for the others to show up. Sylvia and Arturo were next to arrive and then much later Manuel and Laura came by. The food and the wait service was excellent but when we left the place, all of us vowed never to return.
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| My supper: Huarache con Pollo |
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| Paula and her giant margarita! |
When it came time to pay, they had given us one large bill and we all went through and figured out how much we owed from it. I went to hand the lady my card and asked if she could put RD$450 on it. She looked at me and said no, like I was crazy. I didn't understand so I asked Paula to talk to her. She then said she would go and ask. This was all very odd. The owner returns and tells us that we can't put individual amounts on cards, we can use one card for the entire bill but that's it. All of us were confused and wondering what this guy was thinking. He gave the reason that they have to pay the fee for the credit card use. Well this makes sense, but, its not like we were putting RD$50 each on the cards. And only 4 of us had to pay by card out of 11. They were still getting several thousand pesos in cash. Gerardo got upset about this and told the man that he would separate out the bill for them so that they could see where the money would go for each person. The owner reluctantly agreed. So we all sat with our cell phones figuring out the exact amount including taxes for each person. Gerardo went up to the till with all of our cards to ensure they did it properly. When he returned he told us that the owner told him that he was being abusive and rude, requesting that we put amounts onto our cards. Gerardo couldn't believe this (neither could the rest of us!). We also found out that when Gerardo and Yeimy arrived first, they asked for a table for 10, and the owner said to them, you are only 2 people, I'm not giving you a big table. Gerardo said to him, yes but we have other people joining us. The owner said, well where are they? Seriously, this guy needs to realize that what he's doing is ruining his own business. What a jerk.
This morning, I got to have a bit of an adventure. I rushed to get ready in about half an hour in order to hop on the metro to meet Ozumy at the Centro de los Heroes stop. I have never actually been to that part of the city so it was all new and exciting. Ozumy pssssst'd at me to get my attention. She likes to be all Dominican like that around me. Once, in Pola she actually yelled out, "Hey Rubia!" when she saw me. Oh Ozumy... Anyway, so our mission was to find the post office. Essentially, no one uses the Dominican Postal Service because it is known for being really unreliable. Apparently, it has improved greatly over the past few years, but there is still a lot of mistrust. Most people use private courier services when they want to send stuff. But, I was mailing out 25 envelopes and sending by a private courier would be much more expensive, plus, I wanted to send mail in the real normal way from the Dominican. Mari had been before and she told me it was really easy to find, just 100 m from the metro station. She lied. We wandered towards the Malecon in search of the building. I had seen a picture of it on their website so I knew sort of what I was looking for. We ended up having to ask two men who looked like they knew the area. They told us to continue on and to take our next right and then we would eventually see it on our left.
So we carried on and sure enough we found it. We walked in and the entrance is just surrounded by post office boxes, we decided to head to the left and asked a guy at a desk where we could buy regular stamps for the mail. He said to continue into the next room to till number 2. So we did. There was one man in line ahead of us, and it took forever. He was sending bags of what appeared to be clothing. So he was wrapping them up with packing tape and then also taping on a big label with a pile of stamps. Ozumy was unimpressed.
Finally it was our turn! We had 22 envelopes going to Canada and 3 going to Europe. It cost me a total of RD$545. Of course, the stamps were old school lick and sticks but between the 3 of us, and the post lady's wet sponge thing, we managed to get it all sealed up. Not only were the stamps old school in terms of the lick and stick, but also in terms of when they were made. One was of Pope John Paul, I believe celebrating his last visit here which was in 1992 or perhaps his death in 2005. Another was of the PanAm games in 2007. There was also a fashion envelope mannequin behind the desk.
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| Random envelope fashion |
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| In they go! |
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| Maple leaf on a random post office box |
After the post office, we were walking back to the metro when a man started getting all excited and yelling things at us (probably more so at me). He was walking directly towards us and looked legitimately crazy. I was actually a little bit frightened. I think some of the people near us were also a bit frightened. Anyway, after that we hopped back on the metro and then took a carrito to Sweet Bakery for a quick breakfast before I headed in to work. Random and slightly freaky moment was when we were crossing the street after getting out of the carrito and in the middle of the street was a dead blue fish. A BIG fish. I'm talking approximately 2 feet long big fish. It was so creepy and disgusting! And I nearly stepped on it too since I didn't notice it at first, since, you know, I was paying more attention to the traffic. Then once I had gotten back to the office, Ozumy sent me a text to tell me that she had just seen a dead squished rat on the road! What an exciting, crazy, random and fun morning!
At lunch, Gerardo, Robert and I decided to go to IKEA. Gerardo was going to call me when he was getting close to the office so that I could run out to Lope and he could just grab me at the side of the road. I was waiting for his call and chatting on gtalk with Robert about how it shouldn't be taking him this long. Then the phone rang at O and my desk. It was the receptionist saying that someone was downstairs for me. Gerardo's blackberry has been acting up lately, and it was stuck so he couldn't call me. Anyway, then we got turned around (my office is on a one way street) and back on to Lope in order to pick up Robert, further down. It all worked out and we had a nice lunch at IKEA including ice cream for dessert! On the way back, we dropped off Robert, and then me. I got off before the office and had about 3 blocks to walk to get back. On my way though, I was having to walk on a slanted portion of sidewalk and there was a bit of mud in an area that just looked wet. And I slipped. Feet out in front and fell hard on my ass and hands. UGH. Of course there is the embarrassment of falling in front of a ton of people out on the lunch hour rush. A guy on a motorcycle who was essentially next to me tried to help me up and another lady asked me if I was okay. I was okay, just a bit dirty. My main concern was that I may have wrecked my favorite dress pants. They seem to have survived though (the amazing toughness of wool!). At least my hands weren't bleeding, just a bit sore and scuffed up. Sigh. But I carried on walking to the office and just as I was getting close to the corner, a lady in front of me fell! Something in the air?
