Cultural Night and Another Goodbye

On my way home on Wednesday, I hopped into a carrito.  I was in F1.  The funny thing about this carrito was that it had been a driving instructor car in its past life since there was the second brake on the passenger side.  a part of me really wanted to push it just to see if it was still connected.  I'm sure it wasn't, since when you have two people squished into the front passenger seat it is bound to get hit eventually, so I would assume that the driver would have it disconnected.  I was good though and didn't try to push it.

Thursday was a pretty quiet day.  I ate lunch by myself and just puttered away at the office all day.  When I got home, I had to call Orbitz to deal with an issue that had come up regarding my Christmas flight.  After that, I had a quick bite to eat, worked on my cover letter and resume for a job posting I had found, did some encore! work and chatted with mom and Bart.  I decided to head to bed a bit earlier since I was pretty tired, but before I did, I finished all 500+ pages of Every Man Dies Alone.  I had technically finished it earlier, but there was a fairly lengthy afterward that I wanted to read (the book is based on the case of one couple and so the afterward did an excellent job of recounting how the story related to the real life happenings at the time).  What an excellent book.  It lived up to its reviews and I would definitely recommend it.

On Friday, I had another regular day at the office.  I was able to eat lunch with Robert and Mari, and I spoiled myself a little by having a mini lemon pie at Sweet Bakery.

In the evening, Gerardo, Robert, Mari and I went to Zona Colonial for a cultural night.  All of the museums were free and there was a lot of live entertainment, including a military band in the Fort which made me really happy.  Oddly, one of the biggest museums was closed to the public because there was a private function (wedding)... I guess rental money trumps providing a free cultural night to the public.

We ended up at Segafredo for drinks and pizza.  Arturo and Sylvia joined us later on.  Sadly, we all had to say our goodbyes to Sylvia as she is leaving to move back to Wales this Saturday morning.

Roadkill Fish

Before I jump in to the past two days, I need to mention something that I forgot in my last post.  I mentioned that Maria had decided to take home the tiny chihuahua, but what I neglected to mention was that more than one person came up to Maria and asked her how old the dog was.  I found this very strange.  This is something you ask parents about their baby.  Not something you ask about someone's dog right off the bat.  Interesting.

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.

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.

My supper: Huarache con Pollo

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.

Random envelope fashion

In they go!

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?

Ants in my Purse

Yes, that is correct.  I had ants (and tiny spiders) in my purse on Friday morning.

I was sitting in the carrito when I noticed a tiny ant crawling on me.  This isn't weird, often this happens in the carrito.  So I squished it and went back to staring out the window.  A few blocks later, I noticed another one.  That's odd.  And then I looked down at my purse and saw several of the tiny ants and tiny spider type things crawling in my purse.  UGH.  So I tried to squish as many as I could without looking suspicious.  Then I realized why they were there.  I had two Daim chocolates in my purse that they had found.  UGH.  I tried to remain calm for the rest of the trip, including my stop at Sweet Bakery.  When I arrived at work, I promptly emptied out my purse, got rid of the chocolate, and then attempted to wipe it out with one of my kleenex wet wipes.  Horrible!

My new room has some of the tiny ants running around and the purse incident was enough to make me buy some ant traps.  I figured that I would try the traps first before the sprays.  Probably better for my health.  So that's what I did after lunch.  Lunch, by the way, was kind of exciting for me.  I love getting the fruit salad, but normally there is too much papaya in the mix.  And living here has taught me that I don't like papaya.  But on Friday, it was essentially all pineapple, kiwi and grapes!  Hurray!

By the end of the day I was exhausted with a headache.  I decided not to go to Romanian night as a result.  Instead, I spent the evening listening to Beethoven and reading my book.  It was exactly what I needed.  I was also able to have a chat with mom and with Bart, which was nice.

On Saturday, I ended up at work really early.  When I turned on my computer I looked at the time and thought, what, how did I get here so early??  I even slept in a bit and chatted with the girls at Sweet Bakery too.  I was in before JCL!  After work, I met up with Maria at Nacional.  From there, we headed to the place that brings in packages that are shipped to her Miami address.  Then we went to a copy shop to get some shirts printed for a few of her friends.  It turned out that they didn't have the right sizes in their own shirts, so, after a quick stop at Maria's place, we were off to Plaza Lama to get plain white shirts.  We then headed back to the copy shop and waited while they made the shirts.  From there, we walked back to Lincoln and took a carrito to Independencia, then to Zona Colonial.  Our first stop was finding the American who sells his cave drawing photos.  I had to pick up a few to take back home.  Then I picked up some more Christmas gifts, and a replacement doll for the one I had given to mom for her birthday (it ended up breaking on the flight home from Turks and Caicos).  By that point, Maria and I decided it was time for a drink, so we headed to Plaza Espana.  I was kind of excited to go there because Mari had told me that a while back, they were putting up a big tree in the plaza.  However, when we turned the corner and saw the tree, I had a good laugh.  I was expecting something beautiful and classic.  Okay, well it was classic... coca-cola classic:

The restaurant we went to had this weird deal on their menu where you could eat as much as you wanted from the sampler plates for RD$500.  The waiter convinced us to go with this.  But the servings were tiny!  The gnocchi dish had 5 gnocchi in it.  FIVE.  And then I had this dish with mashed potatoes, peppers and cod.  I finished it in about 8 bites.  Not worth the money at all.  I mean I could have had more, except, there was nothing else on the menu I wanted.  Anyway, here we are enjoying our drinks and what the tree looked like once the sun went down.

When I got back home, I was happy to be able to chat with mom, dad and Jonathan!  That's a rarity.  It was so nice though!

Today, I had exciting plans!  Maria had invited me to go with her to San Pedro to visit her mom.  Her mom had planned on making sancocho.  I got up just a bit later than my regular time and on my way out the door, I sort of met the parents of the lady I live with.  It was kind of awkward, but I just smiled, said Hola and went on my way.  I met up with Maria at Nacional, although I was a bit early so I grabbed an espresso.  Then I went to check out if Casa Cuesta was open yet.  Turns out, it didn't open till 10.  Since we needed to go there, I decided to go and have some breakfast at the cafeteria to kill time until the store opened.  That's where Maria met up with me.  We went to Casa Cuesta in search of decorations for Maria's tree at her mom's house.  We found the decorations for the tree and I also picked up a poinsettia for Maria's mom as a thank you for having me over.  We caught a carrito to Duarte and then walked to the bus station.  There is something about Duarte which I love but also which I am afraid of.  I find it fascinating to just watch people shopping and checking out what things are being sold, and at the same time, I know it is not the safest place in the city for me to be.  Anyway, once we got to the bus station, we met up with Nicole who was coming along with us.  The best part of the trip was when a guy on the bus stood up and was trying to sell these toothbrushes that folded up, so that the brush part was covered... it was so random.  He talked about how they were especially good to keep your toothbrush away from the cockroaches.  And something about not wanting to play hide and seek with the cockroaches.  It seemed as though he managed to sell a few.

When we arrived in San Pedro we were bombarded with motorconcho drivers wanting to take us to where we needed to go.  They were incredibly persistent.  Finally Maria yelled at the one that was coming up onto the sidewalk with his bike, telling him that he needed to let us pass.  He replied that he was just working, and she told him, not on the sidewalk.  It was really annoying.  Then another guy said to this other guy, in regards to the three of us sitting and waiting for a taxi, "Did they move the toy store?" Then he carried on by indicating that he was confused about where it was now since he was looking at 3 beautiful dolls right there.   UGH.  Then the other dude replied, "no they are stars that have fallen from the sky."  UGH x2

Finally the taxi came and we headed over to the house.  We were greeted at the door by Maria's mom and 3 totally fun dogs!  Maria's mom made vegetarian sancocho just for me!  The first thing I had to do when we got in was taste test it to ensure it had good flavors!  And it did!  Then I played with the dogs, drank some beer and helped Maria and her mom decorate their Christmas tree.  So enjoyable!

Soon it was time to eat!  The sancocho was really good.  I also liked it with a bit of rice in.  I even ate two servings!  MMM.

After we ate lunch, it was determined that I had to learn how to play dominoes.  So Maria gave me a quick lesson, and then her mom joined us.  We played for quite a long time.  I was doing quite good for it being my first time.  At one point, her mom was getting frustrated with me blocking her moves and she told me to go back to Canada!  It was so lovely to be sitting there, playing dominoes and drinking beer with amazing people.

It was a truly fun day.  I felt very Dominican.  In the best possible way.  Maria and her mother were gracious hostesses and I am so pleased to have been welcomed into their home!  When it was time to leave, we said our goodbyes and Maria decided to take home the 4th dog, a baby chihuahua.  So the three of us, plus the dog, hopped into a taxi to catch the bus back to Santo Domingo.

Slowly Getting into the Christmas Mood

The beginning of my week was a little rough.  I have been having issues sleeping well at night.  I think it has something to do with the new place, bed facing a new way, having to sleep on the other side of the bed, etc.  It's improving though!  Overall, the week has been quite busy at the office.  A lot of projects on the go and several that are finishing up which means I'm doing a lot of translation and quality control work.  Along with writing a few proposals and other things.

On Monday, I had lunch with Mari.  Lately, our lunches have been as cheap as we can make them.  I think this one came in at about RD$65 (CAD$2).

Rice and Beans and Platanos Maduros

I was quite worried that I would somehow end up getting off too early on my way home.  I didn't have to worry about this though since I got stuck at work a bit late and traffic was too heavy to justify taking a carrito.  So I walked all the way home.  It's amazing what those extra 6 blocks do for my energy level.  I was really tired by the time I got home.

Tuesday was similar to the day prior.  Lunch with Mari and lots of work.  It was pay day but I didn't want to have to walk home again, so I left right at 5 to catch a carrito, and thus missed out on getting paid.  I headed home quickly and tried to have a nap before Gerardo came to pick me up for a trip to IKEA.  I wasn't overly successful at actually falling asleep but even just resting made a huge difference in my energy level.  Once he came we went to pick Mari up, carrito style, at the side of the road.  Once she was in, we headed off to IKEA.  On the way, we passed by the park where Lincoln and Lope  split and I finally got to see the trees all lit up.  We decided to stop on our way back for pictures.  Then we passed the park with the giant animals near IKEA and they had COVERED the giant gorilla in lights.  It was amazing and kind of crazy at the same time.  Again, we decided to stop after supper and shopping.  So we arrived at IKEA and went straight to get some dinner.  I had the pasta and a cute can of wine.  I know, a can.  It was called "Vino & Fashion."  How could I resist?

Vino & Fashion

After eating we did a bit of shopping.  I was picking up a gift for our Secret Santa night we were having on Wednesday, along with a few foodstuffs and a random stocking stuffer for Bart.  However, being at IKEA (which makes me feel like home since it looks exactly the same), listening to Christmas music and seeing all the Christmas decorations made me incredibly homesick.  Mari was having the same issues.  I started getting really excited about going home for the holidays!  As mentioned, we planned on stopping by both parks for pictures after, and that's what we did.  Here are some shots (courtesy of Mari):

Me and the Crocodile

Eee Big Gorilla!

Gorilla with one green eye

Giraffe

Me and Gerardo

Poinsettias and lights

It ended up being a really enjoyable evening!

Wednesday's excitement came in the evening.  I rushed home from work to pick up something to bring to the party and to wrap my gift for the gift exchange.  I was actually buying for Gerardo, and thus had secretly purchased his gift while with him at IKEA.  I threw on a dress and headed over to Robert and Mari's a bit early so that I didn't have to walk when it was totally dark.  Slowly, everyone else showed up, except Sylvia.  She called us and as it turns out she'd been trying to get a taxi for about half an hour and didn't have any luck.  So Gerardo and I headed over to pick her up.  Gerardo because he has a car and me because I have the best sense of direction.  When we returned, we all did some more chatting and picture taking before doing the gift exchange.  It was so much fun!  Robert was my secret santa and he got me a mahogany massage thingy that was made locally in the DR.  Very cool!  Manuel also stopped by and we ended up ending the evening with some Charades.  Here are some highlights from the evening:

This morning, I met Mari at the metro station so that we could get an early breakfast, together with Ozumy at Sweet Bakery.  Afterwards, Ozumy and I went to the dry cleaners since I had a few things to be cleaned, along with a pair of pants that needed the hem fixed, and another pair that just needed to be hemmed.  I needed Ozumy to be there because my needs were a bit more sophisticated than I can handle myself in Spanish.  Plus I really didn't want anything to be screwed up.  The total bill for the dry cleaning of one pair of pants and two shirts, plus hemming two pants was about RD$700.  That's about $20.  Which is insane.  I pay nearly that much to have one pair of pants hemmed back home!

At work, I got a call from Sr. S and he asked me about my progress on a particular financial report.  I stopped and thought, I know which one he's talking about but I didn't know that I was supposed to do anything with that.  As it turns out, I was supposed to translate it.  So it seemed like there was some pressure to get this done right away, so I just immersed myself in it and finished the entire financial statement in about 3 hours.  Sr. S was really surprised that I finished it that fast.  So was I, but I mean, they've gotten a lot easier now that I've done so many of them.  We didn't have internet for the end of the morning and the rest of the day.  That was really frustrating.  O and I also had to get a document and draft email onto Sr. S's blackberry in order to send an email with an attachment which HAD to go out today.  What a hassle.  Internet is important, just saying...

I ended up leaving a tad early, which I didn't feel guilty about since I had worked through my lunch.  I made it home in less than 20 min!  I rented "Eat, Pray, Love" off of iTunes the other day so I'm hoping to watch that this evening.  Life tomorrow is also going to be different, as Pavol heads back to Slovakia. There is a good chance he'll be back in January, but it will still be weird not having him around.  Such is life though.