Stepping Out of the Boat

It's amazing what effect warm weather has on our internal clocks. My mind and body think it's still August, but indeed, it's October! What happened to the time? We've been living here for two months already - two months exactly as of October 7th. Things here are pretty normal to us now, which has driven home the point that no matter where we go, no place will be new and exciting forever. No matter how new and exciting everything is in the beginning, we'll get used to it and it will all become normal with a little bit of time.

It's Sunday morning right now, and we've had a bit of trouble finding an English speaking church. It's very difficult to get around, especially when you don't know exactly where it is you'd like to go. So, this morning, I did a little online searching to see if I could find a good sermon for us to listen to, and lucky me, I found one. Thank goodness Fellowship Missionary Church in Ft. Wayne, Indiana puts their sermons online! If you want to get a sample of what we're listening to, visit their website: http://www.fmcfw.org You can find all the sermons by clicking on "downloads" and then you can choose which one you want to hear. My best friend, Jamie Bennett, goes to FMC, and the pastor there is an excellent speaker with his heart and mind in the right place. I've just made coffee in our weird little coffee pot, and I'm waiting for John to wake up. Then, we'll have church in our apartment.

If you read the previous post, you know that we had planned to go to the beach this weekend, and that it didn't work out. We ended up staying here instead, in the city. Friday night, we went with the other foreign teachers to Marte's club to swim and relax until about 7:30. (Marte is a friend who teaches at St. Michael's.) After we had relaxed to our heart's content, we went out to the parking lot to leave the club, and Marte pulled about 10 pounds of juicing oranges out of his trunk. He gave them to me saying that he has a friend that owns an orange farm, and he will be getting another batch soon - he was wondering if we would like to try fresh squeezed orange juice. I was excited and gladly took the oranges. When we got home, I squeezed every one of them by hand (hard work) and it was sure worth it. We only got a small pitcher of juice, but it was better than any juice you can buy at the store. It's 100% natural and organic, too.

Saturday, we left home at about 10 am and headed to a shopping center with Sonya and Wayne. We ended up staying there until about 3 pm. During our shopping trip, we noticed a few unique cultural norms that people here exhibit while shopping:
1. If some one is looking at something, it's okay to walk up right next to them, or in front of them, stand so that you are almost touching, and look at the same thing.

2. It is perfectly acceptable to sing along very loudly with whatever music is being played in the store, even if you are tone deaf.

3. If some one says, "excuse me" (in Spanish, of course), there is no need whatsoever for you to move out of their way.

4. Children are aloud to do anything and everything they want, even if what they are doing is extremely disruptive or bothersome to other people.

I don't think it's necessary for me to say that we got a huge dose of Dominican culture - perhaps too much for one day. Another funny thing that we thought we'd report is that in all the stores here, they have employees on rollerblades who spend their working hours rollerblading from the cash register area to get necessary items from the store. For example, if an item doesn't have a price, the rollerblade guy takes the item and zooms to the back of the store and back with the price. That seems to make good sense, although it could be a saftey hazard. They really fly on those things.

I'm not sure what today holds, but I know we'll be listening to a good sermon and relaxing a bit more - although today requires some time to be spent on school work. Don't forget to leave a comment about what's going on with you!