Stepping Out of the Boat

Yesterday, we went out for my birthday dinner - yes, my birthday is in November, but John was so sick on my birthday that we couldn't do anything special, so we postponed it until we had time. We were so busy until now that it just didn't happen. We went to a place called "Bob's" that we had wanted to try. I had hummus, a smoothy, and ravioli with pesto. The pesto was certainly not the best I have had, but it was still a treat. John had a burger.

On the way to lunch, we decided to stop and get a new shower curtain because things here get moldy really fast... we needed a new one. So, we went to the Multicentro to get a shower curtain, and the only color they had was pink. Our bathroom is yellow and green. Still, though, a pink one works just as well as any other color, so we went for it. Of course, because this is the Dominican Republic, when we got to the checkout, we found out that the curtain we picked up didn't have a price and therefore we couldn't buy it. So, we had to stand there while some one went to get another curtain. Eventually, we successfully purchased our curtain.

Then, we went to pay some bills because they had arrived while we were gone. We never pay our bills in person because the school takes our money and sends people to pay the bills. Here, you can't send your bills in the mail or pay them online. You have to actually go to the company and pay the bill there. We knew that the companies we needed to pay had a little booth in the Multicentro, so we took our bills and our cash and got in line.

There were employees behind the counter and other people waiting in line, but after a few minutes, we realized that no transactions were taking place. Why? We had no idea... and still have no idea, but there was a sign on the counter that said, in Spanish, of course that between 2:30 and 3:00, you can't pay bills. Why? We have no idea. The employees were all there. WHY??

Lucky for us, it was 10 minutes to 3:00, so we just had to stand around until three o'clock when the girl behind the counter started to help customers... how Dominican!

After all that rigmarole, we went to Bob's for dinner, and then to another store where John got some shoes. We planned to stop at the video store on the way home to rent a few movies, but when we came out of the store where John bought his shoes, we noticed a nasty storm brewing in the sky - we were a mile from home. :(

We ended up spending WAY too long in the video store while it poured outside, but we were really excited about avoiding a severe soaking. We're learning. :)