The Lizard

The other day walking along in the temple grounds we saw a lizard crawling up over the curb by a palm tree. Sherrie thought it was pretty cute and wanted to get up closer to see it. It scampered away and we walked on feeling peaceful and content as we felt the warm sultry Caribbean air moving through the leaves of the Flamboyan trees. It was a delightful evening. 

Last night we had a Family Home Evening with 30 or so other missionary couples. Since Thanksgiving is not a Dominican holiday, we celebrated last night with a full scale Thanksgiving dinner. Lots of turkey, mashed potatoes, yams, stuffing, jello salad, black olives, and plenty of desserts. I'm afraid we ate rather too much, but it sure tasted great.

After we got home and settled somewhat after the big banquet we retired to the second bedroom, which is our computer, music, movie room. To watch movies properly with our little projector, we need to adjust the curtains so they're not blocking the wall. 

There are two windows, the other one is just out of the picture on the left. You can see the curtain rod extends beyond the width of the window, for whatever reason. The projector nicely fills the wall between the windows under the air conditioner, which is the white thing mounted on the wall between the windows. At some point during the day Sherrie likes to pull those curtains all the way closed. Hence, to watch a movie we need to pull them back to the edge of the window, widening the available "movie wall".

As I pulled the curtains back, I was eye to eye with a cute 6 inch long lizard, who, I can only assume was waiting to watch the movie with us. Or something like that. 

Sherrie rather liked the lizard at the temple, but didn't seem quite as partial to this one. As lizards go, he was actually rather comely. Also, everyone knows lizards eat bugs. One would think he would have been quite welcome. 

As it happens, I was taken a bit by surprise and dropped the curtain, which quickly swung back over the little visitor, covering him from view. Sherrie was surprisingly insistent that he was NOT welcome and furthermore that it was quite clearly MY responsibility to get rid of him. 

A matter of some private shame to me is that, where bugs and reptiles are concerned, I am not quite the he-man that people might believe me to be. Nevertheless, to buoy up the rapidly sinking spirits of my little bride, I put on my bravest front and, armed with a plastic bag in a waste basket and a piece of cardboard, I pulled back the curtain again. I imagine the plan was somehow to use the cardboard to scoop him into the garbage bag and then escort him outside. To my secret pleasure, the little guy was gone, having apparently escaped out through the gap between the two halves of the sliding window, which I have since discovered is much larger than we had previously thought. I had suspected bugs might gain entrance that way, but who would have thought it was big enough for a lizard to crawl through?

So this Thanksgiving week, while we are not especially grateful to have had a lizard in the house, nevertheless we are grateful that the little lizard showed us where we might strengthen our defenses against future unwelcome visitors.

Happy Thanksgiving!

La Zona Colonial

This morning being a Saturday morning, we slept in a little and then had pancakes and Tang for breakfast in preparation for our first non-shopping, non-working venture into Santo Domingo. When we were finally ready we got in the car and headed east. You can't just head east. The street in front of our building is one-way west only. There are a lot of one way streets in this city. One-way seems only to apply to a handful of people including foreigners. It apparently does not apply to motorcycles, taxis, or people who are driving backwards or just want to go part way down the street. But that's another story.

First we decided we should stop at a store to get some sun block. You never know on an outing how long you might be out in the sun. So, we stopped at the gas station right next to Burger King. I'll explain. In a normal country you would probably just go to the store if that's where you were going. This is the Dominican Republic. When we got to the store we found the entrance and the surrounding street blocked by cars going in every conceivable (horizontal) direction. Rather than add to that mess, we decided simply to move along, so we drove around the store and found a Shell gas station next door, which just happened to more or less share some parking space with a Burger King.

At the gas station, you're not supposed to pump the gas yourself. They have people for that. Of course, they expect a tip. And they're a little slow. Nevertheless, we filled up the tank in our little white Honda Civic, which took about 7.6 gallons or something like that. Gas is about $5.50 per gallon, so filling the tank is alarming. I suppose this is how it feels to fill an SUV, except when I drive away I'm still just a little white Honda and not TRUCKZILLA.

Since we were right next to Burger King, we pulled around into the one available parking spot and went for a couple of Whoppers and fries. We also got a couple of drinks. Sometimes when everything else seems wrong, a whopper and fries just make things better. This was not quite one of those times. Actually the burger and fries were great. They needed salt, but otherwise they were really good. No, the problem was the flies. These are Dominican flies. They just sort of behave differently. They are less inhibited. Or perhaps they are drunk. I'm not sure. In any case, we kept waving our arms to chase away the flies. One of them was particularly interested in Sherrie's orange drink and just fell in and started swimming around. I've never actually seen one do that before. It wasn't an elegant dive or anything, he was just sitting on the edge of the cup and just sort of belly-flopped in. Kind of like a dog, actually. As a testimonial to the depths to which we have already fallen in a mere three weeks, Sherrie just pulled him out and decided it was not a problem. This is the same woman who will not double dip chips in salsa with her husband. Amazing.

After lunch, since we were still parked just past the store we had originally intended to visit, we walked back and got our $10.00 bottle of sun screen. Remember, everything here costs more.

It was finally time to quit stalling and go to the Zona Colonial. Bear in mind that this was our first tourist outing away from the bug apartment, and everything is still just a little creepy. The Zona Colonial would be roughly the equivalent of Old San Juan in Puerto Rico. However, my first impression is that if Old San Juan were compared to, say, a Marriott Hotel, the Zona Colonial would be a Motel 6 in the bad part of town. Really, it probably wasn't all that bad, but our first visit left us with no desire to return. To be perfectly fair, since I grew up in Puerto Rico and spent a lot of time getting comfortable with Old San Juan, this may not be a fair comparison.

Probably the most interesting thing we saw was the old church - the oldest in the western hemisphere. Or at least the oldest Catholic church. It sits back from a park and a statue of Columbus. In the park there are people playing dominoes and sitting on the benches watching other people. We didn't see many touristy looking people. 




 

I'm not sure what's in the baby cart. I apparently was looking at something else when Sherrie took this picture. There were a fair number of people wandering around. There must have been a wedding nearby, because we saw a girl in a wedding dress and a guy in a suit having pictures taken at this little plaza. There was a little sort of sidewalk cafe with three guys out front playing a kind of drum, an accordion, and some sort of scratchy noise maker thing. Moderately charming, I suppose.

Perhaps on a different day and in a different mood this might seem like a nicer place. This area around the church is a little different from the rest of the walking street where there are people trying to sell lots of odd looking paintings and various other odds and ends that might appeal to tourists. Several beggars and street vendors approached us. One guy admired my clean tennis shoes. I am not a stranger to this sort of thing, having been in similar places in many parts of the world, but for some reason this seemed creepier than most. Not sure why.

The walking street is called El Conde. At the end of the street is a fortress wall and then a street and then the river that empties into the Caribbean. The mouth of the river hosts a port for some big ships that you can see in the background here. Again, it looks a little like the forts in Old San Juan, but with a decidedly different feel.

It was a bit warm and muggy today. It rained a bit while we were wandering around and felt pretty steamy when the sun came back out. 

After our visit to the Zona Colonial we went out to do a bit more shopping before heading home. Saturday, it seems, is not the day for us to go to PriceSmart. It is apparently the day everybody else goes there. Nevertheless, we got what we needed and headed back home to wind down from our big adventure.

People drive pretty crazy here, but for the most part I've seen the same stunts pulled in Elk Ridge and in Provo. Still, every once in a while they'll do something that surprises me. As we were driving down one street today, two lanes in each direction, the left lane of my side seemed sort of emptyish, so a car in the left lane of the oncoming traffic decided to use that lane. Having once set the precedent, it apparently became legal and suddenly a whole bunch of people just filled that lane. Pretty interesting.

Revenge of the Bugs

Last evening, Sunday, Sherrie pulled a box of milk from a plastic bag. This was not a magic trick, milk comes in boxes and you store them on a shelf, or in this case, in a bag because we're not yet ready to put things on the shelves; bugs, you know. Anyway, she pulled out the box and then there was a loud shudder from the kitchen that I heard back in the bedroom. It seems a group of insurgents had infiltrated the bag and pretty much surrounded the milk carton and the surrounding vicinity.

On the floor by all the water bottles is where the bag was.

This is a one liter box of milk not covered with bugs.

Our immediate response was measured, a small tactical strike with conventional weapons (a can of Raid), but we had the advantage of knowing what was planned for 8:30 Monday morning.

Monday morning (this morning) at about 9:30 (8:30 American time is about 9:30 or so Dominican time) we retaliated with a shock and awe campaign the Air Force would have been proud of. The bug guys came. Not only did we spray around all the baseboards, cabinets, windows and doors, but we also fogged. It was pretty impressive. We showed the head bug guy some of the remains from previous skirmishes, and he picked them up and bagged them for further analysis. Personally I think it was cockroach droppings, but he seemed to think perhaps something else. We all left the apartment and waited until the fog guy, his job completed, backed out of the front door and closed it. Then Sherrie and I went to work.

When we got home this afternoon we cautiously opened the door. I took point and entered first, searching for IUDs, WMDs, or anything else that might have been left behind. Surprisingly, we found nothing but the residue of this morning's raid. I'm calling it a success. 

So now we're involved in the clean-up operation: washing all the dishes again. With any luck we'll soon be able to load up the cupboards and finally put everything in order. But stay tuned; this is the Caribbean, after all.

Sherrie would like to express to our church leaders in Salt Lake the request that in the future, where possible, they avoid sending non-campers to third world countries. At least that's the mood today.

Shopping in the DR - First Impressions

The Dominican Republic is a poor country to begin with. This must be clearly understood or nothing wonderful can come of this story. Oops, that's from A Christmas Carol. Wrong story. Nevertheless, given all the poor people I wonder about the high prices and high taxes. 

One of these days we may become fluent in Dominican Peso prices, but so far we are still laboriously translating everything from pesos to dollars. The exchange rate is roughly 42 pesos to the dollar. So, when looking at a price, say 120 pesos, we would naturally simply move the decimal point one place to the left, so 120 becomes 12, then divide by 4, so 120 pesos is about 3 dollars. Pretty easy, right? But, there is this pesky 18% tax on everything. So, to really figure out what something is going to cost, we divide by 3 instead of 4. Hence, something listed for 120 pesos actually costs about 4 dollars when you add in the tax. Very annoying. 

One would think prices would be somewhat lower where people are poor. A one liter box of 1% shelf milk (ultra-pasteurized milk in a box that doesn't need to be put in the fridge) has a listed price of about 55 pesos. After tax that would be 64.9 pesos. Four of those, a little more than a gallon, is 259.60 pesos or about US$6.18, which is a little more than twice what we pay at home. 

A regular little bottle of salad dressing is about $6.00. A bag of potato chips is $6.50. Gas is over $6.00 a gallon, but as we haven't bought gas yet, I'm not sure what it really costs after tax. I'm sure we'll have that happy experience one day soon.

La Sirena - This store is sort of like a smallish WalMart with groceries. Go into a walmart, reduce the store size and contents by about a third, double all the prices, and put everything in Spanish and that would be about like La Sirena. The small one is close to our house and is on the way home from work, so we have been there several times. We got light bulbs, a little Christmas tree, and our Thanksgiving turkey breast ($21.00) there. On Wednesdays they have all their produce on sale, so that is understandably a big event. Produce consists of such things as mangoes and avocados and many things I don't recognize. Plantains, of course, and bananas of different varieties are plentiful. What is it with dried fish? Yeesh.

PriceSmart - Almost a clone of Costco. We got our membership cards the other day so now we're full blown PriceSmart shoppers. We bought a case of shelf milk. A bucket with a ringer for a mop (without the mop) was going to cost about $200.00 so we passed up that opportunity. I'm still hoping to find a Swiffer - preferably for some price that doesn't make me choke. A 3 pound bag of Hershey's miniatures was $25.00. We passed that one up as well. A 90 oz. bottle of Dawn dish washing liquid was $13.00. The Ghirardeli six pack of triple chocolate brownie mix was $19.00. We may have to do that one anyway. We passed up a lot of things. However, on the way out we got a couple slices of pizza - two bucks each - really good.

Ikea - Yes, they have meat balls. But they put gravy on the french fries. Not bad, by the way.

Agora Mall - This four level rich people's shopping experience is reminiscent of the snooty malls in Virginia where you feel you have to dress up before you'd dare enter. Apparently there are some wealthy people living here - people with so much money they would actually buy stuff in those stores. Go figure. Anyway, we've heard rumors that the big malls and some of the really big new apartment buildings are largely built with drug money. That must be it.

Transporting oneself between these venues is quite another adventure, suitable for another post some day. And so, as Tiny Tim observed, more or less, Heaven help us, every one.

The Silent One Writes...

OK...so here's my current take on a few things.

The Bugs:  Uck.  Hopefully they'll die and quit coming someday.

The humidity:  Bearable.

The barking dogs in our apartment building:  Just glad they're not mine.

How many times I've cried:  Only once...when I told Brad I'm not having fun yet.

Our car: A nice, new, white Honda Civic.

My feelings on washing all fruits and vegetables in a bleach bath before they can go in the refrigerator:  A pain, but I'll get used to it.

My feelings on not drinking the tap water:  A pain, but I'll get used to it.

My feelings on having to brush my teeth with bottled water:  A pain, but I'll get used to it.

My feelings on the traffic:  A pain, but Brad will get used to it.  He drives, I navigate.

My feelings on seeing the Caribbean and a coconut tree out our windows:  Cool.

My feelings on speaking Spanish:  Aye Caramba!

My feelings on learning Spanish:  Must do!

My feelings on meeting with the Caribbean Area Presidency today:  Neat!! 

President Andersen, Elder and Sister Dalton, Elder Cornish, and Elder Zivic

 And there you have it for now.

Gazcue Ward

Today we went to church at the Gazcue ward. You would pronounce that with a hard G as in gas, the a sounds like the doctor telling you to say Ahhh, the z is like an S, and the cue would be like KWAY. I have no idea where that word comes from. The building has a chapel upstairs, and downstairs are mission offices for the Santo Domingo East mission.

We pulled into the parking lot about 10 minutes before 9:00. One other car pulled in right after us. It was the bishop. Moments later a bus pulled up to the gate and maybe a couple dozen people got out. A bunch of dentist related people on a humanitarian trip (mostly from Utah) just happened to be in town today. Tomorrow they'll head out into the country to do dental work for lots of people. One of the people we knew from our ward in Elk Ridge. Go figure.

We wandered upstairs and found a cute little chapel with tile floors, no carpet, benches that were not fastened down, so they had a tendency to move on the tile floors, and otherwise looking very much like a typical chapel. People rolled in a bit later, but the bishop started the meeting pretty much on time.

We met several young missionaries, the mission president and his wife, another senior missionary couple and several locals. 

They speak Spanish here! Other than that, it was a pretty typical three hour block of meetings. For the most part I found I could understand when people spoke loudly enough.The Sunday School lesson was about "every member a missionary". The instructor asked Sherrie and me how we prepared for our mission. We managed our first Spanish class participation without any undue problems.

Priesthood meeting was something else again. I suspect the teacher was an auctioneer. I could scarcely believe how fast he could talk. It sounded sort of like a machine gun, only not so loud. Nevertheless, I found I could understand most of what he said. Had he been speaking English I don't think I'd have understood much more. 

Sherrie wins the prize for participation today. In Relief Society the teacher was trying to get someone to lead a particular song. Apparently nobody knew it, so Sherrie taught them "Oh Hush Thee My Baby" in Spanish. How about that? That's my missionary companion. Cool.

A Few Pictures

Sherrie says we need some more pictures, so here are a few pictures to help you more visually share the experience with us.

 

This is outside our living room window looking more or less south and down a little bit.

This is facing south from our living room. If you look carefully you can see the ocean at the horizon. We see it rather more clearly most of the time, but sometimes it is all rather gray and you can't tell the ocean from the sky. We figure the tall buildings by the ocean are all done with drug money.

Since I'm not really very artistic, I'm just moving these pictures left and right because it seems the systematic way to do it. The pool appears to belong to the building just to the east of us. Hence, this view is out our east window.

Here is the front of our building, the north side, and we're on our way to work. You might notice a white tag hanging on my collar. At work we're not suppose to wear our black missionary name tags, but the white FamilySearch name tag instead. I'm not really sure why. If we ever find out, and if it is an interesting reason, perhaps we'll write about it.

 The temple is directly across the street to the north of our apartment building. You can probably see Moroni up on top of the steeple. Sorry about all the wires.

 To the west of the temple is a park where people go to exercise in the morning or perhaps any time of the day. We've not experienced walking through the park yet, but it looks like a lot of fun stuff goes on there.

 This is a highly unusual view down Calle Bolivar (facing east) from the front of our building. No traffic. From five to seven in the evening it is pretty much impossible to cross the street.

 Here is another shot of the temple from the front of our building a little closer to the street to try not to get the wires. Someday we'll have to learn to take better pictures.

This one is significant because this is the first book we imaged. I don't remember how many pages it has, but we were pretty pleased to wrap up our first book. 

As far as I know it looks like each camera may handle perhaps three or four books in a day. Of course it depends on the book. Some of them are in pretty awful condition with the pages all torn and sometimes half disintegrated.


And there you have our pictures for the day.