Sights, Sounds and Smells
So many different things are so different from home, where do I start to even begin to describe it all? The school children in their sparkling clean uniforms catching the buses to their schools. The street vendors selling everything from newspapers, fruits and vegetables, flowers, tacos and other various foods, the guys who want to wash your windshield at the stop lights, and the mom and pop grocery stores at least one per block. The trees, shrubs and plants growing all over that we try to force to grow as houseplants: fig trees, diffenbachia, hibiscus and many, many more. The colorful houses with their beautiful iron grillwork, vivid colors of the flowers on the trees and shrubs rioting over the fences and walls in contrast to the rocks and garbage in the streets. The large number of stray dogs and cats, the rooster who wakes you in the morning and who along with his harem of chickens peck away in the streets all day. The pet rabbit who bounced out of the bushes one morning and surprised all the street dogs. The enticing smells of the food cooking at the vending carts vie with the smells coming out of the some of the sewers, a truly massive assault on the senses, but it all seems strangely normal and a part of our new home. The rough cobblestone and dirt streets of the neighborhoods and the smooth asphalt of the main streets. We have been doing lots of walking, which is a real adventure for Roy (he is several inches over 6 feet). The sidewalks go from being smooth and wide to narrow, holes, lumps, rods sticking out, low wires overhead, air conditioners overhanging the sidewalk, low tree branches,etc., this is the first time I am happy to be short, I only need to watch where my feet go, my head is safe! Quite funny.
We are within 2 blocks of 1 bigger grocery store, 4 or 5 mom and pop type stores, a laundry, a few minutes further away are a couple on internet cafes which charge between $.80 and $1.00 per hour and a bakery. We bought tomatoes for $.70 cents a kilogram the other day from a veggie truck. If we walk for 20 minutes or so we are at the centre of town, or the malecon along the waterfront, 20 minutes the other way will take us to a mall, or in 10 or 15 minutes in another direction we are at a major grocery store.
Our windows on our apartment are single pane glass, no screens on the windows, next to no mosquitoes and maybe 1 or 2 flys in the evening when we shut off the A/C and open them up. There is about an inch of space under our door to the outside, sealing things off from the cold is not a big priority here. Just up the hill from us is an older man, who lives in a very basic "shack" constructed from whatever he could find around. A very friendly fellow, who does some work for our landlords from time to time.
We have found the people here to be very friendly and outgoing, a cross walk cop saw us trying to decide if we should go into a bakery and he told us that the bread there was very good. The other day Roy went fishing with the landlord and they came home with some little fish, so we had fish for supper. On their way fishing they gave me a ride to the store and one of their sons a ride to school. The son was joking that his dad parks where he can throw his line out from the car, then he asked if I was going fishing--I said no--men fish, women shop, he thought that was pretty funny. All in all, we love it here. Hasta Luego.
