January 18, 2008

Today was another trip to the big city San Pedro Sula. Saul went with us so we thought this trip would be less stressful because he is familiar with city and would know his way around. He does know his way around but apparently Honduran’s understanding of directions and ours are very different. Most of the day we were completely turned around and had to make several u-turns because we missed the turn on the first go around. It was stressful.

Just getting our house set up so it doesn’t feel as Cindy says “like I’m living at camp all the time” is taking a lot more time than we expected. You can’t just go to one or two stores and get everything you need. Then when you do go to the store is suppose to have what you need they may have, they may not have, or they have only one of the items and you need several. Guess it just takes awhile to learn where to go for what. At the moment we are spending way too much time just running around and accomplishing little. All part of learning a new culture. What we can say is the people we meet are, for the most part, very nice and understanding. (Every culture will have some people that are having a bad day – but we haven’t run into too many)

An example of shopping frustrations. We go to Diunsas (suppose to be similar to a Walmart type store). We can’t find any cleaning supplies, Tupperware type disposable containers, or even a wallet for Brad. He didn’t carry a wallet in the States but here you have to deal with such large quantities of money he doesn’t like having to pull this big wad of money every time he needs to pay. He’d like it to be hidden in a wallet so everyone and their brother can’t see it. To give you an idea, a 500 limpira bill here is similar to a $20 in the States. We joked today that once you break a 500 limpira bill the rest of it just disappears. Similar to once you break a $20 in the States the rest disappears quickly.

Our toilet is continuing to run so we have to turn the water supply to the tank on and off to use it. Water is a precious commodity here. We go to a hardware store to get a new flushing mechanism for the toilet. It’s ACE Fermosa (ACE Hardware). They sell complete toilets but no flushing mechanisms. However, they do sell the disposable Tupperware type containers. Huh?

At the lumber yard you can buy mp3 players, cell phones, internet routers, wireless internet cards for computers, and computer printers but not the lumber we need. We have to go to another lumber yard for that. See how it’s a little confusing for us North Americans. Not saying our system is better than theirs. We just don’t know their system yet so we spend a lot of time back tracking, front tracking, and sideways tracking.

While in the city we had to go get some quotes for various projects we have coming up. We went to several stores – sometimes to be told they don’t carry what we needed anymore. At one store we did find the doors we needed, got the price for doors (the price was marked on the door), and we were ready to go. Saul says we need to get a quote. We’re thinking why do we need a quote the price was written on the door? We wait for probably 10 minutes for one of the salesmen to get free so he can help. (once again he is very nice). The salesman and Saul discuss everything in Spanish. The salesman prints something out, hands it to Saul, and Saul turns to us and says he is giving us about a 10% discount on our entire purchase. Now we know why you should wait for a quote.

We also went to a bilingual school to line up some translators for the February medical team but the principal wasn’t there. This means we must return on Monday and try again. This is just stuff we have to adjust to and not get frustrated.