Monday, June 2, 2008

June 1, 2008

We are sitting in our room Saturday night. It's about 5:30 pm when the oldest daughter comes into our room with the phone in her hand saying her dad wants to talk to us. All the family but Majo (the oldest daughter) are visiting relatives. Estuardo (the dad) tells Cindy (Cindy took the call because she speaks the best Spanish and Estuardo talks very fast) that they will not be home for supper and do we want "carne" (meat) or Domino's. All Cindy really understood was "carne" and Domino's. She deduces from the situation the family will not be back in time to make supper and he is offering some options for supper. She chooses Domino's because she understands the meaning of Domino's.

We think, no problem, we will be having pizza tonight. About an hour later Majo returns to our room with the phone and ask if we will call Domino's and order the pizza. While we are trying to find out if Domino's speaks English Majo hands Cindy the phone with it calling Domino's. No time to plan what we want or how to place an order in Spanish.

Domino's answers and things look good - they speak English. Well, sort of. They know some English words. And what is the first question pizza delivery places ask? What's your phone number? We have no idea the phone number. So Cindy is asking Majo the phone number. Majo gives Cindy the phone number in Spanish. And, Cindy relays the info to Domino's in a combination of English and Spanish. Then they want the address. This time Cindy gives up and hands the phone to Majo. Then the phone is returned to Cindy and she proceeds to place the order. Except we don't know what kind of pizza we want. Majo suggests tropical (Hawaiian). Sounds good, Cindy places the order plus one 2 liter coke and one 2 liter diet coke.

About 10 minutes after placing the order Cindy and Majo tell Miguel (the young man from Germany staying at our house) about the pizza order. Guess what? Miguel doesn't like Hawaiian. So Cindy proceeds to call Domino's and order an additional small cheese pizza. She thinks they told her they would include it with our other order.

Now we realize we need to come up with the money to pay for these pizzas. Woops, didn't think of that before we ordered. It normally wouldn't be a problem but it was raining today and so we decided to wait until tomorrow to go to the bank and exchange some money. We're a little short on quetzales (the money of Guatemala). We scramble around and come up with various denominations of bill and coins - hoping we have enough when the pizza gets here.

About 15 minutes later the gate bell rings and it's the Domino's pizza man on his delivery motorcycle. Cindy and I go out the front door and up the steps to the gate. The Domino's man only has the large pizza and two regular cokes - not one regular and one diet. He is telling us he will go back and bring the diet coke back with the other pizza. We agree pay him for the pizzas and drinks. Now we still have no idea how much the other pizza will cost so we're debating how much we should tip and still have enough left to pay for the other pizza.

Problem solved. A second Domino's pizza motorcycle shows up with the small cheese pizza. Ah oh! The box looks really small. We pay for the pizzas, take both regular 2 liter cokes, tip Both delivery guys, and still have 22 quetzales left (that's about $3).

Problem is the small pizza is more of a snack size pizza and it's suppose to fill up and 21 year old young man. Fortunately Miguel was a good sport. Before he ate his "snack pizza" he even went and got his camera to take a picture to send to his friends. We're not sure we've ever seen a pizza that small.

Ah, the joys of not speaking the language well. Never boring and many times amusing.

No comments: