Making Change

Mom and Dad are in town. We spent the day with a short-term team that is here for a week. This morning we went to Policlinica and this afternoon we spent the day at Pastor Domingo's house just enjoying time with his family and letting the team get to know him and his family. They have a river behind their home that we splashed in, and hung out playing dominoes and eating guacamole. But, that's not today's story.

Hanley Wiki:

Policlinica - a neighborhood near the Iglesia Nueva Vida tent where a large number of church members live. At one point it was going to be a Clinic, a small hospital, but it was never completed. Following a natural disaster in which many peoples homes were flooded, the government moved them to this area. Thus the neighborhood of Policlinica was born.


After dropping the team off at the hotel we decided to get pico pollo, grilled/rotisserie chicken sold at little stands throughout town. One of our favorites we call "Poli-Chicken" because it is near Policlinica. Unfortunately, the only denomination of peso we had was a 1000 peso bill, about 30 dollars. Well, a whole chicken with yuca is only $200 pesos (about $7). I knew breaking a 1000 was going to be trouble, so when I ordered I asked, "Can you change 1000", they checked and decided they couldn't. However, there was a white truck parked down the street that sales bottled cokes and water to the little restaurants, and the chicken vendor say, "Go ask him, he has money." So I walked down the street, waited for him to finish a conversation, and asked, "Can you change 1000". He checked and said no, but he told me that he needed to collect a bill from a restaurant, and if they paid he would have change. So, I waited for him to go collect his bill. When he returned he told me that they didn't pay today. I returned to Poli-chicken with my 1000 pesos. The vendor suggested the grocery store, the other direction. I went to the grocery store, and they told me that they could give me to 500 peso bills. So, with my two 500 peso bills I returned to Poli-chicken. The assistant chicken vendor, pulled all the bills out to change my 500, and had to take some coins from her back pocket to change my $500 for the chicken. So now, having worked up an appetite we went home to enjoy some tasty chicken!!!

For more pictures of the day, click on the album below:

Day with team at Domingos

That will be five pesos and two chicklets

We were at Playero (pronounced PlyJero) the other day. For those of you that have not been to the Playero it is the closest we have to an American Grocery Store. Nice aisles, refrigerated meat sections, frozen foods, Canadian chicken breasts, you know all the staples. Anyway. We stopped off with the team from the Mid-west. They were buying snack foods for a youth event with the Dominican Youth Group. As, one of the team members said it, we were going to introduce the Dominican Youth to the "Trashy American Diet". Melissa and I took the opportunity to get some of our shopping done. When we checked out the check out lady handed Melissa her change, Five Pesos and two Chicklets. She said, "I'm sorry, I'm out of pesos." She didn't have any 1 peso coins, so she decided to give us our two pesos in Chicklets. Now, all the rest of the team just thought they were given a mint like when you go to the bank, they weren't yet as quick on the peso math, but anyone that day that was getting less than five pesos back got the balance in candy. Just another fun day in the DR.

Gomeria

Well, Pastor George and Jeanne are in Orlando for a few weeks and they left us their car to use while they are gone. We are a two-car family once again. Of course that was until today when the left front tire started going flat. There is a tiny tire repair place, gomeria, in Charamicos a neighborhood close to where we live. Melissa was driving the flat, so I met here their and we switched cars. It was actually a short wait in Dominican standards. I was only there for maybe 30 minutes. They were working on a few motorconchos, the motorcycle taxis that are common transportation for the area. Kate noted the other day, "I think there are more motorcycles than cars here." She is right. They were banging tires onto the motorcycles with a flat piece of metal. It seemed downright prehistoric, or as though they had my handyman technique down, you can fix anything with a hammer!!! Then all of a sudden they pull out a air compression powered lug nut remover. What??? One minute they are bullying a tire into place with a piece of metal, and then they pull out a power tool? You just never know. And speaking of never knowing, it cost me all of 50 pesos. That is just over $1.50 (32 pesos to the dollar if you want to do the math) or the equivalant of two 12 ounce cans of Dr. Pepper. The entire process consisted of waiting about 15 minutes while they hammered the motorcycles, then the guy jacks up the car, brings over the power tool to remove the lug nuts, rolls the tire into the repair shack (I took a picture, but only had my cell phone and don't know how to get it off the phone and actually us it), I wait another 10 minutes he rolls the tire back out, puts it on, and says it was a clavo. A what I ask, he says he'll bring it out. It's a nail. My new spanish word of the day is clavo. I pay 50 pesos and hope they really patched it. Just a little bit of today's adventures.