Good evening. Today was incredibly relaxing because it was
my day off. My friend Oriol came to work
with me for two hours on my Creole. Not
only was it good to see an old friend, my Creole is improving. We will work together once a week, and after
we are done with my Creole lessons, we will work on his English so that he will
do better on his next TOEFL test. He
wants to study music in the States, and in order to do that, he needs to score
much better on his next test.
I took on
the local market by myself today. I
successfully purchased bread and cheese for lunch. However, I paid about 600% more for the bread
than I needed to! I think the lady made
more off me than she usually does in a week.
Me: “Do you have bread?”—this was for two loaves
a bit bigger than a foot-long sub.
Her: “Yes.”
Me: “How much?”
Her: “Six
dollars.”
I thought
was a bit steep for some bread, but I paid it.
What do I know?? I also thought
she was trying to scam the “Blanc” standing in front of her. As I walked away, I heard her laughing with
her friends. I knew I had goofed in some
way. I continued on my way looking for
cheese. Here’s the conversation at the next place:
Me: “Do you have cheese?”
Nice Lady: “Yes.”
Me: “How many goudes?”
Nice Lady: “Seven
dollars.”
This was turning into an expensive lunch of bread and cheese!
I counted
out seven $1 bills and handed them to her.
She looked at me as if I were crazy and handed six of the bills
back. Aha!
Note to self: Always ask for the cost in goudes!
When I got
back to the orphanage, I checked the exchange rate for goudes, Haitian dollars,
and U.S. dollars. There are 40 goudes to
an American dollar, and 5 goudes to a Haitian dollar. No wonder the Bread Lady was laughing at me!
My
afternoon was very uneventful. I ate
lunch and then spent most of the afternoon napping in my room. It was a cool day with a beautiful breeze, so
I was able to sleep comfortably. I got
up just in time for dinner. I didn’t
feel that tired until I lay down, but as soon as I lay down, I knew I was in
for a long nap. And it felt so
good.
Jamie, we all need a day off at least once a week. The nap sounds lovely. We had a lot of snow today. Do you miss it? The cool breeze sounds heavenly. Mom
ReplyDeleteReminds us of the Mexican mercados..but they would tell us that 'always the others are higher than me!' But still we never felt rooked!
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