A day in my life

I just wanted to share some differences of daily life in the Dominican Republic to those that we get so accustomed too in the US. For one, the power goes off here every day. Sometimes it goes off more than once a day. These outages can last several minutes or several hours. Usually it goes off in the morning for a spell, what can be frustrating is when you're in the middle of brewing a yummy pot of coffee.

On the subject of running water - most areas have it here, but since we are at the edge of a development and there are a lot of users (legal and illegal), we do not get any water from the city. We pay water trucks to come out every few days and fill a cistern. Yet, the water company still sends us a bill every month. On the subject of bills, there is no mail to the house, so what the companies do is fold or wad up the bill and throw it over the gate. It's a treasure hunt sometimes to find them! So we had a water and power bill and I went to pay them today. At the water company, they still want our money even though we aren't getting their water. Well, I complained to someone and they might be sending an engineer out to look at the problem tomorrow. We'll see, I'm not keeping my fingers crossed or anything.

The roads in and around Puerto Plata are terrible. Road construction is ongoing all over the city and they have huge swaths of streets cut into and gaping open with very few barriers keeping you from entering the sinkhole. At night, they light fires in all the danger zones. So you car will be on fire as it sinks into the earth, great! At every job site I have passed, without fail, there will be two men working and about 8 standing around. Efficiency! While I was in line to pay the electric bill today, there were two booths and a pretty lengthy line. One of the booths suddenly closed, and the guy there proceeded to count money. Customer Service is a bonus not always found here.

I helped Sharla to buy a Nissan Pathfinder for the Makarios ministry here, and yesterday and today have been driving that badboy around town. Now let me tell you that has been an experience! Horn honking and flashing lights are essential forms of communication, but I sure have gotten some mean Dominican stares. And please, if you see me driving in the states when I return, remind me that Americans actually do stop for stop signs and red lights.