Day 10

I may have my first experience to base a dislike of the French upon. I was drawing at the table downstairs when Daniel, the man we are renting the house from, stopped by with Sonya and another couple. Daniel asked if he could show them the house – they were friends and this was the house he used to live in. after they had left, I was upstairs where I found a pile of cigarette ash in the middle of the floor where they were standing.

We have been on a roll with our dinners. Tonight Amy made Dominican chicken, a recipe she had found back in Maine. We don’t know if it is actually Dominican, but it’s pretty good. Lane and I went to the Mercado to buy the dinner ingredients. This is the Mercado I like, and the people working there, while not rushing to greet and serve me, at least don’t ignore me, which feels like 4-star treatment around here. To get chicken / pollo, you have to ask the man behind the deli counter – so noted because it has a lot of knives and a scale – to get the chicken. He goes over to a cooler, and picks out various body parts. I asked for a full chicken, and he brought it over. One of the first things they do is cut off the claws, which they put in the bag for you. I guess this is to prove the body parts in the bag are from a chicken? Then he started to bag the whole chicken, but I kept asking him, using a highly developed series involving two Spanish words – “no,” and “pollo” and a bunch of chopping gestures. While he cut up the chicken, with a scattered cloud of flies hovering around and his extended knife swings sending bit of flesh and blood flying around, Lane cowered behind me.

I went to the verizon store a little before 6- they close at 7 – and Aron(?), the young man who operates the store, was locking up. He said they were closing, and come back manana. He speaks to me as if I understand Spanish, even though I have made it very clear I don’t understand, so I think that’s what he said. Yesterday I was trying to ask him for a receipt, and the only way I could think to ask was to use the Spanish words for “paper” and “sale.” Aron thought I was asking if he sold paper there, and kept saying no, there was no paper for sale. At least that’s what I thought he was trying to say. I like Aron.

Next topic: I will try to explain why I feel so comfortable in undereducated, male-dominated cultures.