Jan 17: Our Second Guests

I guess that our second guests didn’t technically arrive at our house today, but most of the fun getting them did!

Home Team in Green

Most of the day was actually spent in La Vega since Nicole’s parents weren’t supposed to arrive, in Puerto Plata, until 9:30pm. We were surprised to see our neighbor had organized a soccer game for the younger kids in the Barrio against another team from town. This included lines, jerseys, and even a referee! It was kind of funny to see the Barrio team improvising a warm up as they really didn’t know what to do. Throughout the game I couldn’t help but wonder what it was like for the local kids to be part of a team, wearing nice new clothing, and competing together? It really reminded me of  the many movies with a similar theme, only this was the real thing.

You might notice that the Jerseys were obviously donated by Cardel Homes so I thought we should maybe challenge one of the other home builders to do the same and help us organize a tournament. Anyone have any contacts?

Futbal

For the trip to Peurto Plata I had arranged for a taxi to pick me up and go together to the airport. After waiting the usual 20 minutes extra plus another 20 for good luck we had to get our neighbor to call and check what was happening. Turns out the taxi driver had gone to Rod’s house, not Brad’s house. This is actually a fairly common mistake for Spanish speakers for some reason.

Finally on the road I was a little nervous as the vehicle didn’t run as good as it looked on the outside. There was a pretty substantial knocking in the drive train, and grating in the breaks, which made me wonder how well the vehicle would survive the 2.5 hours each way. It turns out my fears of these problems were unfounded as the only problem we encountered could have happened to any vehicle. As you may know the roads here are not quite as good as in Canada. Although they are generally in pretty good shape there are some rather nasty potholes, and some places where the pavement may narrow suddenly. Well as it got dark we hit one of these at highway speed causing one tire to go flat. Fortunately, the driver had a spare tire which we used for the rest of the trip, but I still breathed a sigh of relief every time we hit another bump which didn’t hurt a tire. Somehow I doubt that he had two spare tires.

Nicole’s parents arrived only an hour late which still gave us lots of time to wait at the airport. The trip home was smooth and Nicole parents seemed to enjoy getting to see some of the differences in this part of the world first hand.