Our New Apartemente

I don't know if I mentioned right after we moved here, but the folks making the arrangements for our apartment misunderstood the Church's guidelines for senior missionaries: the couple is responsible for up to $1400 for rent and utitlities, and anything over that will be covered by the Church.  This is a great policy to help those serving in NYC or London for instance, where it can be very expensive to live.  Well, the people in our office thought that the Church would cover up to $1400, and the missionary couple would cover the rest.  Needless to say, even though we have had a nice apartment (although lacking screens :-), it was $1200 a month plus utilities which was ridiculous and more than we wanted to pay.

So after five months, they were able to cancel the original lease, and we went apartment hunting.  After looking at 8 or so, we settled on a nice one for $800 a month about five minutes closer to our work.  We are now on the 7th floor and have a lovely view of the ocean.  It is smaller than our previous one and about fifteen years older, but plenty big for us.  We have had to work out a few leaking faucet issues, but, overall, this is going to be great.  Here are some photos:

 View outside one of our windows

Another view

 Some of the other apartments around us.

Our living room - I love the old fashioned furniture.

This is a fun painting that we bought -
it's called a Haitian Primitive and shows villagers harvesting their crops.. 

 Our little office area - there are French doors that can be closed.

 

 Our kitchen.  The great fridge is behind me - large and cold

(unlike our old apartment)

 Our bedroom

 The Maid's quarters - all apartments here have them, consisting of a room big enough for a bed and a little bathroom with a shower.  (We are storing stuff here, but just know that there's a place for you if you want to come wait on us :-)...

 Our dining room

 One of the paintings that came with the apartment -

it's a pretty fishing scene from Samana where we saw the whales (see March)

 A washer and dryer (which actually has knobs that work and doesn't just cook everything.  There are clotheslines in here as well.  There is only a metal gate to the outside from here,

so eveyrthing dries very quickly.

We can still see the Temple spire from here - we're just farther west than we were before

on the other side of the park which I showed you earlier.

Frustrations

I think that I may have been doing all of you a disservice to only have been sharing the interesting things that we have been doing and not the nitty-gritty of our daily lives.  So this post will, hopefully, change that. 

Our Schedule

First, here is pretty much our daily schedule:

· 6:00 AM: Arise/ exercise in apartment or walking in the park across the street

· 6:45 AM: Shower

· 7:15 AM: Eat

· 7:30 AM: Study the scriptures and Spanish

· 8:15 AM: Cleanup

· 8:30 AM: Leave for the office

· 9:00 AM: Begin workday

· 4:30 PM: Leave for home (actually seldom this early) Two afternoons a week, when I

can, I attend a Spanish class with other senior missionaries from 4 until 5:30 pm.

On Saturdays, I wash clothes, Rob sweeps the apartment, and then I wash the tile (which is the flooring throughout the apartment) with a string mop (which isn’t very effective).  We do our grocery shopping, and sometimes I do a little cooking to get ahead of things.  I dust and do the bathrooms, etc.  Many Saturdays, like today, we have meetings to attend in the afternoon, and so that doesn’t give us a lot of free time. Sundays, we have church all morning in the little congregation outside the city which is an hour drive each way.  Some Sunday afternoons, we also have Public Affairs council meetings. This makes for a pretty full week.  On Monday nights, we get together with other Senior Missionaries.  The other nights depend on things we need to finish up for work or other things.

The Mosquitoes

There are not screens on the windows of apartments here, and we only have a little wall air conditioner in our bedroom.  We have to open the apartment when we get home from work – the breezes help a little, and we run a floor fan in a room where we are eating or working.  So this makes an open invitation for mosquitoes (who like me more that Rob).  These things have helped, but not eliminated the problem, but we are living with it.

Yes, this is a mosquito net which works quite well, unless one gets underneath 

which happens occasionally in spite of our best efforts. 

 On the right is a bottle of special ingredients which help reduce the itching.  It really works, but I recently dropped it on the tile floor and it broke into smithereens:-)

On the left is a bottle of repellent with all natural ingredients - it doesn't last a long time, but it works well. 

Food Preparation

We generally have to do food shopping at least twice a week because the fruit and vegetables (especially lettuce) don’t keep more than a few days.  And the actual prep takes time to cut everything up or peel it (no little ready-to-go baby carrots here). Also, all fruits and vegetables need to be washed in Clorox sprinkled into water, and that’s just one more thing. It’s not a big deal, but it takes time.

Here's a water bottle that we have refilled with drinkable water, and my trusty Clorox bottle which I put in the smaller container on my counter to pour into the sink when needed..

Language

Even though I now can sort of carry on a short conversation with someone, I just get totally lost in Church or office meetings.  Rob would translate the whole time for me, but then that’s disturbing to those around us.  I’m working on it, but it has left me in tears sometimes. Someone told me that you can have more problems learning another language when you’re older, and I believe it. However, things are getting better!

Culture

I love the folks here – they are some of the sweetest folks I have ever met.  But they do things just a bit differently.  Meetings often begin ten or fifteen minutes late because no one gets there on time.  On Thursday, I stayed home from the office because a repairman was coming to repair our air conditioner which wasn’t cooling.  He was supposed to be here between 10 and 10:30.  He arrived about 11:45.  After checking everything out, he told me that he would need to get a breaker and replacement electronic board and would be back right after lunch.  He and his helper returned about 3 to complete the job.  Granted, our bedroom has been nice and cool now, but it was a long frustrating day.  

We are moving into a new apartment and the contract was supposed to be closed on July 1st.  When I checked with the girl in the office on Monday, she said, "Oh maybe next week - Monday or Tuesday."  When Rob talked to her yesterday to confirm one of those days, so we could start packing, she said, "Oh you really are serious?  Okay, well, I'll start working on it." (which means it will be three or four more days) So we'll see when it's finally closed...  

Public Toilets

This is something that would only frustrate a woman (or a man with diarrhea).  The public bathrooms typically do not have toilet seats.  So it makes it a little interesting going to the bathroom:-)  In addition, when they do have toilet paper, you don’t put it down the toilet but into a wastebasket next to the toilet.  I guess it’s because of plumbing problems, but sometimes that little basket full of used toilet paper is just a little gross… (No photo here, for lots of reasons!)

The GPS

This little gadget has been such a lifesaver for us.  We had many sites already loaded on it by another senior missionary, so we can generally get to Church buildings, well known sight-seeing attractions, and shopping places.  But sometimes it just doesn’t get it right.  Especially because so many streets are one-way, and we can’t turn around.  Earlier this week, we went back to visit the home that was being improved by the Book Fair pavilion materials (see earlier blog).  It is in a little scary part of town, and last time we had followed the owner to know how to get there.  Then we put the site into the GPS.  Well, as we went to return to the house, the GPS sent us into a cemetery (more on this one next time) where we wandered down streets of mausoleums until turning around, back tracking, and then going down a dirt street that just looked slightly familiar and finally led us to where we needed to be.  But I was a little nervous as folks just stood there on the street corners staring as our nice car traversed down their poor little village streets.

The Internet

We use a little contraption called a “flybox” here which is a plug-in internet box.  We can plug it in anywhere here, so we can take it with us if we are going to be somewhere without internet connection.  It is very reasonable – under $50 a month – which is great, but sometimes it runs so slowly that I feel I’m back with a dial-up connection.  Still I am grateful for it.

54 is the best that it gets, but sometimes it's 19..

In Conclusion

In rereading this post, I feel that I must sound like a whiner, and, please believe me, there are many more positives than negatives!  I just didn’t want you to get the impression that this has just been one long week in paradise.  Obviously, none of these things are a big deal, but they can mount up and just send me nearly into tears – I feel like such a big baby.  I had thought that going on a mission as an older person would be so easy.  I would know my companion and have learned to work with him, and my years of “experience” would make me be able to handle anything.  This has caused me to spend more time on bended knees asking my Heavenly Father to help me, and this alone has blessed me greatly.  Will I survive?  Well, at least for another week :-)