This week has been full of firsts for me! These firsts may seem small but internationally they are monumental!
1. Coconut Ice cream eaten out of a coconut! My friend, Alexa, came to our apartment and we went out. We decided to get coconut ice cream because who could say no to coconut ice cream? The taxi driver took us to this small little shop about 15 minutes from our apartment. The lady was so sweet and brought us this coconut with coconut ice cream with shredded coconut and toasted coconut on top!
Coconut ice cream in a real coconut! Ummm..... can you say DELICIOUS!!!!
2. Got lost! I know this may not seem like something to celebrate but we found our way. We were walking to JoMa to get dinner after our ice cream and we were walking to it, but then turned around because we thought we had passed it. But when we couldn't find it we turned back around and found it about 100 meters past where we were the first time.
On our way to JoMa. Had to take a picture of the traffic, this isn't even that bad!!!
3. Had TexMex! The sisters who own our school treated all the international staff to lunch. They took us to a local TexMex place. I was kind of looking forward to some TexMex food. However, none of it was TexMex! LOL. We had shrimp, a burrito (as close to Mex as it got), steak (as close to Tex as it got), pasta carbonara, seafood pizza, and then ice cream for dessert! However the best part was guacamole with doritos! Definitely an experience I will never forget!
4. Street Market! Our co-worker's wife took us around our neighborhood Thursday night and she showed us the local street market that is just a block from our apartment. All the produce is sitting on the street and you pick want you want and they weigh it and you pay. Simple right? It would be if you knew how to say prices in the language! But no fear, that day will come. For right now we just have them type the price into our phone's calculator.
5. We found a seamstress in the market who could fix our zippers on two of our couch cushions. One zipper was 1.5m and the other about .5m. We dropped off the covers to this very nice lady who spoke NO ENGLISH and she told us to come back tomorrow. So the next day we went to her house and she had sewn a new zipper on the long cover and fixed the zipper on the other one plus the mouse hole! It was amazing!! And she only charged us $2.75! What a bargain! We paid her double that! We were so thankful and wanted to bless her!
6. Spent over 2,000,000 at the grocery store! Jen went to Big C for the first time and we had to buy food and things for our apartment. When it was time to checkout we had a full cart and every person was staring at us. People always stare because we are the "white girls" but this was different. People were standing beside us, like they were checking out with us, and staring at us and the total of our bill. I don't think a lot of people spend that much money at the grocery. So they were amazed, but it feels like you are always on display.
Our full cart of groceries! We definitely stood out even more than we already do.