¡Hola Baby!
The easy thing would be to tell you that we’ve arrived.
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Dominicans love children. And they seem to especially love my little light-haired, blue-eyed boy who has, in just a few days, mostly gotten used to all the attention. Choruses of ¡Hola Baby! and ¡Ay Dios mío! greet us everywhere we go especially when Nicolas is wearing his sunglasses. From the hotel breakfast room staff to the guard armed with a broken 12-gauge at the grocery store, somebody is always trying to get a smile or a wave from him.
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What I thought I knew: things would be a little bit different here and the traffic would be bad.
What I couldn’t have imagined: ladies with fruit piled high on their heads weaving in and out of lanes never dropping a banana or lechosa as motorbikes (often with a rider holding one hand on the grips and the other on a phone or perhaps loaded with three passangers) filter in between cars which may or may not be within their lanes, have functioning brake lights, or bother with a blinker.
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Joe reported to work the day after we landed (as one does, of course) and so Nicolas and I are mostly left to our own devices during the week. A favorite activity, aside from bouncing on the bed, is to sit on top of the couch and peer down at the avenue while making grunting sounds for all the buses and trucks and motorcycles that pass by stories below. Grocery store trips also kill the time and we were recently tipped on to the fact that the pool starts to get some shade later in the afternoon — after nap and before dinner.
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With a small-ish percentage of the population vaccinated (although certainly more than in some countries) a curfew, to help stop the spread of COVID, starts at 6pm. Cars can be on the road until 9pm and restaurants are allowed to stay open for delivery only. Aside from the two enforcement roadblocks we passed through on the way from the airport, it really hasn’t affected us much — the baby conveniently goes to sleep at about the same time we’re supposed to be inside.
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Paperwork SNAFUs are keeping our shipment from actually shipping so we have no clue when we’ll be reunited with our household goods or vehicles. At this point it doesn’t much matter though — we were told yesterday that the estimate for when our permanent housing will be ready has been pushed back a month. It’s a good thing we booked the hotel we thought we’d be most comfortable in as it’s looking like we’ll be here at least until mid-August.
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¿Hola Baby?
