Minor Misfortune

Once again the Lord blessed us with a cool evening. I slept deeply and well and awoke to the prospect of going house hunting with Rachel and the kids. Freddy offered to give us a ride to town and beyond so that we could pick up a few groceries and check out a couple of houses. Dilian and DJ (his son) were going to go along with us. So, they showed up this morning ready to go. While we were talking I saw a boat sailing by and took a picture for Uncle Grover. I hope he enjoys it.


I'll also throw a picture in for the grandmothers :)


After a few minute's wait we decided to walk up to look at another house right here in Soufriere that might work for us. As Dilian and I walked through the house I didn't even think to take any pictures, even though the camera was in my pocket... I did however take some other pictures while we were out.


Although I don't have pictures I can tell you that the house is beautiful. We may go back up there tonight to give Rachel a look. It has no yard, but it does have two balconies, one overlooking the sea, the other looking up toward the mountain. It's also about 100 feet higher up than the house we're in now. The result is that it's a bit cooler. Staying there we might not need AC. However, we forgot to see if it's wired for 110 so we have to look into that. However, it has a washing machine, a microwave and a TV. All in all I think we could make it work. I just want to be careful with our money right now.

Freddy wasn't here by the time we got back and quick phone call revealed that his bus (as they call it) was having trouble. It's now late enough that we don't want to go to town even if we can. Rachel walked down to the new mini-mart and found that the prices are very comparable to Roseau, so not getting to go to town proved to be no big deal. While Rachel was out shopping I took on the coconut that was left in the fridge. They aren't exactly easy to open, but I got it in the end.


Later in the afternoon Dilian showed back up with Freddy arriving shortly after. They took us back up to the house I had looked at in the morning. I took some pictures of the views from the balcony. The height of the house is the reason it doesn't look like we're going to get it. Rachel is afraid that the kids might fall. Also, as nice as it is (and it is very, very nice) it doesn't have a yard. That's one of the things Rachel has her heart set on. Add in the fact that it turns out not to have 110 and it's just not a perfect fit. So, we'll just have to keep looking.


Once we finished looking at the house Freddy decided to drive us up to Gallion, which is a small village just up the road. It's up near the top of the mountains and is very cool. It's very much the temperature we want to aim for when we find a house. I took a few pictures from the top of the village, including some of Soufriere.


While we were out Dilian showed us a bit more of the local produce, including Cocoa and Papaya.


I also thought I would throw a little more economic information your way. We at hotdogs for lunch EC$5.00/US$1.87 and decided to have Bakes for dinner again at a rough cost of EC$2.00/US$0.75. Living here can really be affordable once you learn how. The "provisions" they grown here include green potatoes that taste a lot like boiled peanuts and local sweet potatoes that are also greenish, but taste like sweet potato. We've got to keep learning, but day by day we learn how to live more and more like Dominicans.

Anyway, I really want to find a house that's a perfect fit for our family. In the long run we may want to buy land and build, but we have to get from here to there. I really wish we had been able to go take a look at that other house. Of course, even if Freddy's bus hadn't broken down we wouldn't have been able to see it today. They want us to go look Tuesday, but I'm not sure how that's going to work out. Either way, I'm going to wrap it up here for the night. I'm tired and want to go have a goof off.