Saturday we woke up to the humidity and sun that everyone talks about. It was a pretty day, but I know I was, and still am not, acclimated. Late morning we went to the grocery store with Reed and Katie. We drove our awesome junk of a car to the store where we picked up the essentials. I had remembered reading all of these blogs and informational sites about what to bring to the island because they don't have things here. I was happily surprised to find that most were lies.
They won't have milk unless you go on Thursday or Friday morning: They had it.
You can never find cream cheese or cheese in general: They had it.
There is no ground beef! They had it.
Bring your own shampoo and hand soap! They had a whole aisle just like in the states
Bring at least a month's worth of dog food because you won't be able to find any: There were 6 different brands.
In fact the IGA had nearly everything you could want from oreos to shampoo, dog food to hot pockets and frozen pizzas. Sure the prices were a little bit more expensive than we're used to seeing, but they had it all. A gallon of milk, usually $2.50 in the states, sells for about $7 here. That's probably the biggest price difference that we have noticed. Oh and the beef is about $6 per pound. But otherwise most everything else is just a dollar more. I'm just grateful everything is available, even if it isn't what we're used to in the states. This is nothing compared to China (I feel) where a 2 oz. thing of Haagen-Daaz ice cream sold for $7. Sure China was cheap in other regards, but I couldn't read half of what I bought.
Now Sunday is where things got interesting for me. We had church at 10 so Reed and Katie came by to help us drive to the church. Ten minutes before church we tried to start up the car and it wouldn't even turn over. Crap. Good thing there's a charger in the trunk! But wait... it's an outlet charger... a really low powered outlet charger.... We tried to catch the bus which only runs once every hour in the summer weekend hours, but missed it. It wouldn't be until 11:15 that the bus would come again. Tony worked and worked on that car. Poor thing- he was dripping with sweat in his church clothes and kept coming back with no results. Reed asked people around us if they had a set of jumper cables but to no avail. Either that or they just didn't want to jump us as we hear is pretty common. We left the car to charge and talked, deciding that that if the car didn't start 10 before the next bus, we would just take the bus. Well... it didn't start, so we made our way down to the bus stop and started waiting. After only having been waiting a few minutes a girl from the branch came driving by and offered us a ride. We hopped in with her and made it to church only and hour and a half late. To add to that, Reed is the sunday school teacher, so he missed half of the lesson he was supposed to teach. Awesome...
Church was good, no complaints there. Everyone seemed nice and though we didn't talk to many people it was still nice to see everyone. We caught a ride home with Mason and Bryant. Mason's car was so much nicer than ours it was frustrating!! When we got home we ate lunch and took a nap (that much stress just takes it out of you!). When we woke up we ate dinner, talked a little and decided to save the Bear from certain death by giving him a hair-cut. We were warned before coming down here that hair clippers make a terrible noise because of the energy difference, we choose not to listen and brought ours anyways. Well... its true. It was the loudest pair of hair-clippers we have ever heard! It sounded like trying to mow the carpet in your house, seriously... We continued through the noise and the clippers actually cut just fine. Now we can safely say that the Bear wont die of heat stroke this week.
Let me just explain something about the weather here. When we researched it, it said that it's between 75 and 85 all year round, which is true. However, it does not tell you the actual vs. "feels like" temperature. With the humidity, it was 85 but it felt like 96. No joke, just ask the computer. I'm grateful when there is a breeze which is often, but not strong. Our house is low enough off the hill so we don't get a very good one to run through the house. We have shade, sure, but without movement it's very difficult to be comfortable. It took Bear until about Tuesday to stop panting all the time (bless his heart) but I still can't stand it sometimes.
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