A Floor Fan From a Chinese Restaurant...

So I figured since I'm in a completely different country now, I should change up the look of my blog to match my surroundings.  If it looks jungly and rainforest-y to you on the site, then I've succeeded in helping you "arrive" here in Dominica!  Hopefully while you're reading you can channel a little slice of the island.  Lush is the word I would use to describe Dominica.  Green, green, green!  It's pretty damp and very breezy (though I'm told in the summer months the heat is pretty stifling...I'll take the cool when I can get it!). Yesterday Jonathan and I went for a walk and found ourselves right across the street:

That's the view looking out our front porch.  See those trees down there?  There's mangoes in them trees.  And we endeavored to pick some!  I mean, there's nothing like free produce man!  A mango in the states will run you, what, like $1-1.50 a piece?  So we go down there and these trees are seriously HEAVY with mangoes.  So what do we do?  See for yourself...

Yeah buddy!  So when we're low on funds, we at least know we can pick some mangoes!  These guys really aren't that ripe yet, but we're told that the unripe ones make great pickles.  So today or tomorrow I'm gonna try my hand at them.  Our friend Conrad had a little "snafu" shall we say upon check in here in Dominica on Sunday.  When he sat down to get his ID picture taken he saw a picture on the projector screen of something up in a tree picking fruit.  So he says to the guy (who's a local) "Awesome, so you guys have monkeys here??"  And the guys says, "No...that's a man picking fruit."  And Conrad was officially embarrassed beyond belief.  What a welcome to Dominica!  But after having watching Jonathan shimmy up that mango tree, I can see where the confusion may have occurred.  He certainly did channel his inner primate...

So that was our afternoon yesterday.  I'm trying to squeeze in all these funny stories while they're fresh on my mind.  I'll have to write tomorrow about our suitcase debacle and our barrels arriving, but today (per popular demand) I thought I'd share the floor fan story.  

Where To Buy a Floor Fan in Dominica

So here on the island, a fan is a must.  In our apartment, we have an air conditioning unit in our bedroom and a ceiling fan in our front room (which accounts for our kitchen, breakfast room, and kitchen...you'll see later...).  With the windows open and the bedroom door open, we catch a pretty sweet cross breeze, so it stays pretty cool in here.  However, since we only have a full size bed, it can get a little toasty at night without a little more moving air.  Jonathan and I have done pretty well so far with it (we DID spend our first year of marriage in a full size bed and ever since then we sleep right up next to each other anyway...), but Michelle and Matt (our Freeport family...they live 2 doors down now!!) were in desperate need of a floor fan.  So after some research, Michelle found out that there was a restaurant called Hope right up the street that sells floor fans.  Hope is a Chinese restaurant.  Weird?  Definitely.  We assumed, however, that there was some sort of little store attached to the restaurant.  So all 4 of us trudged up the hill to Hope to get the Wellses a floor fan.  Here is what Hope restaurant looks like on the outside:

Yep.  It's basically a lean-to.  I do appreciate, however, their attempt to make it "fancy" with the Asian  curtains on the door.  I felt a little weird about taking pictures inside so you'll have to just use your imagination.  Surprisingly enough, the inside is just like any Chinese restaurant in the states!  Black lacquer furniture, jade Buddha statues, bamboo plants, the works.  And the menu doesn't look too bad either!  Though as sketch as it looks on the outside, I think we'll pass for now.  Unless we get REALLY desperate.  

So we walk in the place and Michelle says "Umm...do you sell fans?".  And the guy doesn't speak English.  So he asks his manager who promptly responds, "Oh yesh yesh!  We serl de fans!  Yesh!  Dey $125!".  Sheesh!  $125???  Michelle says "Is that EC?" (EC=Easter Caribbean which is the currency here...exchange rate is $1=~$2.65 EC).  He says "Yesh yesh, it EC!  You like?  I take Merican dollar biw!"  Phew!  That's much better!  So he rips a plastic bag off this fan which is sitting right in the dining room and it's a legit fan!  Michelle hands him $40 USD and we're on our way.  Leaving the lean-to Chinese restaurant with a brand new floor fan.  

Is that weird??  Only in Dominica.  I feel like I'll be saying that quite often.  So there ya have it.  A floor fan from a Chinese restaurant.  And we've only been here 3 1/2 days...

More to come!  

Much love!