Today the men got up really early to take a fishing trip into the interior rain forest at Lake Brokopondo Stuwmeer. (Don't ask me how to pronounce it please) There were 10 men in all, Imro, Rand, Pastor Tom, Cody, Tom, Ted, Marlon (Peggy's husband) and three other men from the church. The ride to the lake takes about an hour and a half over a treacherous road of potholes and dust. The guys said later that there were times they couldn't see anything in front of them because of the dust and more than once hit their heads on the roof of the truck. There'll be more about this later.
Our morning started with Tracy and I having breakfast with Peggy. It was so nice not to have to leave first thing and just have time to visit with her. Peggy is a breast cancer survivor and she was telling us how she made the decision after treatments to start pampering herself a little more than she used to. She gets regular facials, manicures and pedicures and also has a massuse come in to give her and Marlon massages every week. She tells us that she would like to take the two of us to have facials sometime while we are here! We look at our schedule for the week to see what would be the best day, but it seems a little surreal that we would be talking about having facials on a mission trip. We decide that Friday afternoon would be the best day and she says she till make the appointment.
Our mission for the day was to purchase items to decorate the church for the conference. We are looking for silk greens to fill out what they already have and something to make trumpets and notes out of. So, Linda, Millie, Tracy, Kathy and I all load up in the car and stopping to pray for safety and parking spaces take off for the stores! Shopping.....always exciting. We left with great enthusiasim and our first stop was the money changer kiosk where us aliens exchanged our US dollars for Suriname dollars. The exchange rate was $2.80 per dollar. Now being new at all of this and remembering that when Taylor went to Italy in the spring that the Euro was much higher than the dollar, I thought I had very little to spend for the money I had exchanged. That will come into play later.
So we exchange our money and head to Paramaribo's version of the mall. Actually it was very nice and though not large there were a good variety of stores there. None of them, however, carried any green silks or trumpets. Strike one. We leave there and drive downtown (this is interesting because Linda is not as comfortable driving in the traffic here and since they don't come downtown often Linda and Millie have a running conversation about where locations are and how to get there. All of the streets have mile long names and more than once Tracy and I found ourselves giggling over the sound of them - those prayers were answered when we made it alive AND found parking!)
The streets are lively with people and it's a lot like living in a small town with just the two lane roads. However, the architecture is so different from anything we are used to that there's no mistaking this for home. Actually, it does feel like what towns were like back when I was little when downtown was still the place to go to shop for everything. We search store after store with no luck finding anything silk or green. I will admit that I did get lost in the fabric department of one "department store" and they had to come looking for me. I mean I just turned the corner and there was all this fabric! I couldn't just walk away, there were batiks and Indian silks for saris and beautiful tapestries. They kept calling me and I just forgot where I was and what we were doing. Linda soon found me and brought me back to reality and it was off to another store.
Linda and Millie did take us to one souvenier shop where we spent about an hour pouring over selections to buy for everyone back home. They were also the one store we found that would take a credit card. (this was big for me because I still didn't think I had much to spend with that whole money exchange thing going on) Because my children still haven't been home to receive their gifts, I won't share what I purchased but I was very pleased with the things I found and they were all locally made which was important to all of us. So when I went to pay for all of my purchases and she did the exchange for the credit card charge I discovered that I was actually rolling in Suriname dollars and could have just paid for everything and had plenty of money left over! The exchange had been $2.80 Suriname dollars for every US dollar. Novice!
Lunch is at a cute little outdoor restaurant called "The Pancake House". This is no IHOP let me tell you. The "pancake" is more along the lines of a crepe but with all kinds of ingredients added like an omlet that's not folded. They have about 260 varities to order both sweet and savory. Linda and Millie say they are very big and enough to split between two. I'm hungry for something fresh and green so I opt for their ceasar salad. Linda orders one too. Kathy and Millie order one pancake to split and Tracy orders a shrimp pancake that sounds yummy.
Well, the pancakes arrive and they are huge! They come on platters with the name "MEGA PLATE" on the rim. That tell ya anything? The ceasar salad is nothing like in the States. It's more like a chopped salad with peanuts, cashews, raisins, cucumbers and tomatoes. It was so good and I was so hungry for something fresh and green. Could have licked the bowl when I got to the bottom.
We make multiple stops still having no luck finding what we are looking for. It's hot and I'm tired of going in and out of both the car and stores. We finally head back to the house where Tracy and I test out 100 DVD's that tomorrow we will be handing out to the Chinese stores to promote the Chinese church in Parimaribo. I can still hear that intro music on the DVD's as we played each one to make sure they worked. Shades of "It's a Small World After All"! Only one bad one in the bunch!
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