Today was garbage day, it’s interesting to watch, no garbage truck but a dump truck donated by the European Union. Garbage is picked up then thrown into the back of the truck. The hombre up top dumps the garbage from the rice and bean/onion sacks then throws the sacks back into the street for anyone to pick up. Thank goodness they do not do this with the plastic bags! The dogs pick up any scraps.
There are no such things as dog cookies, I looked, and people find it strange I feed the strays at night Ritz crackers.
I had my first bank experience this morning. I went up to the bank at 9 am to exchange some US to Cordobas. $140.00 USD gave me just over $C 2790.00. The bank had an armed guard inside and one with a shotgun outside. Inside there were 20 cameras that I could count for only 6 tellers, but cameras were everywhere. I had to use my passport for identification and spoke Spanish to the teller, she then asked me where I was staying, apparently she needed it to input into the computer. I said I was staying with “mi familia”, the response from her was ‘donde’, where? This place is similar to other parts of Nicaragua (and probably Central America), no house numbers and very few street names. So I just told her three ‘cuadros’ (blocks) east of the bank and two cuadros south. That was good enough, that’s Nicaragua for you. Maybe next time I’ll just use the cash machine, but I am told the money exchangers give you a similar rate on the street. I then went to the pastry shop and bought some pastry (don’t know the names) about 8 pieces of good looking bake goods for $C 50.00 Cordoba’s. (About $2.50 CDN)
There are no such things as dog cookies, I looked, and people find it strange I feed the strays at night Ritz crackers.
I had my first bank experience this morning. I went up to the bank at 9 am to exchange some US to Cordobas. $140.00 USD gave me just over $C 2790.00. The bank had an armed guard inside and one with a shotgun outside. Inside there were 20 cameras that I could count for only 6 tellers, but cameras were everywhere. I had to use my passport for identification and spoke Spanish to the teller, she then asked me where I was staying, apparently she needed it to input into the computer. I said I was staying with “mi familia”, the response from her was ‘donde’, where? This place is similar to other parts of Nicaragua (and probably Central America), no house numbers and very few street names. So I just told her three ‘cuadros’ (blocks) east of the bank and two cuadros south. That was good enough, that’s Nicaragua for you. Maybe next time I’ll just use the cash machine, but I am told the money exchangers give you a similar rate on the street. I then went to the pastry shop and bought some pastry (don’t know the names) about 8 pieces of good looking bake goods for $C 50.00 Cordoba’s. (About $2.50 CDN)
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