Day 4

Today is our first Sunday away, and being Christians, we wanted to go to church. My wife has already scouted locations when she visited in November, and we settled on a church that was a half mile away. Growing up, I was raised Catholic. I went through my first communion, my wife did not. The sacrament of the first communion is sacred in Catholic families, I always tell her she can’t take communion without going through confession, but she ignores me, she’s a true Protestant.

A year after my first communion, the church my family was attending asked my father to be a deacon. My dad, chose to leave the church we were at and look for another, his reasoning was inspired by the Groucho Marx quote “I won’t be a member of a group who would have me as it’s leader.” So my dad took me to a church down the street from our house. Now, my father is a Vietnam Veteran (three tours), and before we stepped foot in our new church, even I knew how much he hated hippies, at 8 years old.

The new church was filled with hippies, only by appearance, and how the acted, and named their children, and themselves. It was what you would call a very Pentacostal church, lots of dancing during worship, lots of praying in tongues, a stark difference from the Catholic church I grew up going to down the road. Well, today we walked into a church that was identical to the church I grew up in.

When we walked in, people were singing worship songs, and dancing. I felt very comfortable, and welcome. My children were in culture shock not from the Spanish speaking, but from the dancing during worship. I felt like I went back in time to the church I grew up in, but everyone spoke another language. After worship (which lasted more than an hour) a group of people brought us outside to welcome us, they gave us snacks, and candy for the kids. The pastor’s son was saying a lot of things to us, and my oldest child the entire time was in my ear translating word for word.

Now I’m a lawyer, and I’m at the point in my career where other lawyers hire me to do work, it’s a nice compliment when other lawyers hire you. I handle very large and complex cases with confidence, and my reputation is thankfully growing in the small area of law I practice in. Despite that, I don’t feel very smart here, and relying on my 9 year old to translate for me gives me a sense of pride, and also I feel dumb. After this welcome speech, we start talking to a few people, and some of them know English. We eventually take the kids to their Sunday School classes and then settle down for a sermon I was able to understand 5% of.

After church we were hungry and we stopped at a restaurant across the street from the church. It opened at 1pm and we got there at 130pm, they were still opening up. That’s a big difference between America and where we are, in America if a restaurant is open at 1, they are ready to serve you food, and take your order. They took our order at 2pm. While planning this trip, we have heard nothing but horror stories about people getting sick here, and we have been extra cautious. This is a seafood restaurant and the ocean is pretty far from the town we are in. We ordered mostly fried shrimp dishes, it was pretty good. When we ordered guacamole, they brought it out with shrimp and other seafood as if it was some type of hybrid ceviche.

After lunch we went back to our place, cleaned up breakfast and watched a movie in our room while I took a nap and Bonnie relaxed. We were going to walk to a playground but it was getting late, and a thunderstorm was supposed to roll in, but it never did. Tomorrow we were planning to go to the US Consulate to check in and let them know where we are living and when we plan to be leaving etc… just to be safe but tomorrow is Martin Luther King Jr Day and they are closed, so I guess we will go Tuesday. *