Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Another Day In Honduras

We are leaving for the States tomorrow.  Yay!  This time Thursday night, I hope to be at Nathan's getting Camille hugs.  There is always so much to do before I leave. One day last week, I asked Matt if he would go to Tegucigalpa with me today and help me get the groceries purchased.  There were not too many errand besides the groceries and this should not have taken long.  It didn't take too long.

But,  I had meeting at school at noon and, therefore, we did not leave until around 12:30, rather late to leave.  It is what it is.

Our first stop was the bank.  The Casa store had a great summer and I was wanting to exchange some of that US cash for lempiras.  In the past, we have always exchanged cash and sometimes quite large amounts, in twentys, fives and ones.  And, I had a large amount today.  In the bank, they have to count the money far more times than is necessary.  They counted and counted and counted and counted.  Every time they counted, they pulled a bill or two out and put it in a special stack.  Then they counted again.  You can well imagine that a lengthy line was forming behind us. 

The special stack was bills that a tear in them.  No matter how small the tear, the bill was rejected.  After the money was counted 47 times and all the rejects found, they told us they could only exchange a certain amount each day.  An amount far lower than what I had brought in.  I just stood there in amazement.  Why they could not have told me in the beginning.  It would have saved a lot of time counting money they were not even going to exchange for me.

We were in the bank an hour, until 3:00.  I am very thankful tonight, as I still have so much to do, that all the other errands went much more smoothly than the bank.  Or we would still be in PriceSmart.

And, I guess Matt will go back to the bank tomorrow.

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