Thursday, May 26, 2011

Adapting to Cultural Differences

Well, we have been in the French islands for a few weeks and have been disappointed with the lack of any "Happy Hour" bars or parties on boats around us. What is up here, was our reaction...then we paused and thought we are in France, we are where they drink wine, we are where wine is part of lunch and they take a 2-3 hour lunch break. Wait, they are smarter than us--their Happy Hour starts at noon and we need to get aboard this stand of thinking! So with that in mind Dave's grocery shopping list of late starts with wine,bread, cheese, and the other stuff. We are adapting to these cultural differences and finding an afternoon nap helps after lunch with wine. Another adaptation is the money exchange rate. To accommodate this difference Dave is calling the EU and US dollar a straight exchange rate. He believes he is paying $2-3 dollars for wine and $5.30 (which is roughly $7.50/gallon) for diesel. We heard gas and diesel is over $4.00 gallon in the states and thought that was high.
We are still without our ham radio, without internet, without e-mail and the local Wifi provider has been out every time we have tried his services. However, each day out at anchor we get on for less than 10 minutes at a time and with luck this will go out today, Thursday, May 26.
P.S. Dave is working on a new concept "Cruiser Trawler Extended Care". he see a wide open market for this service. More later.

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