The waiting game

Yesterday was a prime example of how things can take a little longer here than they would back home. After I left the internet cafe yesterday, Scotty and I went up into the market to look for ceramic tile and a piece of furniture for storage of kitchen items. The time looking at ceramics was not too bad, although we seemed to get the silent treatment from most of the ladies that worked in the stores. We found some tile we really liked (to put in the kitchen furniture), but that cost $6 per piece. Since we wanted 8 pieces and we knew the furniture only cost about $150, we decided that we shouldn't pay a third again of the price just for a few decorative tiles. We continued shopping until we found something at 9 Bs. a piece (about $1), which seemed much more reasonable. All of this meandering about was done in a constant drizzle and dashing in between cars and people, which is the game of market shopping, very much resembling "Frogger" (Atari, anyone?). We found the furniture store where we had seen our piece earlier in the week and went in to order one to our specifications. The owners are quite nice and friendly, which is the main reason we chose this store and not another one that had a similar, cheaper piece of furniture in it. But, they were quite busy that day, and asked politely if we could wait for just a minute while they attended to another couple that was already there. Well, the "minute" turned into about an hour and so we shared turns sitting down on a chair and staring at the piece of furniture in front of us, trying to figure out all the changes we could make to it to make it perfect. The rain picked up outside, and then let off, then picked up again. Scotty got hungry and found a handful of trail mix left over in his backpack. He was still hungry. I offered him anything in my purse he could find that was edible...chapstick, mints, water. None of those seemed to intice him. Then I accidently bumped into an iron rail (the store was not much wider than me) and knocked it over onto the head of the owner. Feeling like a big loser, I apologized, and he assured me that it was alright (although, he disappeared after that, I'm sure seeking medical attention). Another lady came in and took a seat, waiting her turn too. She started talking to us about why we were in Bolivia and was happy to find out we were Christians like her. We had a quick, pleasant chat, but her attention span was not quite as long as ours, so she took off. We were just about to follow suit, having waited over an hour, but then the owner came back and was ready to hear all the details of how we wanted our furniture made. We left about half and hour later and walked back down to our parking lot. Parking lots here are not quite what we are used to in the states, but more like a dirt lot where they squeeze as many cars in as possible. When we returned, we found there were about 5 cars behind ours that inhibited us from leaving. At this point, I'm cold, wet, and hungry, and very ready to leave the craziness of the market. Sadly, a 9 year old was the one directing traffic inside this lot, and it took about 20 or so minutes of shuffling cars, moving them around very much like those games with plastic squares that you have to move just right to form whatever picture it's supposed to be. I sat in the car, dumbfounded as to what I was watching behind me, but somewhat amused that this is normal life here. We finally exited with much joy and decided to go to our favorite restaurant, since it was almost 7 and way too late for me to start cooking. So, we called that our Valentine's date, which we had decided to postpone until the Bolivian day of love (in September), because we had completely forgotten about this holiday. So, next time you get frustrated with check-out lines at Walmart (as I constantly did), remember the Bolivian market.