We take the dog for a walk at least three times a day. Two ten minute walks and a half hour walk. Problem is, he has always walked on my left and Jack on my right. When you walk on the street or road you walk facing traffic. We’ve lived in the country where there are no sidewalks. The dog is walking in the grass on my left. But, we are no longer walking on the road. We are now walking on wide sidewalks. We walk on the right side of the sidewalk and the people coming towards you are on the left side of the sidewalk. Naturally, the dog wants heads to the grass on the left. There are 5,000 people in this housing complex. We meet too many people to make them keep walking around us.
We have begun intensive deprogramming and retraining to walk on my right. If he doesn’t think about it and is busy sniffing he will stay in the grass on the right side of me. But, if he is ready to go back to the apartment, he keeps drifting to the left. Annoying as all get out and hard on the right arm. I swear I’m saying “This side. This side” in my sleep. At least he is getting better.
Grocery shopping didn’t go as well as planned. I had a list and attempted and succeeded to find in Czech most of what I needed ahead of time. Last thing I wanted to be doing was trying to explain dill or peaches to Hanka while in the store. Hanka’s English is great, but some words she simply has had no need to know in English, like dill or peach. We didn’t want to attempt our first grocery shopping trip on our own and because they both work, we did our shopping on Saturday. Picture a grocery store the third of the size that we are used to, but put the same number of people in that 1/3 sized store. It gave new meaning to the work crowded. In the 45 minutes we were there I got 80% of what was on the list. At least I got the essentials.
Today Jack and I went to a smaller within walking distance. I still have not found parmesan cheese. I save the labels from packages and cans so I can attempt to find the same thing the next time. However, that didn’t work today. I bought chocolate milk instead of white. The brown carton should have been some indication and upon closer inspection it does clearly read “cokoladov.”
We also bought a couple of plates and a frying pan at another store that reminded me of an Ace Hardware, only smaller. Up until now we have used paper plates and two one-quart sauce pans. Yesterday Mike took us to a store that would be similar to a Home Depot, only smaller. We purchased a vacuum cleaner there.
It is amazing how things just keep changing here so fast. I can see where soon the bakery and meat shops will be the thing of the past. The chain grocery stores have begun popping up. The grocery store we went to on Saturday was a chain called Delvita. It had the bakery and meat counter within the store.
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