Last time I talked about my movie experience going to the
theater, where we saw a movie with Spanish subtitles. Btw, that kept me really
busy during the movie because I was watching the movie in English, reading the
Spanish subtitles, and reading the English subtitles when they were talking in
Japanese. But anyway, today we watched Poseidon on TV, and it was a dubbed
version, meaning it was completely in Spanish, no subtitles or English. I
thought it would be really hard to watch because the mouths are obviously not
going to matchup to the words and I thought the voices would be an odd fit to
the character’s looks. For instance, we watched a movie clip with Morgan
Freeman, and he has a very distinct and famous voice, so to see his character
and not hear his voice is quite odd and hard to get used to. However, it was
not so bad. They time the speaking to be slower or faster depending on the
length of that character talking. Also, at least for this movie, the voices matched
pretty well to the characters. So, those are my thoughts on dubbed movies.
In other news...
This week, we spent a significant amount of time at the
doctor’s office. I have now talked to 4 doctors here and only one of them spoke
English. It’s been an experience and quite the test of Spanish, because when a
doctor asks what your symptoms are, you don’t want to mess that information up.
I have learned a lot of new words and body language does help a lot still.
Everyone we have talked to has been very good and seems to have prescribed the correct
things as everyone is better now.
It is not horribly expensive to see a doctor
here, like in the US. I can’t remember the name of the first place, but it was
at the Minka shopping center. It only cost 8 soles to see the doctor there and
we waited maybe 10-15min to see him. He knew a little bit of English, but we
stuck with Spanish and he was understanding about talking slow enough for us to
understand. The only problem was that he did not give my friend strong enough
pain pills, but otherwise she got the stuff she needed. We also went to the
emergency room at Clinica Providencia, which cost 100 soles. The nurse that
gave my friend an injection was very good and everyone was very nice there.
There was one doctor that spoke English, and we eventually were able to talk
with him. I think he loved being able to speak with us in English as he kept
coming back to talk with us. We returned to this clinic for my other friend for
a regular visit, which cost 40 soles to see the doctor and 30 soles to get lab
tests done. She was a nice enough doctor as well and made sure to cover all her
bases, hence the lab tests.
Another interesting thing is you pay per pill here. Ciprofloxacin, is a
5 day, 2 pills per day antibiotic, and it costs about 10 soles for the 10
pills. I think it is quite convenient to just buy what you need. Just for some perspective, right now 1 sol is about US $0.35. Also noteworthy, all of the facilities were clean and well-maintained. My only
complaint is that they still didn’t have seats on the toilets.
Otherwise, it was a very good medical experience, at least for these symptoms.
And for now, I will end on this toilet seat business. What
is up with no toilet seats?! I was informed that people steal the seats. Uh,
why? What are you going to do with a toilet seat? Unlike everything else that
is sold anywhere and everywhere, there are no toilet seat vendors that I have
seen. You can buy a house on the side of the road. You can get all kinds of
snacks brought right to your car window. Every few blocks there is a restaurant
or convenience store. Yet, NO toilet seats. Also, very rarely is there toilet paper
or soap to wash your hands or towels to dry them. My tips for these occurrences:
bring your own toilet paper and hand sanitizer EVERYWHERE and learn to hover. Finally,
cherish the moments when there are toilet seats to be used. The house has one
and the Mall Aventura bathrooms have seats. Win!
~nos vemos~
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