supermarket-selection overload.

have you been in the supermarket lately? have you seen the rows and rows and rows of the same thing for sale? 

seriously, who needs that big of a selection of milk or juice? or salt. or drinking water. really?
the supermarket isn't hard for me. after all, there are very nice, big, modern supermercados in the dominican republic. really nice ones. with a lot of selection. i mean, there are aisles of wine which is impressive in itself since most of the country just drinks brugal. 

there are some things, though, that just boggle my mind and sometimes throw me into sensory overload. 

i don't think our food is any more natural than north american food - but it looks a little, well, different. my brother bought an onion the other day. a big white ball of onion-y goodness (i l.o.v.e. onions). it was huge and perfect. like, unnaturally perfect. (i would have taken a picture, but remember how i didn't bring my tools for the cell phone camera?) it looked like a giant softball. pure and white and not a dimple on its skin.
i, admittedly, borrowed these pictures from the internet. however, they make my point. do you see the oranges over there? perfect and round and orange? i haven't seen an orange orange in the dominican republic, ever. i don't know why, i don't know how these things work - but when you're accustomed to this kind of "home-garden-y" type of fruits and vegetables, it is a little disturbing to see such aesthetic perfection.

on every visit to the states, the first trip to the grocery store is weird. this trip, though, i got thrown by the drug store. my mom sent me to get some cold medicine. luckily, she was kind of specific - she wanted mucinex. did you know how many different selections of mucinex there are? i stood, perplexed, for a few minutes looking for the one. they were all the same thing as far as i could tell. there were different milligrams, different types of pills, a syrup. had i been alone in the store i might have hyperventilated. good thing i had someone with me just as clueless to the medicine chest as i am (the joys of being 14 and having mom take care of that stuff!) 

i picked the box of meds that matched the price my mom told me - a syrup that was not on sale - and headed to the register. we walked past the aisles of everything in the world - 17 different kinds of cotton balls, 12 different brands of cotton swabs, perfume, makeup, 16 varieties of nail clippers. 

i paid quickly and got out. i haven't been back in the drugstore since, but i'm going to need to venture out before we head back to santiago - after all, there are some things i need to get.