Before the movie, we grabbed lunch at the food court. I got a Pizza Hut personal pizza for $5.00 with fries and a soda (boring, I know, but I wanted pizza) and Emily got lasagna ($3.99 with soda) from a different place. When she came back, she had two pieces of lasagna in ceramic dishes with real silverware. She had pointed at the lasagna picture behind the counter and said, "Dos, por favor". Instead of interpreting that as meaning "item number two", the clerk thought she meant two pieces. We really need to improve our Spanish!
On the way to the theater we passed a shoe store. Here are some of the prices (yikes!):
These shoes look like they should sell for $10-$15 at Target! Imported goods are just so expensive!
The movie we chose was "El Hombre de Acero" ("Man of Steel", the new Superman movie). It was dubbed in Spanish, of course, so we were interested to see how much of it we would be able to understand. The theater does seem to have at least one showing of each movie in English each day, but it's the last showing of the day and doesn't start until around 11:00p. I don't feel like walking the streets of Guayaquil after 1:00a. Here's the ticket:
Tickets on Mondays and Tuesdays are $4.30 each. We were 15 minutes early and were the first people there, so we sat in the middle of the seats. Almost everyone else who came after us sat in the top row. The theater was like those in the US, but there weren't any ads or trivia questions during the pre-movie wait; just a blank screen. We got a Coke and popcorn for $5.90:
There was no butter on the popcorn, but that's how we like it. They had a butter machine next to the popcorn machine, but the clerk never asked if we wanted any.
The first thing to show on the screen was a focus pattern (sorry, no picture!). The camera operator adjusted the projector until the picture was in focus. After that, four quick previews (all of them featuring Sylvester Stallone, it seemed) and on to the movie. No cell phone reminders, no ads of any kind - straight to business!
It was a pretty good movie (the guy who plays Zod is a pretty bad looking dude) and we understood about 10% of the dialogue. Action movies don't require much dialogue, but there were a couple of times where everyone else in the theater laughed at a joke that we, of course, didn't get. Good fun, though!
It's a straight shot from the mall to our apartment - they're on the same street about a mile and a half apart. We caught a taxi at the mall (they're vetted there for safety) so we could get back before sundown. On the way, the driver explained that he was going to take a side street that would allow him to avoid the U-turn in front of the hotel; no problem. When he started taking a road that I knew didn't lead to the hotel, however, we were done with him. We were stuck in traffic, so I said, "Aqui es bueno" ("Here is good") and Emily and I both jumped out of the cab. I tossed him two dollars and closed the door. I don't think he had any bad intentions, but we're not going to wait around long enough to find out. I think he was just confused as to where to go. We walked the final half-mile to the apartment.
Timmy's pitching tonight, so we're listening to the Giant's game while I'm typing this. Another day, another adventure!
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