Day Four: Humid Country, Dry Day.

Not the weather, the weather here is beautiful as always. Partly cloudy apparently means an intermittent cloud every 10 minutes.

No, what I refer to is the content matter of today's outings. Which involved a lecture from Central Bank of the Bahamas, a lecture from a large retail chain called John Bull, lunch at a greek restaurant (where the highlight of my day was the amazing Dolmades I had), a lecture from the Bahamian Parliment, and a lecture from the Main Post Office.

Again, I won't bore you will every little detail, I'll just make another list of each site and what wasn't interesting about them but what I can remember. There wasn't a lot interesting today, I apologize.

• Central Bank of the Bahamas
• Central Bank (CB) operates like the Federal Reserve, they don't deal on a personal level. Rather, they deal with other banks and companies and manage investments of both domestic and foreign persuasion. 
• There is no income/duty  tax in the bahamas. Goods are usually cheaper here because of this. Also because of this lots of foreigners bank with the Bahamas to save themselves the taxes they'd otherwise build up. 
• Tourism accounts for 50% of the GDP here. Because of this the Bahamians have a saying, "if America gets a cold, the Bahamas catch the flu." Meaning that when we take a turn for the worse, the Bahamas are going to take because we stop coming there.
• Americans make up 88% of the tourists coming to the Bahamas, and most of them arrive by cruise ships. 
• I got a 15 cent piece. It's square.
• They also gave me some Goombay punch, which is a soda and is like Mountain Dew on crack. Think Surge levels of sugar and caffeine... as in 54 grams of sugar per can. 
• John Bull
• Absolutely nothing of interest or value happened here, it's basically a department store with a bunch of expensive brands that I care nothing about. 
• I did get a free thing of perfume that smells like someone set a floral shop on fire. 
• Parliment
• The Bahamians just copied Britain for their government structure. They have a House of commons, and an Assembly. 
• The House of commons is made up of 40 members from two different political parties. They make most of the legislation and run the country
• The people who lose the Commons elections get shoved into the Assembly, which is analogous to the House of Lords. They get better digs but have no real power and the pay isn't that good. (They exist mostly because of political patronage issues, also it's probably a good idea to keep the people who ran against you nearby so you can keep an eye on them) 
• The current prime minister is into his 3rd term. He's known as a "common man" who speaks his mind to a fault and side-steps the general perks of office. He's known to juke his drivers and drive himself places. Apparently this really gets on everyone's nerves who are close to him. 
• If the Queen visits the Parliament while it is in session, she never goes into the house of commons (For the same reasons as she wouldn't in Britain). She always addresses the Assembly and they must stand while she's there. This is their penance for lopping of King Charles II's head when he tried to convince them he had divine right. 
• The House of Commons is green, like police station green. The carpet, however, is forest green, and the cushions are jungle green. The impression is that of someone who was told to make the room green and decided to scatter bomb the color scheme to make sure every green was accommodated.
• Lining the walls of the HoC are pictures of previous speakers. They wear the robes and the obligatory one-size-doesn't-fit-anyone wigs. They also switch from white people to black around the mid 1900s.
• The Assembly is lined with full portraits of previous Monarchs, included the ignoble Charles II. I think this is a nice touch personally.

• Main Post Office
• I was zoning hardcore by this point and it's honestly a lot like any other post office...
• ... except that it's all manually done. They don't have anything automated so a lot of manual labor goes into the mail system
• Also Bahamians don't have mailboxes, they must come to the Post Office to collect whatever mail is for them. Some have P.O. Boxes but others just walk up to a window and ask for their name.

That sums up my entire day. I'm sure I'll think of some other points of interest but for the moment, I'm still zoning out and Dinner's coming up soon. I should not that I got back to the resort at 5 today when it was beautiful and sunny. I rushed up to change and rushed to the beach just in time to watch the sun sink below the resort. It's almost heartbreaking. 

Tomorrow is an early day. We'll be heading to North Eleuthera by ferry and spending the entire day there. I really hope I can be outside for most of it because I'm sick of just looking through the window at a beautiful day. 

Hungry Suz shouldn't write blogs.