JUMBO adventure

As the name would indicate, JUMBO is a vast megamarket. There is a large grocery section inside there which sells many international brands so I was recommended by several people to do my shopping there. Plus it's close by - 15 blocks or so. And they have a home delivery service also. Made sense.

I've never been inside a store this big. Never! This is bigger than the largest Bunnings or Home Depot warehouse I've ever been to. It's HUGE!!
Now, this being my 1st shopping trip in my new country, I had a long list of staples, dry goods & toiletries to buy as well. After I'd worked out the layout & found the shopping trolleys, etc. I headed to the food section. Whoa! The refrigerated section for yoghurt alone was 40 foot long. I kept thinking 'who could possibly buy this much of yoghurt?' And (of course) because it was only my 3rd day here, I had not yet bought a decent dictionary yet, so was just 'winging it' this time. WRONG!
Using the natural 'process of elimination' method, I worked my way slowly & methodically through each aisle until I had pretty much all the items on my list plus many more items I'd remembered once I saw them on the shelves. This took me a lot longer than it should, without language to guide me but I was focused on the task, so didn't realise the time passing.

I worried that I had not enough cash on me to cover the total cost, even though everything seemed so reasonably priced. My large 2 level trolley was very full. I kept thinking how great it was that JUMBO do the home delivery service, for people in my circumstance for example. When I got to the checkout counter that was trickier to navigate, lots of gesticulation involved. I wasn't even 100% sure I had the right address for the delivery service! It was 15 minutes to closing time, so I eventually worked out that the check-out chick was telling me my delivery would now have to be scheduled for the next morning. But she reassured me that all my groceries would be stored in the chiller overnight, so not to worry about the food items - at least that's what I thought she'd said. She had even packaged up 1 bag of perishables for me to take with me (lucky 1 of us knew what we were doing).What was the time? It was 9:45pm. PM!! Yes, it was dark outside! I had been inside this JUMBO complex for almost 5 hours. Shit!

I had j-u-s-t enough cash, with a spare 20Peso note for a cab home. Phew! The whole pile of shopping arrived the next morning around 10:30am, bag after bag, delivered right into inside the apartment. Great service.

*Note to self: better get a dictionary fast!