Vic Sage wrote: So here's the thing. i work in an office building which houses the DR embassy. They're on the 4th floor. I'm on the 7th. It is common that a group of Dominicans will get on the elevator with me in the morning, and they will stare at the buttons as if the numerals were in Klingon. In order to move things along, i'll just reach over and push the 4th floor button, and they are grateful. Then the elevator stops on the 4th floor and, despite the elevator, showing a "4", and the signs on the floor indicating "4", they have no idea what to do, so I'll say "quatro" and they'll look surprised and get off, looking around as if it were the emerald city. While stopped there on 4, some other Dominicans will start to get on the elevator and i'll have to announce that we're going up (pointing up), despite the colored light indicators above the door that shows the elevator is going up. For all my services on their behalf, the DR embassy gives me (and all the other residents of the building providing similar services to the embassy guests) not a brass farthing. which is fine, i guess. It's really a very minor inconvenience to shepherd the "quatros", as they are referred to, through our complex elevating system on a daily basis. But it does raise a question. Does the number of hurricanes that blast through the Caribbean each season keep buildings in the DR to relatively short heights, making elevators rare and exotic birds there? I'm just wondering. I think my friend worked at that same building for many years...he worked at Devlin Video (or whatever it later became). He had stories too.