It was old-fashioned, so, instead of picking the candy and then paying, you had to ask the shop assistant for the kind of sweet and the quantity. I had a friend called Harmony, who was English, and she advised me to try a sweet she called “dollars” which were basically like the host they give you in church service but with the shape of a dollar bill.

She then told me to ask the assistant and went to look around, leaving me alone and clueless. It was the first time I was in a place like this and my English skills needed improvement. Despite that, I decided to give it a shot and I asked the shop assistant for ten dollars while pointing at the candy. The assistant seemed confused and asked me:

“ You mean pounds, don’t you?”

I was about to die of embarrassment, so I decided to agree to anything he said. I knew something was strange because he wouldn’t stop staring at me, confused, while putting the so-called dollars into a plastic bag. At first I thought that he had misunderstood me because he filled the bag until there were more than forty “dollars” in it, when I just asked for ten.

I suddenly realized that what the owner had meant when he said “pounds” wasn't the name of the sweets, but the amount of money that I wanted to spend on them and he thought I was so dumb. I couldn’t tell the difference between dollars and pounds. So, you can imagine my horrified face when he offered me the giant bag of sweets and said kindly with a smile:

“Ten pounds, please”

I learned the hard way that in this kind of sweet shop, when they ask you for the quantity they don’t mean the amount of sweets, they mean the amount of money you want to spend.

The funny part of the story is that I didn’t even have the money, so instead of rejecting the bag and offering my apologies I decided to do the appropriate thing: I took Harmony by the arm and ran to the door and onto the street, leaving the poor man with a smile on his face and ten pounds worth of   “dollar” sweets.