El monumento
soooo last night was fun!
Somewhere in the city (I still have a hard time telling what's where because of the necessity to take taxis at night...) there is an enormous monument that has something to do with a previous governmental administration (i'll find out more eventually in my classes, but right now i can't remember what it's for...). it's up on a hill with a road going up to and around it in a circle so that cars can drive around and around and around aimlessly.
On one of the sides of the hill a gigantic stairway leads down to the street below which is lined by bars and what-have-you. I'd been there once before, but yesterday was the first time i'd been there at night, which apparently... is the time to be there.
Remember how I mentioned that most cars have banging soundsystems? Well, a lot even actually have a PA system stashed in the trunk or the hatchback of an SUV...
oh i forgot to mention that on the outside of the road encircling the monument is a near-continuous bench....
so, what all the young dominicans do is hang out there at night, the circle full of cars blasting music so loud you'd think you were in a club while you're actually hanging out on top of a hill looking over the beatifully expansive lights of Santiago.
The ever present young boys wearing rags beg to shine your shoes for $RD5 (15 cents) and countless other people walk around selling Presidente (the most popular dominican beer) out of a cooler, or chips, flowers, food, anything they think people will buy. But of course, people rarely do (except the beer).
I hung out with two american amigas of mine, as well as a bunch of dominican friends that i've made and we drank cuba libres (the most popular cocktail here, better known in the US as a rum and coke) and danced to reggaeton in the eerie shadows of the spotlights illuminating the monument. Since there are really no laws governing the use of alcohol (including while driving... also, no one EVER wears seatbelts, and most cars don't even have them [and all cars are standards]), most people bring their own rum or beer up to the momument to hang out, and when I arrived, my dominican friends already had a 2 liter coke, a bottle of rum, a 5 pound bag of ice and some styrofoam cups arranged in the most aesthetically pleasing way possible, considering that it was a 2 liter bottle of coke and some styrofoam cups .......
(by which i mean to say, they had haphazardly thrown it all in a pile...)
Soon enough though, all my dominican friends had to go home, and the three of us americans were left surrounded by strange crowds with the trash of the bottles, cups and bags that the dominicans left behind in the typical dominican style of throwing whatever trash wherever they want and then complaining later that there's trash all over their country....
We decided to see what awaited us in the bars below, which turned out to be a live band with an empty dance floor and a new favorite drink for me (reccomended to me by a cute dominican waitress, when i asked her what her favorite drink was) called an Alexander, and I had an interesting discussion with our waiter who wanted me to pronounce it in americanese, but i was on a roll with my spanish and rocking the "alejandre."
I have absolutely no idea what's in the drink, an investigation for another night, but it was served in a margarita glass and graced with a handsome portion of cinnamon on the surface. If any of you have any idea of my obsession with cinnamon, you'll understand just how well-recieved the drink actually was...
Entonces, the three of us caught a taxi back to our area of residence (known as "La Esmeralda") and explored the roof of one of our apartment buidlings, in the process probably waking up the neighbors at 1:00 in the morning with our contemplations of life and the customs of the dominican youth in a horrendously butchered language which at one point could have been called spanish.
I also bought a guitar yesterday for my guitar class, so when I got back to my room, instead of writing in my journal i wrote a few lines out loud with the strings instead, and rested my happy head in my uncomfortable bed with my fan on full blast trying to keep as much heat off of me as possible.
Fun night, and not too shabby for a thursday.
Tonight, I'm going to a party at Dahiana's house (spelled as such so that it's pronounced "Diana" in spanish), who's one of my dominican amigas, and I'm excited to be making a strange stab at the dominican social scene.
Somewhere in the city (I still have a hard time telling what's where because of the necessity to take taxis at night...) there is an enormous monument that has something to do with a previous governmental administration (i'll find out more eventually in my classes, but right now i can't remember what it's for...). it's up on a hill with a road going up to and around it in a circle so that cars can drive around and around and around aimlessly.
On one of the sides of the hill a gigantic stairway leads down to the street below which is lined by bars and what-have-you. I'd been there once before, but yesterday was the first time i'd been there at night, which apparently... is the time to be there.
Remember how I mentioned that most cars have banging soundsystems? Well, a lot even actually have a PA system stashed in the trunk or the hatchback of an SUV...
oh i forgot to mention that on the outside of the road encircling the monument is a near-continuous bench....
so, what all the young dominicans do is hang out there at night, the circle full of cars blasting music so loud you'd think you were in a club while you're actually hanging out on top of a hill looking over the beatifully expansive lights of Santiago.
The ever present young boys wearing rags beg to shine your shoes for $RD5 (15 cents) and countless other people walk around selling Presidente (the most popular dominican beer) out of a cooler, or chips, flowers, food, anything they think people will buy. But of course, people rarely do (except the beer).
I hung out with two american amigas of mine, as well as a bunch of dominican friends that i've made and we drank cuba libres (the most popular cocktail here, better known in the US as a rum and coke) and danced to reggaeton in the eerie shadows of the spotlights illuminating the monument. Since there are really no laws governing the use of alcohol (including while driving... also, no one EVER wears seatbelts, and most cars don't even have them [and all cars are standards]), most people bring their own rum or beer up to the momument to hang out, and when I arrived, my dominican friends already had a 2 liter coke, a bottle of rum, a 5 pound bag of ice and some styrofoam cups arranged in the most aesthetically pleasing way possible, considering that it was a 2 liter bottle of coke and some styrofoam cups .......
(by which i mean to say, they had haphazardly thrown it all in a pile...)
Soon enough though, all my dominican friends had to go home, and the three of us americans were left surrounded by strange crowds with the trash of the bottles, cups and bags that the dominicans left behind in the typical dominican style of throwing whatever trash wherever they want and then complaining later that there's trash all over their country....
We decided to see what awaited us in the bars below, which turned out to be a live band with an empty dance floor and a new favorite drink for me (reccomended to me by a cute dominican waitress, when i asked her what her favorite drink was) called an Alexander, and I had an interesting discussion with our waiter who wanted me to pronounce it in americanese, but i was on a roll with my spanish and rocking the "alejandre."
I have absolutely no idea what's in the drink, an investigation for another night, but it was served in a margarita glass and graced with a handsome portion of cinnamon on the surface. If any of you have any idea of my obsession with cinnamon, you'll understand just how well-recieved the drink actually was...
Entonces, the three of us caught a taxi back to our area of residence (known as "La Esmeralda") and explored the roof of one of our apartment buidlings, in the process probably waking up the neighbors at 1:00 in the morning with our contemplations of life and the customs of the dominican youth in a horrendously butchered language which at one point could have been called spanish.
I also bought a guitar yesterday for my guitar class, so when I got back to my room, instead of writing in my journal i wrote a few lines out loud with the strings instead, and rested my happy head in my uncomfortable bed with my fan on full blast trying to keep as much heat off of me as possible.
Fun night, and not too shabby for a thursday.
Tonight, I'm going to a party at Dahiana's house (spelled as such so that it's pronounced "Diana" in spanish), who's one of my dominican amigas, and I'm excited to be making a strange stab at the dominican social scene.