Bienvenidos a la República Dominicana

After nearly the first six months, I've finally gotten out of Puerto Rico for some travel.  Sure, the first part of the weekend was spent in Miami hosting dealers who won a trip to the NASCAR race, but on Saturday morning my boss and I flew to the Dominican Republic.  Every fall, my company helps dealers fund advertising for a charity project, and the dealer in the DR holds one of the largest events and has actually won our most prestigious dealer award.  So off we went.

This is quite possibly the first time in my entire life I landed in a country that I hadn't really researched.  Normally I've got the Lonely Planet travel guide in hand months before departure, but with guests in for the half marathon the weekend before and going 100 miles an hour at work, I hadn't had so much as a second to even complete a Google search. 

I hadn't been out of the US and its territories in over four years, so I was pretty happy that'd I'd even remembered my passport (yeah new stamp!)  The first thing I noticed was the currency listed on the signs at the gas stations.  Hmmm, also failed to think about converting any cash before I left.  Got to my room and quickly did an Oanda.com search on the exchange rate of the DR peso.  The second thing I noticed was that unlike Puerto Rico, Spanish is CLEARLY the language of choice.  It's unheard of in Puerto Rico for a hotel employee to not have some level of English, but I had to break out my Spanish to converse with the staff here. 

The third thing I noticed?  I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to adjust to this Latin culture.  We were invited to a dinner party at the dealer's house as it was his birthday.  We were told we'd be picked up at 8:45 to get there by 9.  We knocked on the door precisely on time like the good little Americans we are, and are the first people to have arrived.  A steady crowd started to flow in between 9:30 and 11 and it's all the three of us (my boss's boss also flew in for the event) could do to stay awake. 

A uniformed maid answered the door when we arrived, and at least three tuxedo-clad waiters kept the drinks coming and the wine flowing.  I'm told these aren't simply people hired because it was a party, but their full time wait staff.   Ahh, so this is how the other half live.  (Well, let's face it, it's far less than a half.)  I gotta tell you, it makes me a little uncomfortable.  I remember being in Nicaragua for a wedding, and we'd be invited to the bride's family's house for lunch.  After everyone had eaten, I tried to be the daughter my mother hoped I'd be and assist with the clean up.  I'm picking up plates and asking where to put them when I'm told, "Leave them alone, dear, the maid will get it."  Awkward.  And uncomfortable. 

I say awkward and uncomfortable, and thus far I've always been on the side of the waited upon, not the one doing the waiting.  Yet that doesn't stop me from wondering what those in the role of servitude think about their lot in life.  How does it feel to watch your wealthy employer drink and dance and carry on as you clean up the spilled wine and clear the dinner plates?  Do you question the chain of events that led you both to this station, or blindly accept your fate and make the best of it?  Or, God willing, are you fundamentally happy enough with life that you don't feel the need to ponder such matters?

I'm thinking all this one night, when the next evening we learn that the dealer will not be joining us for dinner as originally planned.  He'd found out one of his employees was dangerously ill and had been taken to the hospital.  The dealer had rushed there himself to try to make things happen for his employee.  And this gets me thinking that maybe working in the homes of the wealthy are the most coveted jobs in these countries….. 

Back to party night.  Dinner was eventually served around 12:30.  The gringos were the first in line, and it was all we could do to keep from face planting in our plates we were so exhausted.  The highlight of the meal was a tasty little ham and cheese sandwich wrapped in a plantain instead of bread.  I've probably mentioned it before, but I'm a huge fan of the plantain; wrap some meat and cheese in it and I'm sold.  We bolted around 1:30, and learned the next day that the party wrapped up around 5am.  When was the last time you were at a 50-something birthday party that made it 'til nearly sunrise?  Not this girl. 

It feels weird to have spent three days in a country and to have hardly seen any of the touristy highlights.  This is one of our largest dealers, so undoubtedly I will be back – hopefully while I still have a good friend from A&M living there to show me around.   Having only glimpsed the country, I don’t feel equipped to make any sweeping generalizations, but the streets are a bit dirtier, the buildings a bit more run down, and the drivers a tad worse than Puerto Rico.  Driving into Santo Domingo from the airport, I was equally drawn to the view to the left of the gorgeous sunset over the Caribbean through the palm trees, and that to the right of run down, partially demolished buildings piled high with trash and debris.

Today I learned that for more than a year, all cruise ships ceased porting in the DR because of the pollution after a Carnival ship broke a propeller on a refrigerator.  I'm told there is no garbage service outside of the city, so those who live in the countryside use the river to dispose of their trash.  Eventually, it ends up in the ocean and a good majority gets washed up on the beaches.  I heard some statistics today about the tonnage of trash removed from the beaches that I can't regurgitate here but suffice it to say were appalling. 

In other news, somewhere in the last few weeks I've gone from telling people, "No hablo español" to "Hablo un poco español."  And I've got to tell you, it's an exhausting state to be in.  I was totally mentally fatigued after a full day at the dealership, straining to listen to each Spanish conversation in hopes of catching enough to get the gist of it.  At least the Dominicans are slightly easier to understand than the crazy pidgin Spanish the Puerto Ricans use, but I desperately need to get over this hump;  right now I'm thinking it would be much easier if I were oblivious!

I Love Puerto Rico!

Or Puerto Stinko, as Insta-Friend referred to it tonight.  I’d been thinking it was time for a new post, but really wasn’t feeling inspired.  Since Dad left, nothing much exciting has happened.  Well, except spending Halloween weekend like a 25 year old in Vegas, but even then I didn’t have any really interesting stories to share.  Oh, and dealing with a mild tick infestation.  But I can’t elaborate on that here if I ever expect my sister to visit.  Let’s just say I’d been warned they are a problem here, little did I know.

Well, careful what you wish for, right?  Today was a very strange day.  It started with a meeting I was hosting at work to train the Puerto Rico dealers on selling our Extended Service Plans.  Have you ever thought about what it might be like to be in charge of the ebb and flow of a meeting that is largely being conducted in a language you don’t entirely understand?  I have.  It’s disconcerting.  Sure, they all speak English, and do so when addressing me, but it’s not their first choice.  When the conversation gets going, they all revert to Spanish, and I’m sure I’d do the same.  Fortunately, my coworker was there to assist, but when you’re supposed to be the one keeping things moving and you have no feel for the mood or context of the conversation, of if what you're about to talk about has actually just been discussed, it's a challenge.

After two and a half hours of that, I went straight to my Spanish lesson, also stressful.  We’re getting past the stuff I already knew, and it seems more often than not, when we’re done I have a mild headache.  After the lesson I had a phone call from our Michigan offices that turned into an in-depth conversation about the math behind the Return on Investment required for a promotion I want to run.  This also proved stressful, as I was finding the math WAY too difficult for someone with an MBA.  Ugh.

I left the office spot on five o’clock, not sure if I was headed straight home or making a detour at the gym.  Usually, if I leave right at five, it doesn’t take me more than a half hour to make the five mile trek home, and most of the time I can do it in 20 minutes.  Well, not tonight.  Tonight we set a new record: One Hour and Eight Minutes to go 4.9 miles.  For absolutely no good reason other than there are far too many people on the road here without a clue how to drive, let alone when there’s a mild sprinkle falling.  Ugh.  Needless to say, the time I would have spent at the gym I instead spent in the car, so straight home I went.

As soon as I opened the door, I knew something was wrong.  There was a noise coming from the back bedroom like someone had a power blower on.  Turned out it wasn’t a blower, but a toilet that had turned into Old Faithful and was spewing water all over the back half of the apartment.  Hence, Puerto Stinko.  Luckily, it was clean water because it was ALL OVER the master bedroom.  Into the closet, pooled under the bed, bathmats completely soaked, bed skirt saturated.   After the commute home, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

I turned the water off and the spewing stopped, then called the landlord.  She gave me the number for a plumber who didn’t answer.  I googled “Puerto Rico Roto Rooter” and came up with nothing.  So I called my contact from the relocation firm my company has us work with, and she is a miracle worker.  Scheduled a plumber to come out at 8pm.  I was told the relo company gets 10% of our rent each month the entire time we are posted here.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s money well spent to know I have someone I can call with connections.

Not knowing where to start with the clean up, I drug all the bathmats out onto the patio.  Thinking about how many towels and how many runs of the dryer it was going to take to soak up all that water, I knew I had to come up with another plan.  My first thought was that I really wish I had the shammy demo guy from the Puyallup Fair on speed dial.  I could’ve used a couple dozen shammies.  Obviously that wasn’t going to pan out, but it did lead to my second thought.  I have a big window squeegee the previous renters left for washing the big patio windows.  And the floors are tile.  So I squeegeed the water all through the bedroom, into the bathroom and down the shower drain.  I thought my walk in shower was kind of cool and modern, little did I know it would also prove handy and functional; I could just push the flow right down the drain.

It took about an hour to squeegee the place, and the best part is, the floors probably haven’t been this clean since, well, the last time the place flooded.  The real miracle of the night? The plumber showed up on time!  Took him 10 minutes to replace a hose and be on his merry way.  And put one more check in the column for never owning a home again.