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!