Stepping Out of the Boat

OH MY GOODNES!! We had the surprise of a lifetime last night. We had just finished dinner around 7:00 and were getting ready to blog two days worth of stuff when there was a knock on our door...

Apparently, in the DR, it's perfectly normal to show up at some one's house completely unannounced to ask them to go out with you. The person at the door was Alberlco Rolanco (everyone at school calls him El Pana) and he said, "Hey, guys, you wanna go out with us?" He had stopped to see if we wanted to go out to the Colonial Zone with him - or so he said...

As it turned out, we ended up going with the other foriegn teachers and El Pana to three different bars, one of which was in the Colonial Zone. It was a great time, and the first real "fun" we've had here. Too bad it was on a school night.

So, Pana drove us around the city in his SUV, and first we stopped at a place called Adrian Tropical, which is a place right on the coast. We sat outside and watched an enormous storm out on the ocean - the lightning was beautiful. Everyone had a beer - we tried the national beer, El Presidente. I (Claire) am still trying to like beer.

Then, we went to the Colonial Zone, but everything was closed because it was night time. We sat outside at another bar right by the very first church ever built on the island of Hispanola. Christopher Columbus and his crew built it. During the day, you can go inside as long as you aren't wearing shorts.

Pana told us all about himself and all things Dominican. We learned about the best rum in the Dominican: Brugal. It's 37.5% alcohol. The motto of Brugal rum is that the night a man drinks Brugal, he will either fight or make love. Perhaps something was lost in the translation, though, because Pana seemed to think it was really funny.

By this time, it was about 10:00 pm, and I was thinking I'd sure like to get home since the next day was a school day. As we were winding down in the Colonial Zone, Pana said, "Now, I'm gonna take you to a place where you will see a lady dancing on a bottle."

Off we went to El Conuco, a restaraunt/bar in another part of the city. There, we really did see a lady dancing on a bottle. It was amazing and fun. We also had our first attempt at dancing the Merengue - not too successful. We have a picture of the bottle lady dancing, but we're having trouble uploading pictures some of the time.

We stayed at El Conuco until midnight, and I was just about ready to die (I'm not a late night person) when Pana said, "Well, the only thing left for us to do tonight is to go back to Adrian Tropcial and have some Sancocho!" Sancocho is a traditional Dominican stew made with beef and pork, plantains, yuca, and lots of garlic. It was certianly good, and by that time we were hungry again. So, we didn't get home until 1:30 am. It was a very late night especially for a school night, but it was very fun to see some traditional local places and experience the local flavor. Needless to say, we had a busy day today, it's 9:00 pm, and I can't stop yawning.

// posted by The Roths @ 8:29 PM