Stepping Out of the Boat

Sorry we haven't been posting as often as normal. The truth is that almost everything here is "normal" to us now, so we don't think as many things are worthy of posting. We're going to do a

better job now, of keeping up on things.

This first picture of John deals with the first thing in the title of this post: BLTs. There's nothing quite like a good BLT, but bacon is hard to come by here. We had both had a craving for a good BLT, and when we went to the grocery store to try to buy bacon, it was nowhere to be found, and we didn't know the word for bacon in Spanish. So, we started looking at the butcher section where they keep all the huge slabs of raw meat and I (Claire) saw something that I thought might look like bacon. After talking to the meat cutter guy for a little while, I decided to go for it. We got a half pound of mystery meat.

Come to find out, it's the best bacon John has ever had. He went on and on about how good the bacon was and how much he liked it. It was a little saltier than bacon in the USA, and it was cut much more thinly with less fat, but it tasted like bacon. We had some great BLT sandwiches for dinner! (By the way, it's still so hot here that having dinner with a shirt on is not really an option for John.)

Another favoite food of ours here is platanos chips - "platanitos" - which are kind of like potato chips, but made from plantains. I (Claire) like them better than all potato chips, and John likes them better than plain potato chips, but not better than cheddar cheese Sun Chips. We have them for snacks on a pretty regular basis. They taste GREAT with a glass of cold Coke. By the way, the Coke here is super carbonated for some reason. It's like that in all Latin American countries. Here is a picture of a bag of platanitos wth two little platanitos out to the side. I think you can probably buy them in the USA at Mexican grocery stores.

Well, we sure had an interesting experience tonight! Before I proceed to relate the story to you, I need to explain to you that alcohol is viewed completely differently here in the DR than anywhere I've ever been. It's legal to drink and drive here. In fact, gas stations sell alcohol by the case. All you need to have a party here is a little piece of sidewalk and a bottle of alcohol. Alcohol is also really inexpensive here, and I think it's the people's way of coping with life. EVERYONE drinks. The most popular kind of alcohol here BY FAR is rum... that kind of goes along with the whole Caribbean thing... and the most popular kind of rum in the DR is called Brugal. It's everywhere. People drink it every hour of the day and night.

So - yesterday, we got a text message from our friend Roger who has lived here for six years. He really likes to drink, so he fits in well with the culture here. He said we needed to go to this place called "Carre Four" because Brugal was doing a promotion there. After some confusion and a few more text messages, we figured out that Carre Four is a grocery store, and they were having a sale on Brugal and other alcohols. Roger was still really excited about it. We thought we'd go along for the ride just to see what he was talking about.

As it turned out, inside the huge grocery store (like a Super Walmart), there was a tent that had "Brugal" written all over it! They had merengue music playing in the tent and tons of different kinds of alcohol set up. There was a little booth thing in the center of the tent, and they were giving away free drinks! Free alcoholic beverages in the grocery store! What is going on here!?!? Brugal sure was having a promotion!

What an interesting experience. Here we are in the back of the tent with part of the wine selection. It was crazy. After the people we came with finished looking at the alcohol to their heart's content, we shopped around the store. They had some great food options that we aren't used to - like blackberry jam. So, we picked up a few things that we can't get close to our apartment. I also got a nice pair of shoes that were on sale. I love shoes!

Overall, it was an experience we woudln't want to miss. How many other times in our lives are we going to go to a grocery store for an alcohol sale as a Friday night activity? (Probably never again.) We'll chalk one up to bizarre experience!