Stories Beneath the Surface.

First Sips: The Night I Mistook Dish Soap for a Hop Infusion I still blush when I remember the first time I tried to brew beer in my tiny Santo Domingo apartment. I had hauled souvenir packets of lúpulo (hops) back from Medellín, dreaming of a tropical pale ale. My Dominican neighbor, Doña Caridad, peeked […]

That First Saturday Hardware Run The memory is still fresh, though it happened nearly a decade ago. I had just moved into a creaky colonial apartment in Santo Domingo, and a leaky faucet was turning my kitchen into a tropical swamp. Armed with beginner confidence and mediocre Spanish Vocabulary, I strode into the nearest ferretería. […]

How My First Dominican Paycheck Turned Into a Crash Course in Culture I still remember the sticky Santo Domingo afternoon when I collected my very first sobre manila stuffed with pesos. My boss grinned, thumped the envelope against my palm, and said, “Ahí está tu nómina, James, revísala bien.” I thought I spoke decent Spanish, […]

One steamy August morning, just before the afternoon aguacero that Medellín loves to throw at unsuspecting outsiders, I found myself stuck at a police checkpoint near Laureles. The officer peered at my rental car’s license plate, raised an eyebrow, and asked, “¿No sabía que hoy le aplica el pico y placa?” That single sentence—half admonition, […]

I still remember the first time I sidestepped a rag-tag pile of vinyl records in Bogotá’s Sunday flea market, only to lock eyes with a vendor selling a weather-worn Diego Maradona poster. My brain flicked instinctively into Spanish, but my Caribbean-seasoned accent almost confused the poor guy. Ten years of clumsily perfecting “¿Cuánto ‘e?” in […]

When the Tap Runs Dry: A Coconut, a Cistern, and an Unplanned Lesson I was cracking open a coconut on my rooftop in Cali, feeling very Dominicano about the whole thing, when the kitchen taps coughed out their last dribble of water. Ten minutes later a neighbor yelled, “¡El carrotanque llegó!” — the tanker truck […]

Ten years ago I walked into my first apartment in Santo Domingo with sand still stuck between my toes from Boca Chica. I had exactly three forks, zero curtains, and an urgent need for help keeping life in order while I figured out how to pay electricity bills that arrived without warning. My neighbor Doña […]

From Santo Domingo Traffic to Bogotá’s Autopistas: My First App-Based Hitch Ten years ago I landed in Santo Domingo with a suitcase full of sunscreen and exactly three words of Spanish. Fast-forward a decade and I’m a thirty-three-year-old gringo who can haggle for mangos in the colmado, flirt over bachata lyrics, and—most recently—book cheap rides […]

I still remember the first time I tried to explain to my Dominican butcher that I needed rib-eye steaks for a Fourth of July cookout. My hard-won high-school Spanish failed me, and I left the colmado clutching something closer to goat ribs than beef. Ten years later, my fridge is stacked with the exact cuts […]

My Unplanned Rain — A Personal Anecdote from Apartment 402 Ten years in the Dominican Republic had already trained me to keep one ear tuned for bachata and the other for sudden municipal power cuts. Yet nothing prepared me for the midnight pssst-pssst of water dripping through the lamp fixture of my Medellín rental. I […]

From Popping a Tire to Popping New Words into My Head There’s a moment every long-term expat secretly dreads: the hiss of a tire giving up in the middle of nowhere. Mine happened last July on the Autopista Duarte, better known as DR Highway 1, during a sweltering Sunday drive back from Santiago. I’m James, […]