Stories Beneath the Surface.

A clunk, a flicker, and no card: my Tuesday in Santo Domingo I had just finished a sunrise jog on the Malecón, feeling smug after resisting the siren song of empanadas, when I ducked into a Banco Popular ATM to grab cash for the colmado. The screen blinked, the machine hummed, and—¡zas!—my debit card vanished […]

My First “Banca” Bet and the Accidental Lesson When I landed in Santo Domingo a decade ago I thought my intermediate Spanish would float me through any daily errand. Then I wandered into a shaded neighborhood “banca” to escape the midday sun. A banca is a tiny kiosk where Dominicans scribble dreams onto carbon paper […]

Sweat, Sun, and a Faded Paper: My First Revisión Técnica I still remember the way my T-shirt clung to my back the first time I queued for the Dominican “revisión técnica.” Ten years in Santo Domingo and the heat should feel like a gentle hug, but bureaucracy always turns that hug into a headlock. I […]

I was sweating under the Santiago sun, my motorcycle helmet dangling from two fingers, when the nurse glanced at my once-pristine vaccination card and declared it “viejo como el diablo.” Ten years in the Dominican Republic have taught me that when someone calls an object “old as the devil,” a paperwork adventure is coming. I […]

Warm suns rise early in February, but the year I first went to Carnival in La Vega, the heat felt different—spiced. Ten years ago I stood on the curb with half a coconut full of rum, believing my intermediate Spanish was “good enough.” Then a masked imp lunged, cracked my thigh with a vejiga, and […]

Una tarde en diciembre: my first surprise “aguinaldo” Ten years ago, fresh off the plane and still tripping over my r’s, I heard a knock on my apartment door in Santiago de los Caballeros. Opening it, I faced a half-dozen neighbors armed with tamboras and güiras. They belted a merengue típico, demanded rum, and shouted […]

There’s a magic hour in Las Terrenas when the horizon still looks half-asleep, yet the beach hums with men untangling nets, women balancing thermoses of café on hips, and guitar chords fighting with gull cries. Ten years ago, fresh off the plane and armed with textbook Spanish vocabulary, I thought I was ready to chat […]

That Night the Power Went Out on Calle El Conde I was halfway through a Presidente when the lights blinked, the fan died, and bachata cut to silence. Ten years in Santo Domingo have taught me that a blackout isn’t an inconvenience at a colmadón; it’s the unofficial starter pistol for louder laughter and quicker […]

The Surprise Motion That Made Me Raise My Hand I was half-asleep on a humid Tuesday evening in Santo Domingo when the building administrator slipped an extra item onto the agenda. The ceiling fans squeaked, the neighbor’s bachata leaked through the corridor, and suddenly I heard the phrase everyone dreads: “Se solicita voto a mano […]

If you had told the twenty-three-year-old version of me that one of my most vivid language lessons would involve a tiny gold stud, a bottle of alcohol, and a grandmother who dropped the most colorful Dominicanismos I’d ever heard, I would have laughed. Yet that is exactly how I, James—a thirty-three-year-old American who has called […]

The Morning the Ground Wobbled Under My Coffee Two weeks ago, at 7:14 a.m., my Santo Domingo apartment rattled hard enough to make my espresso spoon dance. I had felt tremors before—Colombia’s coffee axis is practically a trampoline—but this one was my first sizable shake on Dominican soil. I rushed downstairs, barefoot, half-awake, and immediately […]