Learn. Speak. Belong.

I once spent forty minutes in a Santo Domingo–Madrid product sync arguing about the word “ticket.” Half the call used the English “ticket,” the other half said “incidencia”, and no one knew which issues we’d actually solve. The root problem wasn’t translation—it was the agenda I’d dashed off in Spanglish ten minutes before the call. […]

A Tuesday night word problem meltdown A few months ago, my Colombian partner’s twelve-year-old nephew, Julián, plopped his workbook on our kitchen table in Santo Domingo. He looked up with those wide “tío-ayúdame” eyes and groaned, “No entiendo qué quiere decir hallar el múltiplo común más pequeño.” My inner math geek lit up; my Spanish […]

The 92nd-minute goal that tuned my ear to accents, not tactics I was crammed into one of Santo Domingo’s noisy colmados, the kind with plastic chairs, fried empanadas, and a TV hanging by miracle alone. Barcelona faced Atlético. As the clock ticked past ninety, Lionel Messi curled a free kick into the top corner. The […]

I learned the danger of loose lips one Friday in a Santo Domingo colmado. I’d stopped for a cold Presidente, only to stumble into a heated debate about the Haitian border crisis. I tried to sound informed and blurted, “Bueno, el gobierno debería cerrar todo, ¿no?” A hush fell. Two regulars stared like I’d insulted […]

When “¡Qué bella sonrisa!” almost cost me a promotion Two months into a consultancy in Medellín I congratulated my project manager, Daniela, on her presentation. Trying to flex fresh Spanish Vocabulary, I said, “Tienes una sonrisa hermosa cuando explicas los datos.” Her cheeks reddened, the room went quiet, and a teammate later pulled me aside: […]

I still remember the first “fifteen-minute” stand-up I hosted in Medellín. Half the developers were paisas who spoke rapid-fire Spanish sprinkled with “parce” and “bacano.” The QA lead connected from Santo Domingo, tossing in Dominican fillers like “¿tamo ready?” Meanwhile, our London product owner listened silently, trying to map Jira tickets to the Spanglish whirlwind. […]

I was standing in the neon-lit hallway of our neighborhood Unidad de Atención Primaria in Santo Domingo, sweating more from paperwork panic than Caribbean heat. The nurse asked for my son’s carné de vacunación—and I handed over a crumpled U.S. CDC card. She smiled politely, disappeared, and returned with a Dominican vaccination booklet I’d never […]

The day my pun died in Bogotá I walked into our WeWork kitchen, spotted the Colombian backend devs debating coffee strength, and quipped in English, “I like my Java strong enough to throw NullPointerExceptions.” Blank stares. One teammate finally asked, “¿Null qué?” My carefully engineered tech pun had crashed—hard. Ten minutes later, Sebastián cracked, “Este […]

A two-country Tuesday that reset my watch Ten years in the Dominican Republic have taught me that ahora mismo almost never means “right now.” But nothing drove the lesson home like one whirlwind Tuesday last month. I started the morning in Santo Domingo, coffee in hand at 8:00 a.m. sharp, waiting for a plumber who […]

The first time my college buddy Ryan crashed at my Santo Domingo apartment, I forgot one tiny detail: explaining the regla de los mosquitos. At midnight he opened every window to welcome the Caribbean breeze—and an army of buzzing invaders. By dawn we were both polka-dotted, swatting in rhythm. The fault was mine; I’d fallen […]

The morning I almost said “no” in the wrong way Nine years ago, fresh off the plane from a Medellín work trip, I opened my laptop in Santo Domingo to an email barrage from my Dominican director. He wanted a 40-page market report “para ayer.” I drafted a blunt reply—“Impossible, necesita más tiempo.” Then I […]