Learn. Speak. Belong.

From White-Water Panic to Conversational Flow It was my third month in Jarabacoa, the so-called Dominican Alps, when my gringo swagger met the Yaque del Norte River. I’d survived the usual expat rites—the first mamajuana hangover, the first power outage shower—but this was different. Our rafting guide, Tito, rattled off rapid-fire instructions, and my “basic […]

When the Caribbean Rain Wakes You Up Three years ago a 3 a.m. downpour rattled the old zinc sheets over my Santiago apartment so fiercely that the drips sounded like conga drums on the floor. I rushed outside in flip-flops, flashlight between my teeth, and watched water funnel from a fist-sized hole opened by rust. […]

First Beats in Santo Domingo I still remember the first time I chased music down the Malecón in Santo Domingo. Ten years ago I was a fresh-faced expat who could order a cold Presidente but didn’t know how to ask when the next merengue band would come on. The sun was sliding into the Caribbean, […]

The Day My Vintage Guayabera Became an International Incident The saga began on a humid Tuesday in Medellín, the kind of afternoon when the mountains hide behind a curtain of low clouds and the wi-fi decides to imitate molasses. I had just splurged on a vintage guayabera through a Colombian classifieds app that resembles Craigslist, […]

A Projector Misfire in Medellín: My Wake-Up Call The first time I had to run a PowerPoint in Medellín, I swaggered in with ten years of Dominican Spanish under my belt and the overconfidence of a man who thinks a VGA cable is a universal peace treaty. I asked the techie for “el proyector” because […]

La primera vez que vendí mi air-fryer en Medellín I still remember the hum of Avenida 33 as I walked to a tiny copy shop to print the photo of my once-beloved air-fryer. Ten years in the Dominican Republic had stuffed my brain with merengue lyrics and playful doble sentido, yet that morning in Medellín […]

A Morning Arrival That Smelled Like Cacao I still remember the humid dawn when I first rolled up to the campesino co-op in San Vicente, Antioquia, my backpack heavy with a thermos of coffee that turned out to be redundant. The scent of freshly roasted cacao danced through the mist, coaxing me awake better than […]

La primera sala de espera: my wake-up call Ten years of life under the Caribbean sun of Santo Domingo can make you cocky about your Spanish. I thought I had every hospital term nailed—until my buddy Tomás dislocated his shoulder during Carnaval de Barranquilla. One moment he was trying the garabato; the next he was […]

I was halfway through my first tinto of the morning when the inverter on my recently installed rooftop solar array started flashing red like a Christmas light gone rogue. The timing could not have been worse: I had just flown in from Santo Domingo the night before, lugging four pounds of Dominican coffee and ten […]

I was halfway through a Sunday mango batida when the realization hit me: the deadline to pay my Impuesto al Patrimonio Inmobiliario—locals just say IPI—was forty-eight hours away. Ten years in Santo Domingo and I still manage to tangle myself in Dominican bureaucracy like a tourist fresh off the cruise ship. The difference now is […]

How a Wobbly Booster Seat Made Me Re-learn Spanish at 10,000 RPM Last July I flew from Santo Domingo to Medellín with my two-year-old, Mateo, and a suitcase full of toddler patience. The plan was simple: rent a small SUV, drive up to Guatapé, and let Mateo yell “¡Vaquita!” every time he saw a cow. […]