Sunday, October 29, 2006
Halloween Dominican Style
Even though Halloween registers barely more than a blip on most Dominicans' holiday radar screens, my colleague Daryl and his wife Virginia host an annual Halloween bash in their beautiful top floor apartment near the U.S. Embassy. Four of us came up with a plan to be Mexican wrestlers and spent some hard-earned cash buying beautiful fabric to create costumes of which Nacho Libre would be jealous. Every half hour or so at the party, we would initiate a match (and thus becomming "those people" that everyone must watch out for at parties) and wrestle one another or innocent by-standers to the ground using a particular specialized move that matched our names: Atomic Pedro, Hombre Handler, Senor Smash, and Lethal Labios. Everyone was reminded once again not to let Mark on the dancefloor with a beverage as my butterfingers just can't hang on to anything while trying out new Merengue moves (especially in costume, for gawdsakes). Unfortunately, my friend Lissa took a nasty fall to the elbow before a towel arrived to swab up the mess. Those revelers who remained at the party to the end were treated to a huge steaming bowl of delicious Dominican soup called Sancocho that put each of us to bed happy.