Vicinos

We live in a Dominican nieghborhood. If your door is open that means anyone is free to come inside your house. If someone comes to your house around dinner time that means they are hungry and you should share your dinner with them. They don't exactly treat us the same as the other Dominicans. I think they know Americans are a little more independent and we like our space sometimes. But we do like to take part in the very relational, unselfish parts of this culture. We do have people over for dinner from time to time, of course its a very planned-in-advance "American" thing. Our friends, Leandro, and Joel (pronounced, Ho-el), came over one night and made Donplinas, (which is how they pronounce dumplings), fried salami, and sweet plantane, or platano maduro. It was a wonderful meal, that we shared with about 10 other nieghbors. Afterwards, I brought my laptop outside under the carport next to our house, where everyone hangs out, and we all pulled up a chair and watched a Dominican comedy classic "Sanky Panky" No it's not a porno get you mind out of the gutter. A sanky panky is when a Dominican man meets a older maybe not so attractive wealthy American woman in hopes of marrying her and fulfilling his biggest dreams of being able to sit around all day and do nothing. Ok maybe they do that anyway, but the catch is that they would have money, and ultimately someday be able to go to the US, specifically NYC. It's actually really funny, even if you can't understand what they are saying.