When It Rains, Go To An Outdoor Concert

Last Saturday, Juan Luis Guerra came to Santo Domingo for a concert. In case you have no idea who he is (like I didn’t before hearing about the concert), he is super popular throughout the world in the Latin music genre. And he’s Dominican, so it was kind of a big deal. Therefore, all of us interns convened in La Capital for the weekend.

The other interns and I went to a friend’s house beforehand that was really close to the arena where the concert was. As soon as we got out of the taxi at his house, it started sprinkling. By the time we left the house with everyone to walk to the arena, the sprinkling had increased, and by the time we got there, it was clearly raining.

The place was packed with people, so looking for space enough for nine gringo interns to sit proved impossible. We ended up at the very top of the stadium, not in the very last row, but behind the last row in a tiny space between the highest seats and the wall that ensured we did not fall to our deaths. So there we were, in the pouring rain, with barely enough space to stand, and it was awesome.

The view was incredible. Could we see Juan Luis Guerra? Not really. But between us and him were hundreds of Dominicans singing and dancing to every one of his songs. Not one person remained seated while he and his band were playing; it was like a giant party. Behind us we could see Santo Domingo (mostly a lot of trees from where we were) from a bird’s eye view. We could feel the breeze blowing more rain into our faces, we could hear the collective voice of everyone around us, we could laugh at how crazy the Dominican adventure was turning out to be.

During the concert they had to take a break to deal with all the water on the stage and whatnot, at which point a lot of people left early and we were able to take their seats. This made it a lot easier to dance around and try to avoid catching pneumonia.* Other highlights included Juanes showing up to sing a song (cue hysterical screaming by the women in the crowd), as well as another guy named Romeo Santos (more hysterical screaming). It turned out to be a good thing that I accidently left my camera at the hotel, since it would have gotten completely soaked like the rest of my belongings, but that also means that I have no pictures from the concert to share. So you’ll just have to take my word for it! Or read this: http://www.hoy.com.do/el-pais/2012/6/17/432881/Juan-Luis-Al-son-deguerra-en-el-Olimpico 

*exaggeration: It was not actually that cold.