Before arriving in Dominica we had to stop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. With no field work to do yet, we were able to have a night on the town courtosy of NSF. Our program director, who had lived for 10 years in Puerto Rico, took us to the old part of town to a restaurant he described as 'the hot spot to be' -The Parrot Club. Since it was Monday night it wasn't took crowded and the 8 of us enjoyed an amazing meal. I had some kind of chicken kabob BBQ rice&beans thing that was incredible. It took me forever to eat it because I kept stopping to tell everyone else how good it was. Best part of the meal though was trying different cocktails, making sure I stayed a half-step behind our increasingly giddy program director. I enjoyed a margharita, mohito, and rum & coke, all exceptional. The other students did the same.
After a brief walk around old San Juan to see the fort and city walls, we returned to the hotel where our professor, one TA, and one student went to bed. The remaining 5 of us went out to meet a friend of one girls in the program. We met a mexican restaurant/bar which featured a live band playing bad 80's rock covers that would randomly take 15 minutes breaks during which loud base-heavy rap music was played. Both girls go to Mount Holyoak, which I found interesting as I have a Wellesley girlfriend, so we bonded over this rather random not so much of a commonality. Our conversations involved me feeling awkward in all-girl dining halls, what I feel is the overuse of the posessive term 'boy' by Wellesley girls, and the different reputations of the remaining all-female seven sisters schools. I learned that Smithies are either 'preppy' or 'lezzie' (or both actually, it was loud at the bar so I couldn't really hear), Mount Holyoak are the partiers and Wellesley girls were either bitches or too good for the other two schools (or both). I didn't really protest as I didn't want to argue with people I barely knew, plus I could understand their side and found it funny. The girl's friend was is San Juan to see her boyfriend, who had actually broken up with her 2 weeks prior, leaving her with a plane ticket and really nothing else to do, so she came anyway and seemed to be enjoying herself; she introduces us to 3 Puerto Rican guys during the course of a couple hours; an obvious symptom of what I have come to describe as the all-girls school student "ooh! boys!" syndrome.
The shock of the night came when we received our bill. Somehow 5 of us had managed to accumulate a $120 tab with any of us getting drunk except one girl who's an '09 and really skinny so doesn't really count. My bill for 3 beers was about 12, which I expected and the other assortment of mixed drinks were overpriced, but expected. The kicker, which sadly fell entirely on our TA Richard, was Whiskey. While rum is very cheap in the Carribean, apparently whiskey is not. Richard's whiskey and coke, follwed by a doulble whiskey and coke, followed by a round of whiskey shots he ordered us all set him back roughly $60. Poor guy, he never saw it coming. It probably didn't help that I was pointing and laughing at him at the time.
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