This will put you in the Christmas spirit...in a merengue, tropical sort of way

Nothing spreads Christmas cheer like some Puerto Rican dudes dressed up as the 3 Kings, throwing out red, plastic balls from the bed of a Ford F-250. It also helps that they blast this 'Feliz Navidad' song from 5 foot speakers mounted from the back of another F-250 pickup truck.

Keep in mind they drive in idling speed, slamming your ear buds with the music from this video below. I was more than slightly annoyed when we were behind this parade a couple of weeks ago, trying to get to a nearby Subway took twice as long. However, Santa has since softened my heart and I now realize that I'll probably never see something like this in the states...therein lies my newfound desire to write a blog post about this parade.

Feel free to use some of these awesome choreographed dance moves during the holiday season, they're sure to spice up the typically mundane family Christmas party.

What I plan to do when I get my own house

Some friendly PR pick-up basketball

I just got back from playing pick-up basketball with about a dozen Puerto Rican guys. The players who were sitting out and waiting for the next game to start were drinking Medalla Light (similar to Coors Light) in place of Powerade or conventional water. Sort of odd I guess...but when in Rome, right? At least I waited until after we finished playing to enjoy a cold one.

Questions, Anyone?

A few weeks ago, we visited the girl volunteers at their school in the mountainous area of Puerto Rico, about an hour and a half from San Juan. I forgot about this story until now but I thought I'd share, thinking "better late than never."

Before each class period we sat in on, we introduced ourselves and said where we were from in the United States. I tried to keep it short and to the point, considering most of the kids were bouncing off the walls from the 50g of sugar they had just consumed during their morning snack break.

During the second grade classroom visit, I told them my name was Stephen, I was from Ohio, and that I was a volunteer in San Juan. "Any questions?" I said. After a silent, awkward pause a boy with jet black, spiked hair raised his hand. "I like animals," he said.

Failure on my part I guess. I don't think teaching is in my future, we'll let Ashley handle that.

Just me blabbering

Anxiously awaiting the arrival of my family and being able to enjoy the luxuries of their nice hotel: hot shower, no ants on the floor or dishes, no water leaks from the ceiling/walls every time it rains, A/C, lack of dust everywhere, etc.

Also I'm ready to cheer on the UD Flyers, who are making an appearance in Puerto Rico for the PR Tip-Off preseason tournament...Gooooo Dayton Flyers!

My new Pandora station has a reggae, island, chill theme to it with artists like Citizen Cope, Dispatch, Sublime, Trace Bundy, Nelo, etc. and is appropriately called "Pure Awesomeness" and I'm pretty excited about it. Maybe that's a sign that my life is so boring now that I get excited about a new Pandora station, but to each his own.

Yulp, that's about it. I have more meaningful posts coming, but those require effort and pictures/video from my external hard drive that I left at my apartment. Sorry I'm not sorry, I'll get to those later.

Everyone enjoy their Tuesday!

$

I just found $32 in the back pocket of a pair of my shorts.

I think it was from a few weeks ago when I was walking somewhere and had spread out the money between my pockets and shoes. That way, in case the other volunteers and I were mugged, the bad guys wouldn't make away with all of my money...just most of it.

No, that reasoning is not made up and I really did that.

By the way, am I the only one who burns a Citronella candle in my bedroom?

Our Surprisingly Comfortable Suzuki

This morning we were about to take off in our awesome Suzuki Baleno for work when I opened the door and saw that the driver's seat was fully reclined. The Suzuki looks something like this picture, just imagine it with more scrapes, a cracked windshield, missing lights, no hubcaps, etc.

Anyways, we finally figured out that because we don't lock our beautiful Baleno's doors every night, a homeless person had slept in the driver's seat the night before. "Why don't you lock your doors?" you may ask. Well my friends that is a good question, and a relevant one considering the circumstances.

We don't lock our doors because we could never get back into the car if we did so. The driver's side lock has part of a key broken off inside of it, the result of an attempt to open the lock with an incorrect key. The passenger side has a lock, but the key we have to the car doesn't unlock that door. Neither of the back doors has a lock, in fact one of them has the tip of a hanger instead of a lock.

I'm thinking of leaving the homeless guy a note for next time he sleeps in our car (like tonight). It might say "Que te descansas, mi amigo" (rough translation of "here's to you having a good rest, my friend). Then I thought that he might like some food or something like cookies to welcome him into our Baleno. Maybe some milk and cookies. Like Santa Claus, but homeless. A homeless, Puerto Rican, Santa Claus who sleeps in my Baleno. Maybe resembling something like this guy...

Supplementing the Volunteer Stipend

Last night we went to Hotel Conrad in Condado to watch the Bears-Falcons Sunday Night Football game. Yes, the same place we went when that Skater dude bought us a $216 bottle of champagne for no reason. Well I guess it was for a reason, albeit purely an emotional, non rational one.

This time, we sat down next to an American looking dude wearing a Red Sox backwards hat. You can spot fellow gringos down here from a mile away. This young man, Jeff, was no exception. Things that clued me in that he was an American and not a light skinned Puerto Rican: lack of a rat tail, public support of any other MLB team than the NY Yankees, he was wearing shorts, flirting with the bartender openly (with little success but I'll hand it to him for giving it a shot), and the hotel bar's TV remote was directly in front of him (true American, taking over the TV controller to make sure he didn't miss any possible sporting events).

Turns out this guy (Jeff) and Dan (Danimal) had worked together at AT&T a few years ago, greeting people and showing customers the iPhone when it came out. Apparently Dan's title at the store was "Product Pro," which is hilarious enough in itself. Also, apparently Dan used to be super-skinny back in his AT&T days. Jeff called 2 people from their old store and his conversations with them were strikingly similar.

"Jeff: Dude, I'm on vacation in San Juan right? Guess who's sitting next to me right now at this bar? This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of, I've never even heard of such nonsense. Yeah, it's Dan from Lehigh! ....pause....Yeah dude, the skinny kid, yeah!"

Jeff had come down on a "buy 2 nights, get 3 free" deal from this hotel for $450 including airfare, which btw is an unbelievable deal if anyone is looking for a little time in the sun. Anyways, we got to talking about how he's made up that money (plus another $600) at the craps table over the past 3 nights.

Less than 10 minutes after that, Dan and I were on Jeff's hip pocket at the craps table in the hotel. Best casino game ever. I've been trying to learn for awhile now, and I finally have enough know-how to stand there and play, a huge accomplishment in my mind haha.

I cashed in with $20 and came out with $32. The way I look at it, $12 buys me two meals. Bingo, bango, bongo!

Weather Tips?

Why do these kinds of pages pop up when you type in "San Juan, Puerto Rico" on weather.com

http://www.weather.com/activities/driving/drivingsafety/drivingsafetytips/aggressive.html?from=36hr_fcst_driving_trigger

Things that make you go hmmmmm.

And I thought I was done with school...

Check Out Dan's Blog Post

Maybe that link is representative of a sort of cop-out effort at a blog post, but Dan's pictures are pretty much the same as mine and he does a good job of summing up our day at the school on Tuesday.

Below is a video I took that includes Dan acting like a pirate in order to illustrate a story to the kids...complete with an eye patch, parrot on his shoulder, peg leg, etc.

As you can probably tell the sugar from the kids' early morning snack is hard at work and they can barely contain their excitement.