JLG.

Juan Luis Guerra. 

I tried very hard to think of a comparable Juan Luis Guerra in the US, but there really isn't one. Imagine if the US had one genre of music that everyone in the nation enjoyed more than all the others, and then that there was one artist who did it better than anyone else, and everyone could point to that one person as the sole American artist who had achieved the most worldwide success.  With that in mind, you can start to understand why 50,000 people flocked to the Olympic Soccer Stadium in Santo Domingo for his concert on Saturday night.

Damp.

As we get to the stadium around 7:15, it had just started to rain. It was one of those rains that you welcome, you know? Light enough to cool you, but not enough to ruins things. Our tickets were for el terreno, or the groud/field area of the stadium, so we made our way in and got up as far front as we reasonably could. Then we stood there for over an hour until the concert started.

Wet.

By the time the opener actually started playing, the light rain had turned into a kind-of-annoying rain. We were starting to get a bit uncomfortable... the open was decent, although we had no idea who he was, but we tried to pick out one phrase from every chorus to sing along with him just the same ("Quiero salir contigo está nooooche...").  In the break between, it stopped raining for a second, leaving us in a mass of wet, sticky, smelly people armed with thunder sticks packed up against you as far as the eye could see in every direction. Then I began to wonder if this is what hell was like.

I took a video so you could fully appreciate the enormity of the masses of people.

When Juan Luis Guerra finally started playing, we'd already been waiting there for over two hours, and then it started pouring. The torrential downpour kind, where the rain actually drowns out the sound of the thunder sticks instead of the other way around.  Once JLG started playing I regained the will to live. He was soooo good. He had a full band complete with back-up sings and a brass section behind him, along with huge screens that illustrated and complimented his lyrics. It was super high energy, and the crowd was going crazy, singing all the songs at the top of their lungs.  It was such an incredible feeling... standing among thousands and thousands of people dancing in the pouring freezing rain. We couldn't help but laugh :] I won't forget that anytime soon. After about seven or eight songs, the wind had picked up, and since we had no deep-seated emotional attachment to the artist after all, we let our fear of pneumonia win out and pushed our way through the masses and finally made it to the exit on the opposite it.  Oh, and Juanes was at the concert too. If you are unfamiliar with Latin pop music, that's a big deal.

Completely drenched.

We were so. Incredibly. Soaked. I honestly my camera was done for, but it turned out to be a little trooper. I was wearing denim maroon shorts, and as they got wet they started dripping dark purple dye all down my legs... I still have some stains around my ankles. So funny! I thought I was bleeding profusely there for a little bit.
We found a street vendor selling hot ears of corn, which tasted like heeeaven. We were so so cold, and it was still pouring! We sought refuge from the rain under the roofed-around outside an emergency room on the corner while we waited for our ride. Oh, and while we were standing there, there was a commotion and a guy (who looked like a security guard or policeman) was rushed in who looked like he'd been stabbed in the back. A few minutes later there was another fuss as a man was usher out of the hospital with his hands behind his back, and the escort was carrying a gun. So. That was mildly terrifying. But we're all okay so no worries, everyone :]

So Saturday was eventful, to say the least. I decided the concert was one of those best-experiences-that-I-never-want-to-do-again type of things. It was definitely a slam bang finish to our weekends in Santo Domingo, that's for sure!!