La Pijamata

Last night I hosted a pijamata at my house. In the United States, a pijamata is a simple concept known to everyone – a slumber party. I think by the age of 10, all Americans (especially the girls) have been to a slumber party and the majority have probably hosted one. Well here in the Dominican Republic, that is not the case. La pijamata is a rarity, and I think I can count on one hand the number of girls here in Baoba that have been to one.

Yesterday was the 14th birthday of my neighbor Nancy, the little sister I never had (ha-just kidding Jordan), and I wanted to do something special to celebrate the occasion. Birthdays are not a big deal here either, and often people are lucky if they get a special dinner, much less a party with gifts from family and friends. So I hosted a slumber party for her and 4 of her friends.

First let me tell you that it was a hassle just to get the parents to let their daughters stay at my house, and I had to promise that I would lock the girls in the house so that they wouldn’t leave. But once all of that was settled, we started the planning. The girls arrived at my house around 10 pm, after a special mass in the Catholic church. I made popcorn (stove top, of course), poured soda and we all settled down to watch a Dominican horror movie called Andrea. After about 40 minutes in the movie, the girls were too scared and made me turn off Andrea and put in one of my favorites- Love Actually. One of the girls fell asleep during the movie, so the other girls painted her face with blue tempera paint.

The movie ended around 1 am, and then the real party became. The girls danced, listened to music, and modeled in their underwear in my full length mirror for about 2 hours, and then we all crashed around 3 am. I slept in my bed, and they all slept on the floor. And around 6:30 the next morning, they all left.

All 5 girls told me that they all loved the pijamata, and surprisingly it wasn’t as stressful as I thought it would be. Although I hardly slept because I kept listening for them to see if they were going to try and leave in the middle of the night, but alas nothing scandalous occurred. We did have two male visitors stop by around 12:30 am, but those guys (Javier and Fausto) are more my friends than the girls, so that didn’t worry me too much. And now the girls are asking me to have a pijamata for my birthday, but that is definitely not going to happen. I enjoyed the pijamata, but it is definitely not how I want to celebrate my birthday. (FYI: I want to celebrate my birthday by dancing bachata and merengue on the beach.)