This past weekend I learned how to play dominoes with my girlfriend and the landlords. The landlords don’t know English all that well so it was pretty fun trying to decipher what they said and plan my next newbie move. Dominoes is a very common game that you will see people playing on the weekends having beer until 4 in the morning while sitting in there carport. We however had homemade Pina Coladas made out of real coconut cream, pineapple juice, and Don Q Rum (the favorite rum of the locals).

If you have never played, its an interesting and fun game. It reminds me a lot of card games such as Spades or Hearts. There is a lot of strategy involved, because you want your partner to do well and keep the other team from throwing down there dominoes. When one person gets rid of their dominoes that team wins.

Dominoes is a serious game here in Puerto Rico, the people we played with even have a custom table built with a Puerto Rican theme. The table looks like a standard card table with wood built on top with a picture in the middle of El Morro and sayings around the sides of the table such as “Boricua (Puerto Rican Taino Indians)” and “La Bandera (the flag)”. No one could find a piece of paper to write on, so a file folder was improvised as the score card. I still don’t think that I understand the whole scoring system, but I am sure it won’t take to long. Hopefully not, because we won the tournament.