Clap she up

What a week...good, bad, busy, exhausting, relaxing. I've been in San Fernando working this week, which is in South and is just under an hour commute. The hour, however, doesn't start until you get into a car, and if you don't get down to the taxi stand early enough (before 6:30am)there is a whole mob of people anxiously waiting for more cars to arrive. When Trinis wait for public transportation, all general human generosity and thoughtfulness pretty much goes out the window. There is no order, no line, no "he's been here longest." The rule is, whoever gets to the car first and is able to box out the hovering crowd gets a seat. So I have been getting up quite early to make my way to the taxi stand and avoid the rush (I was late one day and decided that participating in the mob was not going to work out for me and I decided to take a maxi instead. This was a 2 hour commute instead of 1, was hotter, less comfortable and more expensive, so this week I'll be setting the alarm a little earlier!) I have 3 more days planned in San Fernando and then my data collection is all finished!!

So the early mornings weren't the only part that were made sleep hard to come by this week, I also had a lot of evening activities. I've started tutoring again at Cyril Ross (house for HIV positive children), helped out a friend at an HIV awareness event at the university and went to the semi finals for the U-17 Women's World Cup. The game was awesome, Japan must do endless 1v1 drills because those girls had some sick moves and weren't afraid to use them! I loved the crowd, anytime someone got schooled everyone erupted and would praise the schooler/mock the schoolee for the next 10 minutes.

Tennille, Simmy, me and Danielle at the game

But the best part of the week was heading to Toco for a girl's weekend getaway. I went with Tennille, a friend from playing soccer with the university, and her two friends Adaeze and Tyrish. It was about a 2 hour road trip up to Toco, with a stop off at a famous chicken and fries place, before getting to Adaeze's aunt's house. Toco is wonderfully simple and country, we actually went crab catching on Saturday night! Crab catching includes walking around in the dark with a flashlight and a bag looking for crabs. Once you find one you strategically step on it and carefully scoop it into the bag. Later you season em up and make some stewed crab and dumplings or calalloo. I didn't have the guts to step on any, but I was a good crab spotter. We also played a few games of Scrabble, often getting on the competitive side, and a game of Monopoly that Tyrish dominated in. We cooked good food, hung out at the beach and did lots and lots of talking!

Like any girl's weekend, the talking was centered around boys, relationships, and of course a little friendly gossip. I didn't know anyone they were talking about, but I learned a few new Trini phrases that are some new favorites...

1. "I clap she up"(this is also a gesture that includes, obviously, clapping and a look with a lot of attitude). You'd clap someone up to emphasis your point, usually done a tad aggressively and to show your complete and utter disapproval and annoyance with someone.

2. "She gettin horned" Horned=cheated on and from the sound of it half of Trinidad is cheating on their significant other!

3. "He cuff she up bad" This would describe a real "stink" guy (awful guy) who beat up his girlfriend, heck he probably was hornin her too!

4. "That girl is slack slack" or "slack talk" slack is like loose, so describing someone as slack means they probably get around a bit, someone you might refer to as the village bicycle in the States. Slack talk would be like rude/loose talk

5. "She make a baby for he" This one is obvious, but it sounds way more interesting than she's pregnant.

There were plenty more, but so many aren't affective without the facial expression that goes with them. The moral of the story was that it was a really great weekend and I've now got a lot of dirt on a lot of people...too bad I can't remember any of their names or which thing was about them!


We caught a crab!!


The four of us on the crab hunt...me, Tyrish, Tennille and Adaeze


The sunset while hunting


Auntie Gracie, who we stayed with, Adaeze, Tyrish, Tennille and Happiness (yes, they call him Happiness. He helps out Grace with the house and was an interesting character!!)

Great week where nothing went according to plan!

Throughout life, you only get a handful of people that really get you, that you really enjoy and can fully be yourself with. Luckily for me, my mom is one of these people for me, she is just one of my favorite people and a real inspiration to me. (Don't worry dad, you are right up there too, but mom has the girl thing on you, sorry!) And, again luckily for me, she just came to visit me in Trinidad!! So I went home for a week to go to a friend's wedding (woo Bowden!), do some interviews (I just accepted a position with ConAgra in Council Bluffs, IA) and visit Brenton and the family. Then mom came back to Trinidad with me to spend a week gallivanting around the island. It was so wonderful to have her here and here's an account of some of our adventures...

The Hike
So one thing mom really wanted to do was go on a hike, so I called up some friends to plan a nice, simple hike for us to some beautiful waterfall. A friend posed Rincon, telling me it was a 45 minute walk with a couple challenging hills but a great end destination...mom was up for the mini-challenges so we set it up. Have I ever mentioned that Trinis have a way of distorting time? The 45 min was really and hour and 45 minutes and the little challenging hills were actually one of the following: straight uphill, gradually uphill for a really long time or plummeting downhill. I'm not sure there were more than 15 feet of straight ground the whole time! This face explains everything...

But, a couple falls, scrapes and bruises later we did reach the waterfall and it was incredibly beautiful. I've never seen a taller waterfall and the pool was clear and cool, just right after the hot hike!


The whole thing was quite a challenge, but we did it! It was quite a sense of accomplishment getting back to the car (and mom was quite proud she wasn't last!). Everyone was impressed with mom's tenacity and a few of the girls told me how brave they thought she was, sounds about right to me!

Hotel Flip Flop
So after the hike, the plan was to stay a couple nights in Blanchisseuse and relax by the beach, b..u..t, that isn't quite how it all worked out. Neither the hotel nor the taxi driver who was going to take us there ever answered or returned any of my phone calls (still, to this day have not called me back even though I had a room reserved!) so we needed a new plan. On the way back from the hike we stopped at Maracas Bay to feast on the famous Bake n' Shark (mom thought we were saying bacon something and was very confused by the fried piece of meat inside the fried piece of dough we gave her!). The meal was delicious and happened to be right next to the Maracas Bay Hotel...light bulb! So we stayed the night there, did the next day at the beach and rested our tired legs! The whole thing worked out better than we could have planned and gave us an extra day to gallivant some more. This one is proof that we were on a beach, you can kinda see sand and water in the background.



The Rain Game
So right now it is the rainy season here in lovely Trinidad which means you just never know what you are going to get. One morning we had planned to go to the botanical gardens and the zoo...it poured and flooded a bit (ended up having a delicious lunch and shopped around a little strip mall). Went to yoga in Port of Spain...it poured and flooded a bit (still made it out alive and in time to go see our chick flick). Wanted to spend our last afternoon hanging out, reading and relaxing...it poured and flooded up the valley to my house and we got stuck in a maxi trying to get home for 2 hours (still enjoyed the rest of our afternoon though). So the rain won sometimes, but we always seemed to make a come back!



Gasperee Caves
Since we had an extra day, we went on a tour of Gasperee Caves on a "3 Hour Tour" (the name made us a little worried, we don't have too much experience making coconut radios, but no Gilligan's Island repeats on this particular day). We ended up being the only two people on the tour that day, so we could go at our own pace and decide what all we wanted to do. The tour guide even let us swim in the lake inside the cave, which you are totally not allowed to do! The caves were really cool, I had never seen anything like it before, but sorry, pictures just don't really do it justice, so I am just putting a couple up.




So we did some other stuff too...went on a fabric shopping extravaganza, ate some good Trini food, went to the movies, did some yoga, went for walks, read, went to a game for the U-17 women's world cup that is hosted by Trinidad this year and ate some more. It was a really great week! Here are just a couple more pics...