PORT OF SPAIN 27.9.-1.10.2009 Port of Spain - miten tarunhohtoinen nimi Trinidad & Tobagon pääkaupungilla, ja voi miten ruma se on. Mutta kaunista löytyy täältäkin. Koko kaupunki on täynnä voima- ja sähköjohtosyheröitä, joissa varoitetaan Danger! On haikeaa lähteä Karibialta pois. Tänään maanosa ja kieli vaihtuvat. Lennän iltapäivällä Quitoon, Ecuadoriin. Port of Spain on kuitenkin hyvin eläväinen ja inspiroiva kaupunki. Täältä on lähtöisin muun muassa calypso ja steel pan -musiikki. Jälkimmäinen sai alkunsa siitä, kun afrikkalaiset rummut kiellettiin. Nimensä mukaisesti musiikkia soite [View Full Entry]

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My dad would call it the scenic route. It definitely wasn't scenic. Chester to London was fine. I went first class. It was cheaper!? London to Heathrow was good, Rayna came and met me on route and hung out at the airport with me. I haven't photo documented this awesome last minute surprise because she'd been out the night before, hadn't had a shower and had a couple of big juicy zits on her face. Not that I minded, but she did. Heathrow to New York JFK was really good, I got a free upgrade to World Traveler Class which meant [View Full Entry]

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Preparing for my medical volunteering trip... [img=http://shop.advanceweb.com/images/products/2006/GI/Special_Gifts/misc/01673_HeartStethoscope_GI/01673_stethoscope_med.jpg] I have been planning to be a part of a medical missions trip a charity in New York have been organising for a number of months now. To be honest, I was so excited at the possibility of contibuting to such an awesome project and knew instantly when I saw it that I would be travelling with that team. My biggest hurdle was raising sufficient funds to be able able to travel out there, but as time has passed, [View Full Entry]

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Time for another blog spot. There are those whom have been badgering me for some time now to post more of my travels. Now that my last wave of papers and presentations has past, I have the time. I do study and work while I’m down here, but do you really want me to talk about that? And so I will start with Easter. Carlos, Abbie and I went down to the Wild Foul Trust to stay with my roommate, Isaiah, at his second home. We left Port of Spain for Point-a-Pierre, the bus cost about 65 cents and took us [View Full Entry]

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March 16, 2009 Hello all, Thought it was about due time to update my blog. I’ve got three weekends of excitement comin right up. For starters, the weekend after Carnival a group of us set sail for Tobago, a small island off the north east coast of Trinidad. It’s part of the country of Trinidad. Very friendly. One of the girls on hall is from there and she used a hookup to secure a couple villas for us, real cheap, as in hostile prices. We had a couple small pools, a dog named Shiloh, and a peacock on the grounds. The [View Full Entry]

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February 21, 2009 The other day I went up the mountain to make some reservations at the PAX guest house with another student for her grandparents. The owner is good friends with one of the professors at the UW – Madison. They’re both big ornithologists. Before we knew what was going on, he had invited us in for tea and cake and we were sitting on the back veranda. There are tons of birds, not quite hundreds, but a lot. Off in the distance various birds of prey are soaring the thermals. A little bit closer to us we saw a [View Full Entry]

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My friend Garron (whom you may remember from our travels together during the summer of 2006 and my visit to Rwanda in December 2007) has been living in Trinidad for the last year and invited a bunch of us to join him there for their biggest celebration of the year - Carnival! I used to automatically think of Rio de Janeiro and maybe New Orleans in connection with mardi gras celebrations but, as I have recently learned, Trinidad plays host to the greatest carnival on earth every year and when they're not celebrating it they're reminiscing about last year or preparing [View Full Entry]

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Yo everybody, I figure it’s about time to update everybody back home of my travels. Before I jump into anything, I can confirm my address now…as awkward as it seems coming from the states, that is as much info as needed to have a letter or box or chocolates find it’s way to me, some Lehman’s French onion au gratin would be good too. The cheese down here is wack…they’ve got Land-O-Lakes and Crystal Farms and fresh milk from somewhere in Pennsylvania along with some other my American type dairy products, including Yoplait yogurt. What really threw me the [View Full Entry]

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January 25, 2009 So it has been a week now, I am holding up quite well. The weather is still hot, transitioning out of the rainy season to the dry season (aka – the hot season). It has rained sporadically every single day. Day to day life is pretty chill here, but people don’t seem to be lazy. Things are more so just less organized. For instance, it took 8 hours for us to register for classes after having been pre registered for them. The girls did not handle that well, I still have yet to get my computer working on [View Full Entry]

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TRINIDAD IS HOT! We happened to come right before it rained, so it was wicked humid. Probably only 75 or so, but it was like the middle of July. Our flight came in right on time, the UW Trinny kids were there to meet us. A fantastic surprise. They treated us to some local fried chicken, like KFC with out the gross factor. They use this hot pepper sauce…looks like mashed up pickle relish…which is amazing, on everything. I think its garlic, cilantro some kind of pepper and a special blend of curry. Pretty awesome. The next morning, we had Subway. [View Full Entry]

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