Mission Impossible.

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The group of international students I had met before were going to a Hindu wedding on Sunday, which inconveniently fell in the middle of our time in Tobago. I couldn't turn down this chance...especially since I suppose I am here to study, but we wanted to stay Sunday night in Buccoo. After much plotting Kerry and I decided we would both go back to Trinidad just for the day to go to the wedding and get a flight back in the evening.

Basically, to accomplish everything we needed to in one day would require some serious luck. We broke our day into 12 steps, mainly to amuse ourselves and also to make it seem like we weren't doing something completely ridiculous.

Our ride to the airport came early, which was a good start. Our cab driver, along with most everyone else in Tobago, wanted to know why in the world we'd want to go to Trinidad...saying it was so huge and dangerous. (I'm pretty sure even the biggest city has 50,000 people, but I guess it is all relative.) That's the basic attitude in Tobago. But Trinidad gets their jabs in too, wondering why we would want to go somewhere as slow and boring as Tobago. So apparently there is a bit of tension. Nonetheless, we made it in time to pick up Kerry's ticket, and the plane even left early!

So we were feeling successful so far and got a taxi to attempt to find the boys' house who we had to meet. We got a little bit lost, but ended up finding it, and were still ahead of schedule! We awkwardly sat around watching Anchorman while we waited for the maxi that would be taking us all to the wedding. A student from the University who is from Trinidad came with us to sort of be the go between with the family.

We all loaded into the car, everyone for some reason under the idea that I was the one who knew what was going on and headed out to the wedding. We went first to the groom's house which was ornately decorated and they were apparently waiting for us. I'm pretty sure we put a whole new definition to crashing a wedding since 7 white college students, hopelessly underdressed compared to all the gorgeous saris, paraded in and took the front row. Actually the whole day we were given the best seats, right up front, in front of the family. We were pretty much VIP. Unfamiliar with how a Hindu wedding works, we weren't even completely sure who the groom was (or if it was a man!) Everything became much more clear once we figured that out. And really I think Ryan would look pretty great all made up like this in July. Just a suggestion, it is even pink and green, Cameron!

There was drumming and dancing and still some prayers and rituals going on with the groom and his mother. We were pretty confused until a man came to explain it all. Turns out he was the head priest for the entire area and explained every little detail to me for the whole day! We headed out to the bride's house for the ceremony, we thought for a while the groom's attendants were going to have to actually carry him all the way there. Luckily for them, since it was a good half hour away, they just carried him to a car.

At the bride's house there were more rituals concerning the two families meeting and preparing the bride and the groom. I have a good 8 pages of notes...so if you ever want to know every detail of a Hindu wedding I'm sure we could talk. Until then I'll try and not give a second by second recap.

I didn't get a chance to eat, but Kerry told me great stories about huge banana leaves that they were all fed on, given more vegetarian Indian food than anyone could possibly ever eat. I figured I should keep getting all the info from the priest instead. My favorite part of the two weddings so far has been the little goody bags of fried donut-y type things that you get at both the bride and groom's house. So I snacked on those to hold me over.

The bride and groom eventually both came out and sat together, and were allowed to look at each other for the first time of the day. Once you are married, you perform all the special ceremonies together, so they were literally tied together for the ceremony. In all, the ceremony part lasted close to 4 hours, and that was the abbreviated version! We were supposed to go back to the groom's house after...but Kerry and I needed to catch our plane back to Tobago and we knew the boys were quite ready to go so we headed out. Not before being ushered to the back of some car for drinks though as soon as we stepped out of the house. Apparently there is no drinking in the wedding, but outside the gates the party is roaring. Getting out was interesting- most roads here barely fit 2 cars and this street was packed. It looked more like a parking lot, with 4 cars wide jammed onto the street along with lots of dancing Indians. Somehow we squeezed out, but Kerry saw several cars side mirrors and lights break. We conned the driver into dropping us off at the airport just in time to check in for my flight...successfully accomplishing through Step 10- what we thought would be impossible. We weren't able to get on the same flight, but we expected that so I happily ate dinner in Church's Chicken while waiting for her. I passed the Church's every single day while I was at Enloe and never went near it...and then I go to Tobago and eat Church's chicken. Go figure.

So the whole reason we wanted to get back was to go to Sunday School.
See how responsible I am when left alone mom and dad?
Okay, so Sunday school actually has nothing to do with church...although one of the steel pan bands did play Hallejulah once. It is actually a big street party that happens in Buccoo every week. I had heard tons about it, and we were eager to see there at least be some other people in the town. So we made it back just when the festivities were getting going. It was an odd combination of Franklin street on Halloween- minus the costumes, and the state fair. Basically there are some places serving food, shops open, and a couple different steel drum bands playing. I loved the steel pan music and it was definitely neat to see the town alive. Other than that it was a bit odd, and I was being the party pooper for the night. As far as tourists go we were the youngest by at least a decade...and other than about 4 people, everyone could have been our parents, or grandparents. There aren't very many young tourists around Tobago, which makes me and Kerry and prime attractive target for every man, his uncle, cousin, brother and best friend in Buccoo. Kerry made a friend from England on her plane, so we met up with him and his sister briefly, and while we knew he was a little bit older than us, turns out he was 33 and his sister wanted nothing to do with hanging out with 20 year olds. So once we were on our own and the steel pan music ended, turning into a dj'd dance party, we were endlessly approached by way too many eager local men...once again some of them old enough to be our parents. I was slightly weirded out by the whole thing...but we stuck it out for a while. Luckily our guesthouse was just down the street, so we could come and go as we pleased. I fell asleep sometime around 2:30 and could still hear the party going strong-apparently people party all night and go straight to work. Nonetheless...it was a good experience to see and not be quite so isolated from real life there, like we were for most other touristy activities.

So what started out being the day that we were sure we'd somehow miss both the wedding and our plane home...just be aimlessly stuck at the Trinidad airport, ended up being unbelievably successful, and despite the loud dance party outside, both of us were so exhausted it didn't make a difference.

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Photos

The groom and his attendant
This is when we still weren't sure if that was a man or not. The make up is deceiving. The little boy is something like a best man/ ring bearer

A sweet mullet.
That's for you Allison. No waterfall mullets, but the cymbal player knew what was up!

Throwing rice at the groom's car.
At least I think it was rice. Tradition is sort of the same, but the timing was a little reversed- this was at the beginning

A ritual joining the two families and preparing the groom
I'm pretty sure that's what that is at least. The groom had to have his back turned though because the bride was just across the way.

The bride being prepared
The yellow sari was the first sari she wore for the preparations.

A close up
So Ryan knows exactly how to do his make up

The bride
In the red sari she changed into

Bride and groom during the ceremony
They'd been dating for 8 years...it was pretty cute.