Homestay Day 1

Jessica and I are on our way to Le Brea for our home stay. I'm pretty sure that Trinidadians have never heard of blinkers. They also follow much closer before changing lanes than in the US. They also drive over the center line, speed, and do not follow passing laws like the US. Jessica says it reminds her of driving in New York. Personally, Washington cops would be giving tickets right and left.

More often I'm seeing large mansion houses with big sweeping staircases abandoned. In some cases vegetation had completely covered structures. Houses have construction that has never been finished. All of them are painted bright colors, thought. Blue, red, pink, orange, and every color in between. It's an odd mix of poverty, wealth, and color.

Trinidad really seems to like billboards along the road; in some places are stacked right on top of each other. Along the side of the road you see little cars selling fresh fruit or drinks. In some places there are wide open expanses of lush jungle like area; palm trees and tall grass and who knows what else.

Lots of brightly colored birds, too! I have a bird book that doesn't cover a quarter of what I've seen. Bright yellow and black, blue, pure white... In Tobago we will see Scarlet Ibis.

One gallon of gas cost 0.89 cents here! Maybe I should take suitcases of gas back. That's legal, right?

I wonder if the houses have air conditioning? The Lodge doesn't and our home stay house doesn't either. I'll have to ask the other students if they had it or not.

Did ask and I guess air conditioning is pretty cheap and getting more popular. I'm still not sure why more places don't have it.

We did sightseeing on the way here but that meant a 2 hour car drive turned into 5. The house is really huge; the parents live upstairs (where our room is) our hosts live downstairs, and Riah's brother and his wife and kids live downstairs too, I think.  But this afternoon they went to do something and didn't come back for hours. We had to go look for them, which was a little awkward, although I'm sure they didn't mean anything by it.

That evening we had dinner and tried a variety of Indian sweets. They were really really sweet! Some of them were almost pure sugar.

I tried a kind of pear soda that is very good! That and a kind of drink that's like watered down ginger ale.

I fell asleep for a bit and then we took showers before going to sleep. We weren't sure if it was because of construction they were doing or not bit the shower was a head on the end of a pipe that was only one temperature; however hot the pipes were. Also, the toilet does not flush. We are not sure why, but it seems to be considered normal that it doesn't. After quick showers (it was cold!) we went to bed.