We limeing all day and all night!

Hello all!

This is Itzel reporting from Trinidad! The weather is warm and beautiful, the food is spicy and delicious, and the people are kind and wonderful! Just finished up my first week and we have already had plenty of adventures and solidified what our project will be. Chloe and I will be working on a needs assessment of disability social services and facilities in San Fernando. I have never done anything like that, it’ll be exciting to see all that we learn! I hope you enjoy the pictures and videos of our many adventures so far! By the way, limeing is a word that is used in Trini that roughly means to chill and/or party. It is kind of hard to explain, but it is a lot of fun. It's how we have met some great friends! Disclaimer: we actually don't lime all day and all night, but I thought it was a clever title!

This was our first morning, 29/5/2015 at 5:21 am (the way Trini writes the date is different from the States; DD/MM/YYYY)! Listen to all the birds!

We went up to the market on 29/5/2015. It was packed with so many people and fresh produce. The smell was so strong, and it literally included anything you could have imagined; pumpkin (pictured above), eggs, salt fish (very popular in Trini), apples, mangos (many different types), and so many other unidentifiable fruit and vegetables. Trinis have many different words for the same fruit that we know. For example, avocado is zaboca! I didn’t want to pull out my camera and start taking pictures like a tourist. Since I already stand out anyways, I don’t want to give another reason that I am a foreigner. So I walked around with my phone like I was texting and some pictures came out bad, well most of them. This is the only quality photo :P.

The way up to Maracas Bay (one of Trini’s most famous beaches, visited on 30/5/2015) is full of many turns and it is surrounded by cocoa trees and plenty of fauna. Before we reached the beach, we went up to see the view. The colors are so vibrant, but apparently the plants will become even greener after the rainy season, which officially started!

I love spicy food and so do the people from Trini! This is a picture of bake and shark. We had this when we went up to Maracas bay—it is very famous! When we bought this the lady told us that the sauces were very spicy, naturally, I added a lot of it. Jejejeje, well turns out it was really spicy, but really good! And I ate shark for the first time!

This is a video of the beach! 

Trinidad celebrates a lot of different holidays from Indian Arrival Day to Emancipation Day to Corpus Christi. This was the second time that we had come up to the Mount Saint Benedict Monastery (4/6/2015) to go to mass for Corpus Christi since we didn’t have work that day. Look at this beautiful view! PS the monks make their own yogurt, and it is delicious!

This is a video of the view from the Monastery!

This morning we woke up early to go with our host, Ms Carol (she is amazing, has a great smile, and a twinkle in her eye!). We went to go run a 5k... well walk. It was mine and Chloe's first time ever running a race! Pictured from left to right is Professor Heather Jamerson (our fearless leader), me, and then Chloe Moore (a caring and thoughtful young lady)!