So I am back in Guyana and am going to pick the journal back up.
Sunday morning started early. The alarm went off at 2:55am. Amanda and I had stayed up just long enough to see the fireworks from our new street. Davis’ big fireworks display is at Community Park, just down the green belt from us. Around 9:00 our street became a parking lot. We turned out to have a pretty good view from our sidewalk. But even with a relatively modest 10:00 bed time 3 came early.
Charis was awake when I woke up and asking for a new diaper. This was super sweet, since she had fought bed time but was very affectionate and thankful for a mid-night diaper and water. I collected several hugs and kisses before she settled in to sleep and I took off.
I picked Mark up on the way to the airport. Mark will teach the class with me and then stay for another week to help facilitate the exercise (essentially a simulated flood event intended to test the Guyanese emergency response system). He is one of the most interesting guys I know and a seemingly adventurous traveler.
It will take ~24 hours to get there including 12 hours overnight in Trinidad and Tobago. I took no less than 6 people procrastinating my file to obtain this less than optimal flight plan, but we are gong to try to make the best of it and see if we can’t explore Port of Spain for a little while.
We arrived in Port of Spain without incident. I got exit rows all the way. It seems like every flight I have been on in the last two years have been full, except those to South America. I worked through one and a half lap top batteries. I also read a descent chunk of Pinnock’s theology of the Holy Spirit and several biology lectures.[1] The opening welcome to Trinidad and Tobago was a little unsettling. We were greeted with medical personnel in face masks and had to hand in a questionnaire about where we had been and our potential exposure to swine flu. Apparently they are still taking that very seriously down here.
Mark had talked to someone on the plane and gotten a hotel recommendation. Apparently Port of Spain was 40 miles from the airport and not a place to walk around at night. But there was a Holiday Inn in a ‘compound’ deemed safe by this western traveler near the airport. Sold. We took a cab about 10 minutes. In that 10 minutes we passed the scene of a recent accident. As we approached, someone began to exit the passenger door of one of the vehicles in the accident, and a large truck barreled right through the door, sending glass everywhere. We had to swerve to avoid the whole thing. Welcome to Trinidad and Tobago. No one appeared to be hurt but it was a bit of a startling welcome.
We checked into the hotel. We had no idea what the government rate was, and it seemed a little pricy, so we decided to share a room to be safe. It seemed appropriate since we were only going to be crashing for a handful of hours anyway. Then the shuttle took us to a nearby mall where some restaurants stayed open late. They mostly had very western flair…we went to an Irish pub. I was able to get some Kabobs that, at least, seemed localish and we got some T&T beers. Then back to the hotel to e-mail my wife and crash.
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[1] I am working through the Teaching Company’s intro bio lectures and some MP3’s I got of one of UCD’s freshman bio classes in anticipation of taking 2 freshman bio’s fall quarter while working full time and keeping up my preaching schedule.
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