The lab guys

Nicholas and Christopher make all the earmolds for our clinic. They are both deaf, and have taught me to sign with plenty useful (and non-useful) signs. They are really fun to lime with, and we all enjoy lots of laughs everyday.

Dead dogs on the road count

6

I'm Legal

I got my driver's license! It's no more flattering than any I.D. I got in the States.

San Fernando Hospital

Subway

We have Jared, they have some female bodybuilder who says she eats Subway for "lunch, breakfast, and dinner."

Gulf City Mall

I found a new mall; very big for the country. It has an arcade where we spent much time (and money), and Nicholas kicked my butt 2-1 in air hockey (it was his first time playing)

The ride to San Fernando

The terrain changed from the mountainous one that I'm used to seeing, to a hilly one with much less people. It was a nice ride: About 45 minutes, which the Trinis consider (far)

South to San Fernando

On my day off, I went to the mall in San Fernando with a co-worker where we met up with his girlfriend and then went to the hospital to visit her sister who was about to have a baby.

New Booth

They are constructing a new booth that the Ministry of Health is storing at our facility. Since the project was a noisy one, we had 2 days off from work.

If you ever have to travel with an octogenarian in Trinidad...

offer to drive. I allowed the Catholic priest to drive to his neice's house for a quick visit. He wanted to get home before dark, but unfortunately this was not the case...and it was a bit rainy. We made tons of wrong turns, and he told me, after missing another road that leads to the highway, that he'd rather take "Lady Young Road." I knew, from experience, that this road is full of hairpin turns and I was practically dangling off a cliff many times. If a religious experience is what he was shooting for, I certainly converted to some religion as I was praying for my life.

Eid

Eid was fun. I went to a home where about 40 people were invited. We had an Arabian menu, with some excellent Indian desserts, and the night was finished with Sawine, and traditional soupy dessert served on Eid ul-Fitr. It has vermicelli, tons of condensed milk, and raisins. It was really good. I ate too much, and was sent home with a huge doggy bag.

Sorry, Allah

Mosque started an hour earlier than expected, so I chose to sleep instead of sit on the floor in the back of the Mosque with the women. It happened to be a good choice, because there was a situation at work and they needed my keys to get into my office. If I had gone to pray, the day would've been lost.

I am a God magnet

Recently, I helped a patient, who also happens to be some kind of Christian figurehead...not sure the denomination, and I forgot his business card at work. I believe he is Canadian, and the other day he asked if I was willing to meet his niece, because he thinks I'm a good person, and doesn't want me to slip out of his life. He is a very sweet grandfatherly man, and I'm going to meet his niece this Sunday afternoon. I guess she has 5 children, but is around the same age as me.

So, maybe all this religion is divine intervention or something, but at least I'm attracting the good instead of the evil (I leave that up to my friends back home).

Eid ul-Fitr

I will be celebrating Eid on Saturday with a Muslim family. Eid marks the end of Ramadan, the month of fasting. I'm going to a Mosque (have to wear clothes that cover my elbow and butt), to check it out. It should be interesting. Not interesting in becoming a Muslim, I don't think, because it seems to be a rather sexist religion, but I'll try [almost] anything once.

Dead dogs on the road count

3

Muslim Thanksgiving

I celebrated a "Muslim Thanksgiving" with Basha (a Rotarian) and his family on Saturday, September 29th. This is the month of Ramadan, where Muslims fast from sun-up to sun-down. They will get up at 4 a.m. for breakfast and have nothing until 6 p.m. (not even a sip of water). Before the meal, there was prayer for 45 minutes and some songs, and then everyone went around the table to say thanks for something. The family all gave thanks for the passing of exams of 2 younger boys (16 or 17), and one of the boys said thanks for the food we were about to eat (they were HUNGRY). They asked me to say thanks in whatever way I wanted, in whatever religion I observed. I told them, "I'm a clean slate."
The food was delicious! Tacos, roti (a flat bread that you use to scoop up all the curry) with curried goat, these delicious crushed up pea balls with some yellow-ish creamy sauce, curried channa (chickpeas), fried chicken, rice, lo mein, pineapple upside-down cake, banana bread, and other candies. They packed me a big "doggy bag" and I went home and watched TV and laid on the couch (like the American Thanksgiving).

P.S. on the cake

It didn't stay frozen that long. It was so good right out of the microwave!

A new fruit

A patient gave me this fruit, called Chenet. It is a green pod with a creamy, sweet pulp around the seed. You crack the pod with your teeth and then suck the pulp away from the seed. I was told the juice stains clothing, so I ate it over my sink when I got home.

Liming with new friends

The man, Shawn, is a patient of mine from Tobago. He came into the clinic with his girlfriend, Hannah (who is hearing), right after I started. He spent 15 years in Oklahoma in a deaf school, where he received some great speech therapy, but is now back in T&T. They came over for a few days and spent a night at my place liming (listening to music, playing online, talking). They are both wonderful people, and it was interesting to speak with Shawn about his life. He shares some of the same thoughts as the two Deaf young men I work with...that his family didn't learn to sign and doesn't really bother with him. He told me that sometimes he doesn't feel like his family is really his family; his friends are his family.