A year ago we moved from the US to Trinidad with our 11 year old daughter and 12 year old son.
A few weeks ago, our daughter showed her Trinidadian friends how to set up a lemonade stand. They put a table in the driveway and waved their arms to stop cars and sell drinks. They sold out right away.
The next day, they made cookies and sold those. They took the proceeds to the store to buy ingredients to make a cake and more cookies to sell. A couple of hours later, they came in with empty plates and handfuls of money.
Tonight they’ve set up the stand and are selling cookies, cake, cucumber & mango chow and palouri. I’m not even sure how to spell palouri. I think there’s an H in it.
My husband took our son and his friend Jabari to see the Matrix last night at a new theatre here, MovieTowne. They picked up Jabari at his house where apparently they do not have inside plumbing, because his sister (or aunt?) was bathing outside at the standpipe. MovieTown is a US style multiplex theatre with stadium seating, big screens and the latest sound system. More impressively, Jabari found when he went to the restroom that the toilet flushed automatically and the sink faucets came on when they sensed hands below them. Byron said Jabari came back to his seat, wide-eyed, and said, “MovieTown Looks after itself.”
What a load of great memories your kids are going to have! What made you move to Trinidad? How have the kids adjusted? Have they become fluent in another language?
They speak English in Trinidad & Tobago, but my kids have picked up Trini-isms. They “lime” with their friends, they go “by” their friend’s house instead of “to” their friend’s house, they say “good night” as a greeting instead of just for goodbye, when I ask my son why he won’t pick up his shoes, he says, “I don’t feel to.” That kind of thing.
When I was first hired by a Caribbean organisation last summer, they asked when I could start. Realistically, to tie up loose ends in the US, I thought Oct. 1st would be reasonable. But school in Trinidad started in August, so I rushed to get here in time so my kids wouldn’t have to be “the new kids” starting late. I arrived with my son and daughter a week before the start of the school year (Mr. Gat stayed back to finish up some things). Got a good placement for our son in a school for kids who don’t “fit into the public schools,” which was great, because about half of the students have learning disabilities and the other half don’t, but just don’t fit in which means they’re probably cooler than the kids who do, anyway.
For our 11 year old girl, two schools were recommended to me or looked good from my research of Port of Spain; the International School, which costs like $25,000 a year (WAY over our heads) and St. Andrews. So all my eggs were in the St. Andrews basket when we arrived, a week before school started. I took our daughter out to buy her a uniform (a geeky powder blue gingham number with big white buttons), and she was at first in despair when she tried it on and looked in the mirror, but then got a sense of humor and became a very good sport about it. She still badly wanted out of this whole deal, Trinidad, which seemed like a bad dream to her. I took her in for what I thought was a formality, a few days before school started - an entrance exam to see where they would place her. She did badly in most subjects and failed the math exam miserably. She had come from a liberal feel-good US public school near the University and here was a school with real academic standards and a totally foreign way of doing things. She didn’t know her multiplication tables at all and fractions, exponents and the rest were total Greek to her. The principal took me into her office and said she was sorry, but she couldn’t accept my daughter into St. Andrews. I pleaded (with no other options and school starting in a week), “PLEASE, Olivia is very bright, she just hasn’t been exposed to this level of work. She’ll catch up.” The principal said she was sorry, but said, “Even if she’s really smart, she has so much to learn even to catch up to the other children her age, it will be frustrating and demoralising to her, and not fair to put her through it.” I begged and pleaded some more. There was this awkward, agonising pause in the office with the principal, the teacher who had tested Olivia and me, with Olivia waiting out in the hall. Finally the principal called Olivia in and put her arm around her and said, “We are going to give you a chance. It is going to be a lot of hard work for you and you may not be able to do it. Please don’t let me down.”
Olivia just got the second highest grade on the Science test and the highest grade on the Math test in the whole school.
That is absolutely fabulous! Give your daughter an extra hug from me for doing so very well. It sounds like she has been waiting for just the chance to prove herself.
Just so you won’t have to re-hash anything you may have already posted, have you posted the whole story to the boards before? The decision making, the hunt for a home, getting there etc…
My former MIL (OK, I still get along with the ex-in-laws) grew up in Port-of-Spain. Her family moved there from Wales when she was three. I believe she, too, may have gone to school at St. Andrews! It did sound like an interesting place to grow up…certainly a world away from Wales!