First night; second day

moitt and frech met us at the airport. gray weather. great windy gray rainish weather. loaded into two cars with steering relocated to the right 7 fur-in-urs careening along the left lanes from twilight suburbs to roundabouts in the night-time make their way to the Frank Worrell Residence Halls and Carlton Super-Market. Supper at walking distance down a long hill to Black Road Road and the Flash Zone where I got lamb and salad = $12 barbadian money = $6 usd. cheap. thank goodness. peas and rice with ribs and macaroni pie = $22 barbadian money = $11 usd. not bad, but mostly rice! so much rice!

exhausted we returned to the hall to fall away or into chitter chatter finally out by 2 am with the arrival of the 8th in our party. our 9th might arrive monday. long day. late.

second day, squeezed into the rental car with nick frech, we go to bridgetown. frech is an wood carving artist and dancer who will take us to see the pic-o-de-crop semi finals and junior kadooment - both are parts of the month long Crop Over Festival which consumes the island until August 1 Emancipation Day parades. early morning, and the Grand Kadooment on August 6.

we walked an hour long loop through the market district and wharf. the parliament building is there facing one side of the National Heroes park - it was much smaller than i imagined from the many photos of some of its individual monuments. Lord Nelson was there, in miniature tribute to the big one in London proper. the most impressive though was of Errol Walton "Skipper" Barrow, first prime minister of independent Barbados. anti-imperialist and anti-brain drain. loved his "mirror-image" speech, made the year before he died. finely rendered sculpture by artist Ricky George. The Jolly Roger is a local live music venue.

i slept through the first beach trip - Paradise Beach no less.  

monday, classes begin. proper sentence structure. capitalization. cafeteria food. the meat of the matter.

P.S. It was NOT Paradise Beach, it was Black Rock Beach.