The day started off with a an early 7 am wake up call, breakfast, a mixtures of traditional Caribbean food and English classics was served and cleared alway quickly by the fine staff at the Cascadia hotel.
We then set off (after 15 minutes of pushing the students to leave the free wifi in the lobby) on our tour of the island of Trinidad. Ali, tour guide extraordinaire showed us round some of Trinidad's most famous sites such as beautiful botanical gardens, the magnificent 7 buildings (which, according to Ali, we're not so magnificent). Ali's soothing voice teamed with the exotic Trinidadian backdrop spurred us on for the day.
Ali, along with the help of our two brilliant coach drivers then took us to the Starlift steel pan workshop where we listen a cool calypso rendition to Abba's Dancing Queen. Everyone was dancing and learning both how to play some steel drums as well as how to 'Whynd' (a tradition Caribbean dance that inspired Miley Cyrus's famous VMA performance).
Hopping back into the fun bus we rode onwards to the beach. Beach! Students jumped and revelled at the first opportunity at tanning, sand and the sea. We took advantage of the sun loungers, ordering 42 of them and enjoyed an afternoon of glorious sun dotted with short intervals of torrential rain.
Lunchtime rolled around, the signs on every stall pointed to 'bake and shark' we're too prominent to ignore. We had to try some. At first the prospect of eating shark seemed a daunting challenge, however after seeing it deep fried and covered in chips, eating sharks was becoming more and more appetising. So we ate and ate and ate until our food baby's were as big as Mrs Fosters real baby.
Sticky and sandy we stepped back onto our fun bus and headed home to Casacadia for a good night of sleep and food.
- Priya Matharu
