I had the opportunity to travel to Trinidad and Tobago for a travel seminar this month. I got course credit for traveling to the Caribbean. How could I turn that down?
I got back to Texas on Monday and have had some difficulty when trying to talk about the trip. It was a a very full 2 week trip and I hardly know where to begin talking about it. So, I'll be disclosing snippets for your reading pleasure.
I attended a volunteer training at the Red Cross this weekend and was pleasantly surprised to meet a woman from Trinidad. She is a fellow volunteer and has been in Texas for only a few months. I excitedly told her I just visited her country for two weeks and we had good chat about Doubles and Maracas Bay and Maxi Taxis. None of those things probably make sense to you, but I'll get back to those later.
At the beginning of our training the teacher, who was an 82 year old with two hearing aids, asked us to introduce ourselves. Latoya, my Trini friend, gave a brief intro about herself and sat down. After a brief pause, the teacher responded with: "Honey, are you speaking English?" There was some awkward laughter from the rest of us and poor Latoya was embarrassed. She then went on to explain that she does speak English, but with a dialect unique to Trinidad. For the rest of class, anytime she spoke, Latoya had to speak at an uncomfortably loud volume so the teacher could understand.
One thing our class learned about Trinis is that they are very soft-spoken. The typical volume at which an American speaks sounds like shouting in comparison. A lot of us struggled with this while we were in Trinidad. Between the quieter volume level and the thick dialect, I often felt like they were speaking a different language and would strain to understand.
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