Why can't all hams be spiral sliced?

I have to cook ham for the Relief Society Christmas dinner, which is tonight. So in addition to making three trips to stores for the various supplies I was asked to bring, and drive on what I consider the wrong side of the road to a church building I've never driven to by myself, I have to slice ham. I'm a wimp, I know, but I'm just no good at that.
Perhaps it's a talent I'm supposed to cultivate while I'm here. That and cooking rice that isn't of the Minute variety.
Whine, complain.

Finally, something exciting happens

And I'm not talking about driving here or getting the first installment of our household effects.
Powerful earthquake hits Caribbean
After it was over, Laura said she thought she was going to throw up. But she didn't, and everything's good.

The Gates of Paradise

One of the highlights of a trip to Florence is Lorenzo Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise, which adorn a set of doors of the Baptisery. The ones there actually are replicas, though, and the real ones -- created from the 1420s through the 1450s -- are on tour in the United States.
There's an interesting story on their restoration is the November issue of Smithsonian magazine.

A plug for American citizen services

My friends at the Rocky Mountain News had a story in today's paper about a Denver woman who was on the cruise ship that hit ice off Antarctica last week.
The best part, at least in our U.S. State Department-employed household:

When the passengers were brought to Port Arenas in Chile, they stepped off a plane, and an American consul addressed Van Horne and her niece by name, telling them she'd be with them every step of the way until they were on an airplane home.
"I loved what our Swedish captain told us then," Van Horne said. "He said, 'If you have to be in a disaster, you want to be an American. I don't see consulates from any other countries here.' "

If there are any cruise ship mishaps in Trinidad over the next two years, that could be Kevin meeting the plane. I guess that assignment beats having to visit the incarcerated Americans.

In my spare time

I've read these books over the past few weeks. I'd recommend all of them.
Playing for Pizza by John Grisham. I'd never read a Grisham book and doubt I'll read another one, but Kevin had carried it with him on the plane. The Italian aspects of the story are great, but the football (American style) adds a different element. Plus, it's mostly clean despite the American-playboy-in-Italy storyline.





Gone Baby Gone by Dennis Lehane. I've seen the previews for the movie but not the movie itself, so I have no idea how much they changed the story on film. But the book is great. There are quite a few plot twists and such, but I won't mess it up for anyone. But I really couldn't put it down.






Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. I read this by invitation of a book club here, and I thought it was decent. And if you've ever wondered what life would have been like if you'd joined the circus, perhaps this book can answer that for you. And the end of the story was a surprise, at least for me.

Welcome to the jungle

Despite many attempts, we haven't been able to get anyone to come mow our lawn. Needless to say, going six weeks without mowing one's lawn in a tropical place isn't good. There's no telling what kind of scary things are lurking out there.

Unfortunate headline of the day

From the Yahoo home page:
Dutch woman's dairy tells of life with FARC guerrillas
More proof that spell check doesn't always save you from looking stupid.

Laura's lizard friends

We have tons of birds around our house, but I never can get any good photos of them. I've had slightly better luck with lizards, but only slightly. The one above -- or multiple ones like it -- hang out on the wall between our yard and the one next door.

This one -- Laura calls it a blue tail -- looks like a velociraptor when it runs. We saw two of them at the same time, almost like they were having a reptile parade through our lawn. But by the time I could take a photo, one of them was gone. They're around a foot long, so it's not really easy for them to hide.

And last -- at least among the photos I'm posting today -- is this green guy I came across in the flower bed that runs along the top of the retaining wall behind our swimming pool. I think he's the biggest one I've seen, probably close to 2 feet long.

It's all about the uniform

When I informed Laura a few months ago that her new school required uniforms, she was quite irked. "You mean I can't pick out my own clothes?" she asked.
Not only can she not pick out her own clothes, but the first graders have absolutely no options. On Mondays, Thursday and Fridays, they wear the P.E. uniform. Everyone wears the same kind of gray shirt and navy shorts. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, they wear the non-P.E. version. All the girls wear white logo polo shirts and blue plaid cullottes. (The boys wear blue shorts.)
She chooses to wear athletic shoes -- plain white Nikes in her case -- all the time, although they do have the option of wearing black or dark blue shoes.
The uniforms are sort of expensive, especially considering that we'll have to replace some pieces throughout the year because she's already destroying them. But we still could end up saving some money by not having to buy regular school clothes.

Thanksgiving should be a multiday holiday

Thursday was a busy day of school (for Laura) and cooking (for Kevin and me). We didn't have people over, but we cooked a turkey breast, mashed potatoes, sausage dressing, rolls, gravy and pumpkin pie. We also had a key lime pie from PriceSmart.
I'm thankful for the obvious things, of course: our family (immediate and extended), the gospel, the atonement, our friends, etc. But being here the past few weeks has made me think about a few more, less obvious things.
1. Grocery stores. One-stop shopping is a foreign concept here, but at least we have a couple of decent stores relatively close. The aforementioned PriceSmart (similar to Costco), which sells American and local products, is great. Is it as good as Costco? Heck no. Do I wish it had a bigger selection? Of course. But it's better than plenty of other alternatives.
2. A resilient child. She started school three days after we got here and hasn't looked back. She's gotten perfect scores on her spelling, math and accelerated reader tests so far, and in general she doesn't complain much when I drag her out of bed at 6 a.m.
3. Modern conveniences. We had the missionaries over for dinner a couple of weeks ago, and they were surprised we have a dishwasher. I know we're very, very blessed to have a house that's up to U.S. standards even if it's not perfect.

If kids have school, is it really Thanksgiving?

The International School of Port of Spain is in session for half a day today. We discussed keeping Laura home -- that'd teach them! -- but they "ran out of time" for a math test yesterday and rescheduled it for today. The teacher's way of making sure the Americans showed up? Who am I to say? And it's not like missing a math test in first grade would adversely affect her college applications ...
Meanwhile, here's a funny Art Buchwald column about Thanksgiving I came across this morning.

Green Car escapes the maze that is Trinidadian Customs

Green Car finally is sitting in our driveway in Port of Spain. An embassy staffer got it out of Customs yesterday, but there was a delay in getting license plates until today.
Because Trinidad was a British colony and driving is on the left, steering wheels are on the right. So anyone who imports a vehicle with the steering wheel on the left gets a "left hand drive" label pasted or painted across the back of their car. Assuming we keep Green Car a long time, I suppose it'll always be reminding us of our time in Trinidad.
Also today, we finally have Internet access at home. It's not superfast, and we haven't gotten around to hooking up the router for wireless (so there's no Vonage and only Kevin's laptop is hooked up). But I'm savoring the small victories.

The curse of the atomic clock

Still no Internet access. Or car. Or air freight. But we finally did get cable TV late last week.
Meanwhile, Kevin's alarm clock, which resets itself to the U.S. atomic clock, has gone berserk. Trinidad doesn't observe daylight saving time, so time didn't change here a couple of weeks ago when it did in the states. But of course the clock doesn't know that, so regardless of how many times we reset it, it tells us it's an hour earlier than it really is here. Getting up when the clock says 5 is so much worse than getting up when it says 6.
I've thought about petitioning the Trini government to just get its own atomic clock, but I'm guessing that isn't part of its plan to become a developed country before 2020.

16 days and counting

We still don't have Internet access at our house, but some of our new friends have been nice enough to let me use theirs.
Early observations:
There are some big lizards here. Dang big.
Living life here without a car would be very, very difficult. (We still don't have one.)
Birds can be very loud. This includes hundreds of egrets who roost within sight of one's house, but it's not limited to them.
More later ...