De Lelie Hills Hotel and Casino Paramaribo

... at the guesthouse, we found ourselves roaring out of town towards the Coesewijne National Park in an old but still impressive Nissan Patrol 4x4. The car, stuffed with paddles, tents, fishing rods, cans of petrol and so forth, belonged to Henk, a large, confident, black guy, who spoke English (when he remembered he should because of my lack of Dutch) with a strong Caribbean accent. He drove as fast as possible, given the condition of the 'roads ...

... and water as we would not be able to buy anything later on. (Anna, Inge, Hilde and Huug - they even sold Brinta!) (A cereal I remember from my childhood). The first hour or so was fine as the road was tarmacked and Aniel a careful driver. We passed Bauxite mines and noticed that the soil is almost bright red. (The Saramacca - one of Suriname's three Creole languages - word for Bauxite means 'red earth'). The bauxite is shipped to America, we did not ascertain how much ...

... before he could leave, so I started arguing again and said that this was not what we had agreed to etc. etc. Anyway, it eventually became clear to us that this is in fact normal practice; the fare he had quoted was for a shared taxi! <br><br>Peter, who was not following the argument (Dutch is not his strongest point, well actually there is no point to speak of) had meanwhile checked in the guidebook and realised that this was true ...

... The Mosquito Coast' and they certainly like keeping business in the family as much as possible, so new realities 'back home' could have a huge ripple effect (interestingly Koreans will even go places that give the Chinese pause, like Guatemala City and South LA). But here the Chinese influence is even greater than normal. There's a huge Chinese 'Tong' association occupying a prominent corner in town, as large as any in Thailand btw, and they seem ...

... and then we were off. 2 miles down the road we stopped. The driver pointed to two of us and told us to get into another minibus. "It's ok" said the kind lady who had already pointed me in the right direction a couple of times at the ferry terminal. So more intricate luggage loading, and then we were off again. Or were we? No we sat for half and hour then went back in the wrong direction for a couple of miles to pick up some more passengers. Finally, off ...

... the library isn't stocked yet, but I will be donating some books myself. On that note, simply because it happened this afternoon, I HAVE to mention this. I was speaking to a relatively high ranking ministry official about bringing books into the library. Buying new books, by the way. I said that I wanted to bring the entire Harry Potter set in. If you know me, then this is no surprise to you. Well I was in for a surprise. She told me that she didn't want me to ...

... zaak en laten we de tuner nakijken. Jeroen had namelijk nog steeds het vermoeden dat er met de tuner wat mis was omdat we veel te slecht ontvangst hadden en bepaalde metingen vreemde resultaten opleverden. Als een heus wonder heeft een collega zeiler precies dezelfde tuner ongebruikt aan boord liggen die we mogen uitproberen. Tegelijkertijd meldt de dealer dat onze tuner alleen door de leverancier hersteld kan worden. De microprocessor is in de war. We sluiten de geleende ...

... in the mail." Click. I hung up and realized he failed to tell me the name of the country. It wasn't hard to figure out though. Dutch. South America. A few seconds on Google and voila! Suriname. Now, just where the heck was that? A few more minutes online and I knew a little more: Small country north of Brazil. Dutch heritage. Dutch and Sranan Tongo chief languages. Gold and bauxite mining. 80f land area still undeveloped rainforest. Home to Hindustani, Indonesian ...

... other decorations. The names are generally things like Amazon, Chief, Sharpshooter or a woman's name. More interesting, however, are the slogans on the back of the buses. I've posted a couple of examples in the picture section, but wasn't able to catch some of my favourites on photo. Things like "no backbiters here", "no more arguments" and one inviting one that says "sexual healing". All buses travel to and from a central location downtown. They take their place in line, the bus ...

... that is matched to our job posting. Both Brenda and I have a background in management. Brenda is the Executive Director of HIV North in Alberta and came with the HIV/AIDS expertise that the rest of us lack. She is also has a background in events planning and coordination and did some work here in fund development. One of the things she accomplished was getting the Vagina Monologues off the ground for Feb/06. HIV North did the Monologues last year and it was such a ...