Tower Hotel Georgetown

... trees that have fallen in the road, all of this whilst it was pouring with rain. Needless to say we ended up having another night parked off the road. (N3.56.34.06W59.16.08.07. 5th - Of again and today the road is getting even worse, although the big puddles have stopped, for the last 150 kms the road is either very bad washboard or just full of holes. We are only able to travel at 20 to 30 kms even on the good sections and so it is another overnight on the road.N5.46.29.73W58.28.47.15

... wife who can't pronounce the English name 'George', I affectionately refer to it as 'Joshtown', anything but Jonestown, which happened not so many years nor kilometers away. It still makes the news here. For those of you too young to remember, thirty years ago some nine hundred US citizens committed mass suicide in Guyana under the influence of a bad Elvis impersonator. At first glance after dark Georgetown reminds me of nothing so much as ...

... rest of my life. So they're gonna have a library whether they want one or not. For the kids' sakes. All the same, I think I was as happy as the kids when the term ended. I did go to Suriname for a week and that was nice. Read on to the next entry for details on that. As always my loyal fans, please email me, leave comments, let me know that you're still thinking about me. I hope that I didn't depress you too much. But the Suriname entry is much better. Promise. Sal

... to inform us that our present housing was a bone of contention for the college: Students who dorm were in the process of staging an ongoing protest against the unsanitary conditions in the dorms. Where we were going to spend the next 10 days (8/7-8/16). Those days were quite an adventure, to say the least. The rooms are first of all small enough so that by the time two persons manage to squeeze in all of their luggage, there is hardly any room to walk ...

... for you!" So we go walk down to the shop, and as we are approaching it (~ 30m away) we see a mass of very mischievous-looking Guyanese boys coming towards us. The feeling you experience when a ridiculously large number of Guyanese kids are running at you at full speed with handfuls of unknown substances and buckets is quite an ...

... three hours drive and 30 minutes ferry ride from Georgetown. It was midday and I had just let the interviewers go off to do their work at a market (street with vendors). A man approached me and asked what we were doing. His response, when I told him about our survey, was an interesting fact. I learned that "50% of all surveys done in this country are a waste of money." It was ...

It has been about two weeks and I am officially known around town as White Rasta. Ok, so I might be exaggerating a little. Things are going well and I am gearing up for a week in a smaller town. New Amsterdam is the capital of the county of Berbice, which I hear is very quiet (new meaning to remote getaway?). It should take about 3 hours to drive from Georgetown to New Amsterdam, where we will spend the week ...

... we can adjust back into our old ways...so here are some of the interesting things that happened while traveling and on my first couple days back: First off, I was very lucky to have a wonderful traveling partner, Namisi, who is another WorldTeach volunteer in my region, and is from Buffalo, NY. We met up at JFK to catch the flight back to Guyana, which is about 6 hours. The minute we stepped out of the baggage claim at the Timehri Airport we were ...

... a bar on the third and a restaurant on the top floor. I spoke with some of the people who stayed at the club. It was a good thing I left, because around 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning they closed the club down. It seems somebody was drunk and fired a shot in the air. Nobody was hurt, and I was fast asleep by then. But don't worry anybody, I was wearing my bullet proof T-shirt. Seriously though, I haven't felt threatened or in any danger. There is no reason to worry. Until next time!

... the outer room was for his mom and the kitchen, the inner room was for whatever kid relative or friend that decided to sleep there for the night, so that night there were 3 of us sleeping on a foam on the floor. I love it when my friends bring me over to their houses because there are so many extremely different ways a person can live around here. Friday we were off to Guinness bar again, for karaoke night, then some friends came ...