The lights were off for the bulk of the five-hour flight, which passed quietly. I slept a little, but struggled to get any real kind of rest between the anticipation and seating discomfort.

We landed at Piarco International Airport in Piarco, Trinidad a little before five o' clock in the morning local time. After stopping to make some duty-free purchases and to collect our luggage (a reunion which was a weight off my shoulders), we stepped outside and were greeted with humid morning air, the view of pale daybreak over rainforested mountains and a rich, unfamiliar soundscape. After a short wait, we were collected and driven to what would be our residence for the majority of our stay in the country: Wendy's father's house in Arima. On the way, I was surprised to see a few cattle egrets, a familiar sight from home.

While driving on the left wasn't as much of an adjustment as I had anticipated, the customs and etiquette of the road were so vastly different as to be terrifying to the uninitiated. Indicating and stopping seemed to be reserved only for special occasions, and the speed at which the typical driver was comfortable far exceeded that which I considered remotely safe.

Nonetheless, at the mercy of our Trini driver, we arrived intact at the house, which was quite different from anything I was familiar with. At one point I would comment to my brother, in reference to a fixture in the kitchen doorway, that we "passed the beaded curtain into another world." It was comprised of concrete floors, concrete walls, and topped by a raised corrugated metal roof which sounded loudly when it rained (which it did often). The open nature of the roof invited frequent small visitors from outside. There was no dishwasher, and an old, non-functional washing machine on the covered back patio was filled with a hose to do laundry, which was churned and rinsed by hand, wrung out, and hung to dry on a clothesline. The shower was either scaldingly hot or bitterly cold, and only a single room, one of the bedrooms, was air conditioned, a luxury absent from many homes on the island. Internet access was nonexistent, also typical in less urban areas of the country.

One of the first new avian sounds to stand out to me seemed to be ubiquitous — a repeated, nasally squeaking phrase, whose maker was identified to me as a great kiskadee, named for its onomatopoetic call. These boisterous flycatchers would be a common sight during our visit, and one I would come to miss after leaving. They seemed to fill a similar niche as my familiar great-tailed grackles back home, who are clever, flamboyant, opportunistic and omnipresent in public spaces.

The accent and dialect were, at times, rather difficult for me to understand. This made for some awkward conversations in which, after asking several times for a speaker to repeat what they had said, I ended up merely smiling and nodding cluelessly. Colloquial and formal register seemed to stand in dramatic contrast to one another. I recall watching television during my stay with fascination; while still retaining a distinct Trini sound, newscasters enunciated with painstaking clarity, while sitcom actors seemed to be speaking another language. One interesting feature of Trini speech is its heavy British influence; after all, Trinidad and Tobago was a British colony until gaining independence in 1962. As such, not only is British spelling generally the norm, but many terms of this origin are also retained. I remember being briefly confused when, regarding my braid, I was asked, "Do you plait your hair yourself?"

Despite my difficulties understanding some speakers, I was able to converse easily enough with our next-door neighbors, who were Wendy's extended family and were happy to explain new terms to us and teach us about various aspects of Trini life (especially cuisine!). One such term was "liming," to hang out in a relaxed fashion. We limed on one porch or another for many an hour with Wendy's extended family during our stay, enjoying fresh fruit or simply each others' company. One other mannerism, "steupsing" as it is locally called, but more widely known as "sucking ones teeth," quickly became a personal favorite that my brother and I adopted. The sound is used to express annoyance or disapproval, and to this day remains a permanent fixture of my idiolect in both its original form and a modified version that became called the "whisk," which is used to express any range of things depending on intonation, and is an invaluable expression between my partner and me to simply make a connection when a verbal stand-in just won't do.

After napping to abate some of the exhaustion accumulated between our handful of flights, we ran a few errands in the area. We paid a visit to a produce market in Arima and picked up some fruit, including delicious, locally-grown mangoes (including the popular 'Julie' and 'Ice Cream' varieties), as well as chenet, a grape-sized fruit with a thin, crisp rind and gelatinous, tart flesh that I loved right away. Kiskadees fluttered around the market looking to sneak an easy meal, and I spotted a roach with unusually vibrant red color (of course even the roaches in Trinidad would be beautiful). We were also introduced to two varieties of soda that I was fond of: Solo Banana, which manages to taste like liquid banana Laffy Taffy, and Solo Sorrel, which has a very pleasant bubblegum- and clove-like flavor. Much to my delight, I learned after our trip that these aren't too hard to find in the Houston area (which has a substantial Trini population) and are available in international grocery stores such as Fiesta.

Nothing else of note came to pass during the remainder of the day, which was spent catching up with family and continuing to recover from our travels.