Finally, I'm ready to write. On the one part, keeping a blog is laziness - if I blog, then I don't have to write dozens and dozens of emails, or worse, alter the same one email and send it to dozens of friends. But, I think this is actually a nice way to archive our time at home. And in spite of my eighteen years in Brooklyn (18!), Trinidad remains home (oh, but not without caveats and complications).

Ideally, I wanted to begin at the beginning, from the taxi driver in Brooklyn who showed up late driving the oldest car in Evelyn's fleet with the trunk that didn't latch over our five suitcases and butcher twine for bungees. Oh, but he drove slowly and didn't seem to understand the English words: 'faster, please. our plane leaves at 8 and it's 6:45 and we're on Atlantic Avenue.' Finally, when the bungee twine snapped somewhere close to Mother Gaston Blvd. and the truck flapped open I got out and remembering Helen's Diego sit-n-spin, said 'mucho rapido, por favor.' But that's too far to go back. We made our flight, we're here and so far it's been thrilling.

Thrilling isn't always necessarily good though, is it? Right hand side of the road driving, anyone? I insist on doing most of the driving and I tell Grey I have cradle memory of the streets to tap into. Narrowest roads in the world that have ditches on either side (though to be fair, on most the government is currently erecting twelve-inch high barriers). And omg, Trinis cannot drive. And the maxi-taxis (big-big cabs) are the worse . . .

. . . But we're home and as you can see from the photos Grey posted, happy. The townhouse is great, bare, but great, and Helen Dekker calls it her Trinidad House. It's all her Trinidad everything: see my Trinidad car, my T'dad pool, my T'dad bed (It's actually her best friend Myha's bed, but). She is having an amazing time. She loves her cousins, her aunties, her grandma Ule, having a yard, going to the ocean. We've sussed out a daycare for her, but for now she's thrilled to have the two of us around her all the time. Happy little sweetie.

Okay, so I'll go back a bit in my next post and talk about how we happened upon this five-month adventure. And I'll also make an attempt at sending at least a dozen individual emails so I don't just say, hey go read my blog.

love from all of we.