Weekend Shenanigans!

Hello! It's been fun the past two weekends exploring Georgetown area! I've been real fortunate to meet such wonderful people here in everything I've been doing. Last weekend I spent some time in the National Park with one of the private schools here called American School. Some of the teachers there were putting on a Nickelodeon Day for kiddos to play outside. We got to go pet and feed manatees!

There are about 7-8 manatees that live in the pond in the National Park. They eat grass that people feed them. They're very friendly and you can pet them.

There was also a bike race at the National Park.

One of the monuments at the National Park- reads "Every child has the right to life"

After manatee petting, a new friend took me around town and introduced me to coconut water from a coconut and eating the jelly inside the coconut after.

She also introduced me to an egg ball. It's basically a hard boiled egg wrapped in cassava deep fried smothered in mango chutney sauce. It is delicious!

Also, almost all street food is served in plastic bags- even the drinks you can get in a plastic bag.
As usual, there's plenty of traffic in Georgetown, and on the sides of the streets there are these vendors that used to be called "bend down vendors" because they used to sell their items on the ground and you'd have to bend down to look at what they're selling. Now, I guess they have upgraded and sell off tables.

 We are in the middle of the intersection here, and traffic is stopped. Below picture is a "bend down vendor"

We then went to the Botanical Gardens. The Botanical Gardens houses the zoo and mausoleum for a famous guy here in Guyana. I do not remember who he is, but I've taken a picture with his marker! Also Mickey Mouse hangs out at the Botanical Gardens all the time. :)

 Standing in the middle of the road of the Botanical Gardens.

 At the Mausoleum..

 This is called a kissing bridge, there are a few of them in the Botanical Gardens.

This past weekend was quite eventful as well, and I ended up going back to the Botanical Gardens to visit the zoo and listen to this storytelling guy in one of the gazebos.

He was telling a story of a spider and a tiger who both loved the same girl. The tiger proposed to the girl with a big diamond and the girl was very impressed. But then the spider came around and said that actually the tiger's dad used to give the spider's family rides on his back all the time. The girl did not want to marry a guy who's job was to carry others on his back, and broke it off with the tiger. The tiger was upset and went to the spider and said he'd better go to the girl and explain that was not true. The spider said he was too sick and if the tiger wanted, the tiger could carry the spider to the girl to explain. So the tiger carried the spider to the girl, and the spider said to the girl, "see I told you so."

Apparently there are a lot of stories similar to this using a spider as the bad guy. This story was told in Creolese, which I understood none of. My friend had to translate for me.

They sell delicious sno cones in the Botanical Gardens too. This one is tamarind flavor with condensed milk. It is quite tasty!

Anyway, at the zoo they have a bunch of different birds native to this area. Most of the animals at the zoo are rescues. They have a variety of birds, big cats, snakes and monkeys. There's also a giant otter, but I was unable to catch a picture of him.

Zoo Entrance

 Macaw Birds

 They have some pretty long snakes here

 In the zoo, there's a petting zoo portion with mini horses, donkeys, goats, sheep, and chickens!

 I cannot remember the name of this guy. I think he's a long tailed weasel of some sort. All he did was walk around in a circle the entire time making it very difficult to take a good picture!

 HUGE alligator with just a chain linked fence separating us!

 Beautiful puma!

 Monkey, just relaxing and eating watching the people watch him :)

 Another large snake deciding to climb up a tree.

 And of course, I had to wash my hands in the lion's head! The little girl is the daughter of my friend showing me around.

Before we went to the zoo, we were watching a Squash match at the Georgetown club and had BBQ lunch!

 This tastes like cream soda with 0.9% alcohol.

 BBQ lunch.

My posting today is not actually in chronological order. Last weekend I did go to the National Park and feed manatees, drink coconut water and eat an egg ball. This weekend, I actually started with watching my landlords slaughter and prepare chickens that were ready to eat. My landlords have 12 chickens that they've been raising, and Saturday morning they decided the chickens were fat enough. Of course, I had to watch and document through pictures!

These chickens have no idea what's coming to them!

 Knife sharpening

 Building an outdoor fire to boil water to dunk birds in after to help get feathers off easier.

 Putting the chicken head down

Oops, out of order picture. Chicken taken from coop 

Soaking chicken in hot water for just a few seconds 

 Feather plucking

 Naked chicken

 Removing insides. 

The entire chicken gets used. My landlords use the chicken organs to make food for their dogs, and they freeze the rest of the chickens. They tell me they do this a couple times of the year- raise baby chicks for food. They do not have chickens for eggs.

Side note, I also use that blue basin for laundry...

After that eventful morning, I headed down to Linden with my friend Niocie. She's been the one showing me around. She's pretty wonderful! Linden is about an hour and a half away from where I live in Georgetown. The road to Linden follows the Demerara River which is one of 3 major rivers in Guyana.

 Getting gas before the trip! They pump the gas for you too!

 Linden is a sleepy town. Linden is also the last town where pavement ends. To get more inland in Guyana the roads are more of the red dirt roads.

 They were known for mining bauxite and manufacturing aluminum. This picture below is used to be part of the aluminum processing.

 We stopped by Hymara park. Hymara means fish. This park was off the river and had a playground!

 Pano pic of the park

 River picture

 This is Niocie!

 Of course I had to play on playground equipment. It has been a month since I've done anything close to aerial work. Being down in this weather, it is hard to breathe, and my pores cannot breathe as easily, making doing any type of exercise a huge feat! 

 This sign says "Stop bare-faced thieving" I guess blatant robbery is an issue.

 This is one of the old bauxite mining sites.

 Another river picture

 Niece's family is from Linden, and we went to visit her dad. He has what's called "five finger" fruit trees. I think they're equivalent to what I know of as star fruit. They're good for making juice!

 Sunset in Linden is pretty.

 Linden has a lot of creeks to go swim and cool off in. This is one of the local watering holes.

 This water wheel was built in 1855, no longer used, but it is pretty to look at.

 A pretty picture of the Demerara river with the old aluminum processing center in the back close to sunset.

So it's been pretty eventful here! At least I've been able to keep myself entertained a bunch! There's always something to see. Generally during the week, I concentrate mostly on creating my lessons. This upcoming week is my last week for my first class and I'm giving a final at the end. I have 3 more weeks until I teach my next class in human growth and development and child language development. My plan is to start networking with the public hospital, American School (mentioned earlier I was with them for manatee feeding), one of their special education schools and a nursing home to give my speech students opportunities for clinical experiences. I'm also guest lecturing on statistics and how to get started on prospect research and publication opportunities, rather the process in which one can get published. So I do stay academically busy as well.

Well, that is all for now! Until next time! :)