In the Spirit of Halloween

This year, for the first time since we moved here, I decided to do something for Halloween besides give out sweets to trick or treaters. I went to WalMart and bought a pumpkin on Thursday night and carved it all by myself. I'm pretty proud of my artistic skills. It took a little time to get all the seeds and strings out of the pumpkin and to make some triangular eyes and scary teeth without stabbing myself with the knife but in the end, my pumpkin looked so awesome! My dad went outside after I put it out with the little tea light in it and he came back inside and said in a very clueless Trini manner, "who puh da punkin outside dey wit ah candle inside? wha da punkin doin' dey?"

Since we entered our new house, we were never really able to give candies to the trick or treaters because our house is not really accessible from the street like the rest of the houses. Then again, we never decorated either so no one ever knew if we were taking part in candy sharing or not. maybe this year, i will get to give candies out.
It's actually 12:38 on Monday morning now. I started this blog on Saturday 28th after work in BCC's library. I went over there some time ago and looked at Darsh's memorial. There were flowers placed around the name stone and little blades of grass were growing out in places. I pulled the grass out. Today, on my walk, I was telling Nan about how much BCC feels like home. I feel as if so many memories are there that I could well be a building there. At times, I forget that BCC's library is also a public library. I fell asleep on an armchair in there once...I mean like real sleep and awoke to find a guy standing with his face really really close to me. I jumped back on the chair and then he apologized for "startling" me. He said that he saw me and he wanted to be sure i was alive and alright. Well I ain't exactly Snow White now! While on our walk, we saw an armadillo and Nan wanted a picture of it because she had never seen one up close. It was directly in front of us.
Nan says, "Ent dat does carry leprosy?"
I say, "yeah, so why you still walking up to it for?"
nan, "I wah ah picture"
Me, "you go cant see nuttin on the phone, it too dark."
Nan, "let me try still."
takes the picture and only darkness so she deletes it.
Me, "you know in trinidad they woulda curry that and eat it?"
Nan, "oh geed!"

On Saturday night, we went to Orlando for Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios. We left our house at 6pm and got there at 9pm. It was so much fun! I loved it.

The staff were dressed in ghoulish costumes and walking amongs the crowd, scaring people. A guy with a pumpkin head jumped out at me and I screamed. I didnt see him in the corner where he was hiding. I felt a little stupid because I was the only one scared in our group. There were these guys dressed like red necks walking around with chainsaws and chasing people. It was so funny to see even the guys running from them. One guy walked up to a guy with the chainsaw and asked, "you wanna piece of me?" Ami kept telling me that the people werent going to attack me and that they were just being paid to dress up and scare me. A guy jumped out at Ami and ami started to laugh. Poor guy! then he said, "At least i tried!" Ami told him, "Good job, you're doing a good job!" I thought that they were excellent though. There was really a lot of work put into this and we did get our ticket's worth of fun.

Ami's sister was supposed to meet us there but we never got to see her. I doubt if we could find anyone there! We went in four of the seven haunted houses. The houses are made to look like the houses from horror movies that Universal Studios made. I held on to Vin's jacket for all our walks in the haunted houses. My reasoning was that Vin was big enough to beat up any attackers=0). There were people jumping out at us from dark corners in the houses. The lines were ridiculously long because I guess it was the last weekend there. The place was teeming with people. Most of them were college kids I suppose and they really did give beer sales a hike there. On a way out, one girl started to dance "drop it likes it's hot." she was clearly drunk but having a good time.
There is a really good candy shop there. Couldn't resist having the sugar so Nan went in for chocolate and i got fudge. The place closed at 2am and the walk to get out took 45 minutes. One guy, on the way out said that the crowd "looked like f--king china!" Well with all the drinking and everything going on, there were accidents on the roads leading out of the place and on the I-4. We had to get on the I-4 to get back out on the Turnpike. Ami drove all the way back and I really don't know how he did it. The Turnpike is a very dark road outside of South Florida and to me, it makes for a good sleep. Well for me at least. I also forgot my glasses at home and everything on the road looked like a complete blur to me. all the lights had fuzzy halos around them and it seemed as if the car lights and the street lamps were touching each other. Note to self: start wearing glasses! I tried to stay awake to keep Ami company but I did doze off. Vin was snoring and Nan was sleeping on Ami's jacket after we turned on the heat in the car. I guess if we did not turn on the heat, Nan wouldn't have slept. Ami's jacket and the heat were conducive to a favorable sleeping environment to Nan. It seemed as if the only noise in the car for the entire trip back was Vin's snoring. It was very cold and even with jackets on, we were still freezing. I guess it's because it's the first bit of cold weather we had after a very hot summer and we weren't acclimatized as yet.

We got home at 5:30am and I went to sleep about 6. I figured that I should say my morning prayers before I went to sleep since I knew that I was not going to wake up until i had at least 7 hours of sleep. I had worked the early shift on Saturday morning at the store and really, I slept as if i was dead. No dream, no nothing until I woke up all of a sudden at 1pm and realized the entire morning had gone by. Nan later told me that she felt the same way. Like if she were having a hangover.
This evening, we watched the new "Exorcist" movie with my dad. We have HBO for three months and i am loving it! We all started speaking about ghost stories and ghostly encounters in Trinidad. It ended up sounding more like a comedy session than a frightening talk. Trinidadians are comedians by nature. I was asking my dad about something my uncle (my puwa's husband) had said.
I said, "Lail, but ent Sankar did get good lix for playing lagahoo?" I was already cracking myself up.
My dad said, "nah, doh listen to him, he does make up a lot ah stories, that one wasn't true. Sankar didn't get no lix for that." '
Sankar is my aaja's chacha....my granfather's paternal uncle. This made it even funnier because everyone always has a story to tell about sankar and I actually remember him.
Lix is trini for a good cuta**....which is trini for a good beating.
I had a good laugh with my uncle about it though. Sankar, according to my puppa, was tying a chain to himself and walking along the streets of the village late at night and scaring the villagers until some of the men teamed up, caught him and beat him with the same chain he was walking around it. A lagahoo is a spirit in Trinidad folklore who is recognized by the noise the chain makes as he moves. It comes from the french word "loupgarou." After the talk took a little religious turn as my dad was telling us about the rituals people used to do for all different purposes and how it backfired some way or the other. It's all these sacrifices and the people back then called it a part of hinduism.
Then Vin busted out the classic, "Aye but Uncle L de tell we about dis time he went to Salibea and dese Baptist people de dey on the beach and dey did kill ah chicken and throw de head in the sea and de head keep coming back to shore and uncle L de get frighten!"
I couldnt help laughing. I thought that naturally, everything gets washed back up to shore. Maybe it would have been something if the head didn't come back. Then i started to think about the lack of consideration for the environment and i got angry. By the way, the Baptists in Trinidad are different from the baptists in the rest of the world and Salibea is a beach that is a popular with the obeahmen/ women(witchdoctors).