Carnival!

I'm falling a bit behind again but I swear I have a good excuse! Before telling the story behind the excuse though I must first post about our Carnival adventures.  Even if you haven't heard of the Caribbean tradition of Carnival, you've probably heard of Mardi Gras.  In New Orleans, Mardi Gras is celebrated the week leading up to Ash Wednesday. It's a time to get out all of your debauchery before lent and it culminates on Fat Tuesday. Instead of Mardi Gras, the Caribbean has "Carnival", and each island has its own cultural twists.  Trinidad and Tobago, to my knowledge, is the only Caribbean nation to celebrate its Carnival in the appropriate time slot - the week before lent begins - and it was where the tradition of Carnival originated.  Over the years, other Caribbean islands have started their own Carnival celebrations to correspond with other big events or to specific times of year.  In the U.S. Virgin Islands, each island has its own Carnival: St. Croix is in late December/ early January, St. John is in late June/ early July and ours in St. Thomas is in late April/ early May. This year, Carnival began the night that we returned back from Florida.

In St. Thomas, Carnival opens with a food fair on Wednesday night. Early, early, early (4am early) Thursday morning there is the first parade and most people stay up through the night to attend it.  Then on Friday the kids get their turn with a children's parade.  Carnival culminates with the big "adult" parade on Saturday that lasts practically all day and then people party into the night.

The University usually has a troupe that participates in the adult parade. Besides the university-sanctioned booty shaking dancing girls (it is the Caribbean after all), UVI also has a few veteran Moko Jumbies.  "Moko-whaaat?" you ask. Moko Jumbies! They're the stilt-walkers in Carnival parades (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moko_jumbie).

This year UVI veteran Moko Jumbies put out a call for new people and Tyler and I decided to answer the call. We went to the adult parade last year and saw our director of the marine science center up on stilts having a great time so we figured it had to be pretty straightforward.  Well, turns out that strapping 3 feet of plywood to your legs and learning how to walk on areas about a quarter the size of your feet takes some getting used to.  Our fearless Moko Jumbie leader said that we both had "natural" talent (yeah baby!) but all that meant is that we could stand in one place and lift our legs up and down our first day. It took many, many days of practice to be confident in walking around and not clinging desperately to walls and fences.  Our confidence was then drastically shaken when 2 fellow Jumbie trainees pushed it too far and fell, resulting in some serious injuries.  Falling straight forward from three feet up onto asphalt can really mess you up.  Mess you up in the concussion and stitches kind of way. But I'm happy to say that they recovered fast and joined us in the parade!

Waiting for costumes, or at least for someone to tell us what to do.

Stilts at the ready

The day of the parade dawned with us having no costumes and no real idea of what we were supposed to do. So we showed up and lined our stilts up next to the other clueless UVI Moko Jumbies and waited for someone to tell us what to do.

One HOT hour or so later we heard rumors that the UVI float was coming and someone was bringing our costumes. At this point, the UVI dancers had arrived who included Camille, the dean of the College of Science and Math.

UVI Moko Jumbies and dancers. My college's dean, Camille is the one in white with an orange hat.

Another HOT (did I mention this is the tropics?) hour later and the costumes finally arrived! So then it was craziness - sequins and ribbons and pieces of t-shirts flying everywhere. But suddenly we looked good. And thankfully, despite our extraordinary lateness, the parade was running on island time too so we still had to wait around to start.

Finally, we got the go ahead to strap on the stilts and pour on the charm. Below is Tyler and I at the start. UVI's theme this year was going green, hence all of the... well... green.  The dancers also gave out cloth grocery bags and other goodies to encourage green behavior.

I had been so nervous about not falling that I hadn't really thought about the fact that we would be in a parade with a thousand people looking at us.  But as we started walking it dawned on me how excited people were, especially kids, to see us.  This year we were the only troupe to have Moko Jumbies, and there were 12 of us!  People waved and cheered and we danced and posed for photos. Soon I forgot all of my nervousness and just enjoyed the parade. It was a ton of fun!!

Three hours later, we entered the stadium that marks the end of the parade. We were toast! No lunch and the intense sun and heat made us some pooped Jumbies, but it was totally worth it.  I'm still trying to get a video of us dancing from my friend Dan. Hopefully, I'll be able to add that here soon. In the meantime, here's a photo of us with our fellow (wiped-out) Jumbies at the end of the parade. We'll see you next year Carnival!

 

The Florida circuit

Tyler ready to party down at the wedding

The end of April found Tyler and I traveling to attend a big exciting British wedding. No, not that one, but just as exciting! My old roommates Paul and Lisa got married the day after that other wedding across the pond. That meant Tyler and I took the occasion to visit Miami and catch up with everyone. We arrived two days before the wedding so we could drops some bucks at our favorite dive shop and meet up with collaborators and friends at RSMAS. Adrienne and Thiago were nice enough to put us up despite Thiago's impending Ph.D. defense date (July whoo hoo!).  They also accompanied us to the wedding along with Jason and Rachel who have officially moved onto their boat in anticipation of their Caribbean cruising adventure (see blog Kaki Batu Dua link on side).  The wedding was beautiful, despite being moved inside because of the rain, and we all rocked out to an excellent live band.  Tyler was unfortunately a little feverish that day... and you know he's sick when he couldn't even dance his way through a whole Michael Jackson song.. but he still looked good!

Rachel, Jason, Adrienne, Thiago and I also prepared to shake our booties, after the solemn wedding ceremony of course.

After partying it up in Miami we hit the road with Orlando as our destination. Cara and Wade drove over from St. Pete and were kind enough to pick us up and cart us around after we dropped off the rental car. We headed out for a quick dinner at the Bob Marley cafe at Universal Studios and then hit the sack in preparation for the big day that followed.

me in 2009, excited

So as a little back story: to the left is a photo of me from the summer of 2009 when I went to Universal Studios' Islands of Adventure to celebrate my friend Johnathan's successful Ph.D. defense.  To my complete surprise and utter delight we discovered this sign explaining that they were in the planning process for building a Harry Potter world. As evidenced in the photo, I was pretty excited.

Below is a photo of Tyler and I on the same bridge two years later having completely conquered Harry Potter World in all its glory!

me and Tyler in 2011, still excited

Cara and I awkwardly with the Hogwart's Express conductor

Cara and Wade were of course there with us and who better to explore Hogsmeade, Hogwarts and the Forbidden Forest with than two other massive fans of Ms. Rowling's books? We managed to get in early and ride everything by noon. Lucky for us, it was not busy that day so we even rode some rides three times. We also consumed at least twice our daily caloric intake, gorging ourselves on frozen butterbeers (delicious), carmel covered apples (okay that was just me), Hog's head ale, and other tasty delights. All food and beverages in Harry Potter World are specific to the world. Meaning coke, sprite, and other main stream stuff is replaced with butterbeer, pear cider, and iced teas of different varieties.  It was bloody wonderful!

But sadly our HP world adventure had to end, but a new adventure was beginning as we packed it in and headed back with Cara and Wade to St. Pete to stay with them in their newly renovated house named Ms. Magnolia.  For the inside scoop on the Coopers abode check out their blog: the Coastal Coopers. For the next couple of days we visited with friends including Ryan, Kate, and Annette and Mark and their ridiculously cute son Noah, and we generally had an awesome time catching up with everyone including the Cooper "kids" (two happy cats and two very excited dogs). St. Pete is a great city and the time went quickly biking, shopping, and ok a little bit of working, but soon we found ourselves back on a plane headed to St. Thomas. Thanks to all who made our circuit of Florida outstanding! We miss you guys!