This is not news but the pace of life here is slow.

We admit we haven’t been writing much.

I think when we arrived in Jordan everything seemed very exotic – camels! Arabic! The call to prayer! And life in Trinidad seems much more normal and certainly easier. The grocery stores carry American foods. The movie theater shows American and Bollywood films. Driving on the left and the ocean views are the biggest changes.

We are getting impatient waiting for our car but in the interim – we’ve been swimming in the pool every other day; we’ve made it to our tennis court; headed to the beach; been to the terrific multiplex; and headed out to dinner.

The best decision we made was hiring a local cook. Our kitchen now always smells deliciously of curry. For Thanksgiving, the Americans at the Embassy host a lunch for our Trinidadian colleagues. I made my favorite pumpkin cake but heard that the buffet table was light on food. Our cook Fatima has just made us a large pot of callalloo the national dish (an okra-pumpkin-greens stew) so I brought that in too. After the lunch I had a lot of confused Trini co-workers asking me how I had already learned how to make callalloo and complimenting the good seasoning. I quickly admitted that I was not the cook.

Life here is slow. I have been reading a lot and have a lot of book recommendations. Highest on the list is “Selected Works of TS Spivet” followed by “Superfreakanomics” and the “The Worst Hard Time.”

We spend a lot of time on our balcony watching the sunset over the ocean and watching the boats. Recently we've been watching the progress on the second oil rig in our view. We'll send pictures when it is done.