My first real academic study abroad experience was a 4 week trip to Tobago between my sophomore and junior years at Northeastern. I would earn 8 credits and get to spend a month in the Caribbean - who wouldn’t go?
To give a little bit of background, Northeastern University offers many different 5 week summer programs abroad called a Dialogue of Civilization. They all have different focuses and really allow students to dive deep into the culture of a foreign country. My first one was a trip to Tobago that would focus on an Afro-Caribbean Music Research Project. This was my first attempt at research that was beyond just a simple school report using the library and also my first dive into Ethnomusicology (the study of music and culture). If you had asked me when I started school if I even knew was Ethnomusicology was, let alone if I’d end up with a minor in it, I would have thought you were nuts. Here I am, 7 years later and I cannot shake the travel bug. Full disclosure - this was the first travel journal that I ever did back in 2011 - I did my best to put it together for you, but it's a little rough around the edges!
Week 1 - We started off with a week of classes in Boston. Four weeks is a really tight timeline to cram in a whole research project so our professors wanted us to start off in a classroom on campus. We got a base layer of Tobagonian history and we learned how to use the cameras and equipment. This way we were prepped and ready when we arrived.
Travel - Traveling with a large group is always complicated but when there are delays and lost baggage, the situation escalates quickly. After 14 hours of travel, we arrived in Tobago without our luggage. I was new to the checked luggage game so, of course, I had nothing important with me. It was HUMID, we were all exhausted, and the first lesson I was about to learn to how to cohabitate with ants. They were everywhere, walls, shower, coming out of the keyboard of my laptop. The class and professors were staying in a cute, small hotel that we used up every room of. We all had balconies with little kitchenettes. There was a pool and it was looking like it was going to be a great trip.
Week 2 - So I started this trip with one of the worst sunburns of my life. We were so bored with nothing to do and itching to explore that the first thing we did the morning we arrived was walk to the beach. This was still before anyone had their luggage (where we had all packed our sunblock)...not one of my brightest plans. Fortunately everything arrived later that day. We went to the market to stock up on food and I spent the first week in Tobago squeezing aloe directly from the leaf of a plant onto my shoulders.
Once I had some of my creature comforts back, I was ready to go. That night we had a swim and went to what is locally known as Sunday School. Sunday School is where kids would tell their parents they were going at night when they would really go out and party. So nowadays it’s just a big community party. There was a steel drum orchestra, lots of people dancing, amazing food. And it happens every week!
First day of classes - This was another rude awakening (I promise that I become more adaptable). Our classroom was about a mile away from our hotel and we were told the first morning that we would be walking back and forth, in 90 degree humid Tobago. We all arrived to class hot, sweaty, tired, and I was definitely more than a little cranky. This first week would be all speakers giving us more background information and a general knowledge of Tobago Music, Culture, and Folklore. All super interesting topics but when you combine it with a barely air conditioned room, your energy is gone and I was doing all I could to stay awake and take notes. I know exactly what type of learner I am, and lectures weren’t working for me.
The first week flew by. We had lots of events to attend in the evenings as well as class everyday. We visited the Tobago Museum and explored downtown Scarborough (which I found to be super crowded and full of way more fried food than I knew existed).
By Week 2 our research was starting to progress. We had normal check ins with our professors on how things were coming along and I felt like we were in a great position. We ended the second week at the opening ceremony of the Heritage Festival. It was a giant tent outside where the theme of heat and humidity continued along with a huge crowd of people. It was amazing to see how many people truly came out to celebrate the culture and history of the island. I really enjoyed seeing the folk dances in person and this event definitely sparked my groups interest to make that a focal point in our project. Saturday night was our first Caribbean club experience. I hadn’t been to any clubs in the US yet so I have nothing to compare it to but I had a really great time and enjoyed spending time with my classmates and the locals we had met thus far. We finished the week again at Sunday School where I tried my first “Shark and Bake” - I’m not sure if it was actually shark that I was eating but it was delicious. Half the reason I ate it was to say that I tried shark, so I’m going with that.
Week 3 - We began week 3 with the first day of Steel Pan lessons. I had really been looking forward to this part of the trip so when it didn’t go as planned (the yard had double booked us and the man with the mallets never showed up), I was bummed. We spent day 1 of lessons looking at the drums and hearing a bit of their history before it downpoured and we went back to the hotel. By day 2 our professors had found somewhere new for us to learn so we were able to take lessons all week. On the last day, a TV crew came to film our performance and Tobagonian Assemblymen and women came to watch as well. It went pretty good for just one week of lessons and afterward we got to go enjoy a food fair.
We also spent the week doing interviews to gather research for our project. On the extracurricular front, we started the week at a wake to see how it’s traditionally done in Tobago with music and dance, this was the most uncomfortable experience for me. We stood out like sore thumbs (for the obvious reasons) and we showed up in a huge bus that was basically like waving a flag that we didn’t belong. Tuesday we went to the esplanade in Scarborough to hear a choir directed by our coordinator here in Toabgo. They were really great and it was a fun and entertaining show. We also attempted to see some turtles this week come up to the beach to lay their eggs and after an hour and a half of waiting, we gave up and called it a night. Finally at the end of the week, our bus driver brought us to an Old Fort with an amazing view of the water and parts of the island. There was mystery tombstone there that said “She was a mother without knowing it and a wife without letter her husband know it except by her kind indulgences to him.” Interesting but I have no idea what it means. Ending the week, I caught up on as much rest as I could. Friday night we got to go on an adventure to find a hidden beach we had heard about. It was amazing, we had it to ourselves and we watched the sunset and body surfed before we had to go back to the hotel for the nightly debrief.
The schedule was super packed in addition to the actual project we were working on and time was flying. I found myself never saying no to anything because I wanted to experience it all. Saturday we went to the village or Moriah for the “Old Time Moriah Wedding” as part of the Hertiage Festival. The wedding is a really popular event on the island and a total production. There is a procession, dancing, lots of people. In between downpours, it was great. Sunday was another event called “Games We Used to Play” that I wasn’t such a fan of. We got to see some of the older games but mostly were distracted by the huge bouncy castle, they really knew how to mix the old and new.
Week 4 - The last week was a whirlwind of soaking in every experience possible as well as finishing our paper. We had more interviews, rehearsal for our presentation, writing the paper, creating the video to go along with our presentation, and getting one of our new friends that happened to be a dance teacher to participate in our presentation. I tried surfing as well as scuba diving for the first time - I loved both and hope to do them again! Our presentation turned out really great and I feel like my group killed it. Plus I have at least one friend that I know will be with me for a while.
