Submitted by Caroline Nee on the 2018 winter session program in Barbados sponsored by the Department of Geography…
Barbados is absolutely unreal. I’ve never been to an island and I am absolutely amazed by this little paradise. When we arrived Wednesday in the late afternoon, I had no idea what to expect. We’ve been here 4 days now and I’m pleasantly surprised at how nice and welcoming people are here. Everyone is extremely helpful and always polite!
One thing I want to talk about in this post is how drastically the island changes from parish to parish. There are 11 parishes on the island in total. As we adventured around the island today, I could very easily notice the difference in topography and demographics of the different parishes. My group is staying in St. James Parish, which is on the West Coast, so it is facing the Caribbean Sea, while the other side of the island faces the Atlantic Ocean. The difference between the two is crazy! On the west, you have very calm, crystal blue waters and then on the east, you have very rocky, rough oceans. However, the land is also very different. On the northern part of the island, which is St. Lucy’s Parish, it is almost jungle like. There’s foliage everywhere! It is also a lot less densely populated then the south and west coast. St. Lucy is known to be one of the poorer parishes and focuses more on agriculture as a main source for the workforce. While we were driving in the north, we actually got to see a man working in the sugar field and he was kind enough to let us all try pure sugar cane!
To wrap it up, I just wanted to say how wonderful this program has been so far and I’m very excited to see what’s in store for all of us next!
