Arrival Day (standard:travel stories, 3227 words)
Author: Juggernaut	Added: May 28 2014	Views/Reads: 2623/1993	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Trinidadians celebrate Arrival Day to celebrate the arrival of the first batch of farm labor from India on May 30, 1845 to work on British colony of Trinidad to work on sugarcane soils. Juggernaut celebrates his own arrival day in Trinidad on October 10,

Arriving Day 

Juggernaut celebrates October 10 as arriving day, the day he arrived in 

Trinidad in 1973.  It was a long journey started in his home town 

Pineappleville, a town known for pineapples on southern seaboard of 

India. 

On completing postgraduate degree, Juggernaut was all excited 

to take up his first job as teaching instructor at the same college he 

was a former undergrad.  Teaching is a very fulfilling experience 

particularly if the students are enthusiastic. In the chemistry lab 

demonstrating analytical techniques to the students was inspiring. As a 

student Juggernaut was at the receiving end from the teachers, now he 

was grading the student's test papers. The first semester zip through 

very fast with the excitement of teaching a new lesson every week. At 

the middle of the second semester, some of the excitement started to 

wear off since he was repeating the same material to a new set of 

students. Sitting at the bottom of seniority among the teaching staff, 

juggernaut had a sinking feeling that he had to teach the same course 

for a long time to come. The only way out was to pursue a doctoral 

program or change course altogether into a different field. At the end 

he decided to pursue doctoral program in countries in South America or 

Africa. From National Geographic magazines, he read so much about 

exotic cultures in those countries; he thought that living in that 

culture while pursuing graduate studies would be exciting and 

rewarding. 

Juggernaut went to the library at the local university to 

gather addresses of universities in countries like Chile, Brazil, 

Argentina, Trinidad and countries in Africa for admission into graduate 

programs.  Juggernaut received many responses for his inquiries abroad 

but was mostly disappointing. Some professors mentioned lack of funding 

and others mentioned language barrier. But then he received a letter; a 

letter of life time.  It was from a professor at the University of the 

West Indies in Trinidad. In the letter, the professor offered a 

position as a full-time instructor to conduct labs to undergrads in 

return the tuition fee was waived to pursue the doctoral program.  The 

admission letter was conditional until the receipt of the 

recommendation letter from Juggernaut's professor in India. Juggernaut 

kissed the letter so many times but delicately not to wet the letter 

too much. 


Click here to read the rest of this story (537 more lines)