Aruba tournament - Who's going

The friends in Aruba are organizing a tournament in October, the Panamerican Championships. Having been there a few times already, I'll be visiting again and I'm doing my best to encourage the guys to join as well. As would any beginner fear at this stage, they don't think they are/will be ready for the tournament. Well, it's still 7 months away, so technically they should be well on track, were they to commit to it. Here's the second problem... budget. It will cost about 3,000 Trinidad dollars, which for many people here represents more than a month's salary. Although I beleive my guys earn all above that amount, it's still a significant expense. I already have K's interest, I'm pretty sure he'll commit this week, and I'm hoping for the two brothers to do the same. They're used to traveling for tournaments (Taichi & Kungfu) so that's not new to them. It would be very nice to have them with us, I think they could go a long way ...

So we all need to think about budget, and, more importantly, raising funds. It's not an uncommon thing in this country, as people always try to organize events, activities or trips on the cheap. One of the most common method is called "Barbecue". No, not an open fire pit with grilled meat and veggies, it's actually a deal you make with a restaurant that sells boxed lunches for about $20 and gives you about 50% of the receits. I think it's quite lousy but it seems to work... We could probably think of something a bit more original, but here, originality usually doesn't pay off.

Another method is to find a sponsor. One that I have in mind is Toyota, a big importer of cars here and they seem to have quite an important marketing budget. Also most of their billboard ads include samurai-looking cartoons; perhaps they'd see a benefit in sponsoring us for the trip.