Let's plant a coconut tree!

That there my friends is a picture of the coconut tree I planted. My host dad has a garden, which is really more of a farm, up in the hills, so of course I had to plant a coconut tree when I went up to see it for the first time. The garden is really cool, bananas, grapefruit, lemons, limes, passion fruit, plantains, sugar cane and a bunch of other things grow up there. The place is also really remote and peaceful, so I definitely want to go up there and help out. One of the goals we created for me is to learn to carry a whole big big bunch of bananas on my head like the locals do. I also saw my first whole cocoa fruit on my visit to the garden. Its a red and orange cylinder that looks kind of like a squash.

I also recently went to help another volunteer in my community run a bingo night at a community center that a volunteer helped create from an old laundry. The center is literally a cinderblock room with tables made of plywood place on cartons or crates . It was a really good activityto see what things I work on will really be like. Plus it is a center that I am expected to work with once I'm sworn in.

This is a big week for all of us Peace Corps trainees in St Lucia, we have to implement a service learning project at the school we are working at, and of course things our going wrong. I was assigned the day before spring break, weeks long here, to do mine, a day that now has become a teacher workshop day as of yesterday, so I'm trying to get the kids to school anyways. We'll see how that works out.

Fortunately the following day we someone weaseled into getting out of our lessons to go to a really big cricket match. Then the next day the other island volunteers are throwing us a beach bash, which should be a lot of fun.

Well its way past my bedtime, I miss you all and hope everything is going well for everyone!

Exploring, Learning, and Becoming a Lucian

Here are a collection of banana trees, the purple

flower at the bottom is how the bananas start to

grow.
Above is one of the views as I ride the bus to and from Castries.

The extended host family and me with Castries behind us.

A town up in the hills of the Valley, where I live.
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View from my host families balcony.

Fish Heads and Pig Snouts!

I've now tried fish heads and pig snouts. The fish head was fried, I fried it, and complete with eyes. It was by far the best part of the fish, but scary to eat. The pig snout I didn't know I was eating, until afterwards and I was telling my host mom I enjoyed it. I told my peace corps friends that after we are in our own places, I'll fry up some flying fish for them, but only if they eat the heads.

Other than interesting food, I'm going to try to address some questions I've been getting a lot of in emails. First of all I do have a cell phone! I just got it today, incoming calls are free for me, but outgoing calls are really expensive. I guess that's what skype is good for.

I did finally make it to the beach, a beautiful beach with a cemetery on the other side of it, rather strange, but it was easy for all of us to get to. I went with most of the other trainees after we went to the saturday market. It was a nice lazy day complete with my favorite local drink lemon shandy, a mix of beer and lemonaid.

As for more information about where I live and the conditions I live in, well I basically live in the rich part of a farming community that is pretty poor. It is about a 15 min drive from the nearest beach, but its a beach you would not swim in because people in the village use the ocean as a toilet. As for the closest good beach I'm not really sure. The island is pretty small, and if I had a car it would be really easy to get to a lot of beaches, but having to use the bus makes it more time consuming to get to some of the better beaches I know about. If you walk around the "neighborhood" you'll see a wide range of things: rum shops, shack house, nice houses, field after field of banana trees, a lumbar yard, a police station, but mostly plants growing.

As for my current house, I'm in a 3 bedroom place with my own room and bathroom. Peace Corps requires that I have my own room, which really makes sense for what I'm here for. I think it would really hard to be effective if I was sharing a room, because I really need time to process everything I do. Even when I'm just relaxing I'm learning and working, so the only time I really relax is when I'm alone. It did initially make me feel really awkward though because here I am with my own room, while my three host sisters and host nephew share a room. We have wireless in my host families home, and when I move out I want to get Internet because I really need it for research purposes. Additionally if I want to use skype it would be really hard to speak freely anywhere else because my every action is being watched, partially because I'm an outsider, partially because I am one of 2 white people in the valley, and because everybody is watched closely.

It seems that at the end of training I will be moving across the street to a two bedroom place, I haven't seen it but my host mom says its nice, and if that doesn't work I know of other options...the peace corps takes care of the logistics I just move in.

So far I've had running water whenever I need it, but am told that it is normal to not have water for a while. Sometimes you don't have water because its too dry, it floods, or something blocks up the tank. The mosquitoes haven't been too bad, I've managed only to get a little sunburn, I'm managing with cold showers (they're only bad in the morning when you don't want to be up and the sun hasn't warmed the water at all), and I'm loving not having AC.

Things are going really well so far, my primary school kids make me feel so loved, the secondary school kids make me use my mind, and my peace corps people keep me sane and balanced. Bon swe!!! Thank you for all the emails I really do appreciate them even if I don't respond to all of them, I love hearing about everything that's happening!!

Oh, so thats how that grows!

In the past week I learned how a pineapple, banana, guava, mango, cashew, papaya, and many other things grow. Most of them just grow from trees and aren't really that interesting, but the banana and the pineapple are magical. First of all a pineapple bush, yes bush, only produces one pineapple at a time, and the pineapple grows out of the top of the bush. Of course my host sisters think I'm crazy for being so fascinated by this that I felt the need to take a picture of the one in the front yard.

As for the banana the magic behind them is hidden by the blue bags that cover the fruit in the fields I pass many times a day; however when walking with my host mom around the valley, mainly a farming community, I got to see some of the plants without the blue bag. The bunch of bananas start as a big purple flower that is closed up and as it opens little groups of bananas begin to grown, then the next layer, and then the next, I'll have to bring my camera on the next walk because you have to see it to understand how incredible it is.

Besides being shown all the fruit trees in the yard by my host dad this past weekend, I ] was also taken to the pizza place in the closest town, Dennery, which also happens to have Karoke. Be careful though because you will inevitably have to suffer through some old school, from 50 years ago, country music. I have no idea why but really old country music is huge down here. To eat the pizza we went up to an overlook so you could see the beach below with the town behind it, a rather impressive view for being off the main highway.

I have finally stepped on a beach, but I really only stepped on it and looked briefly out to the ocean. I think this weekend all of the trainees are refusing to lime with a purpose (structured and purposeful hanging out that the peace corps thinks we should be doing to integrate) and taking a day to lay on the beach finally. I mean we've been on a tropical island for almost 3 weeks it’s about time to be on a beach!

I went to church on sunday, I know who am I? It wasn't bad and I feel like it really helped me to get my face out there in a positive friendly way. I later met people who said they saw me at church. On the plus side after church you can buy ice cream, so that made it well worth it.

After church we went to a 60+ culture pageant, where I saw old ladies do Lucian dances, and wear traditional clothing. The most important lesson I learned however was that something you would expect to take a hour maybe two in the states will last about 4 here, and nobody leaves before the end.

I worked with an elementary school this week, the kids all want to be my friend, and I feel like I will definitely continue working with the school through my 2 years. In just one day I already started to get attached.

Today I had my first reading group at the secondary school, it went relatively well. I was given a different group than I originally thought I was getting, so my reading material wasn't as appropriate as originally planned. Everything down here is about being on your toes, and expecting the unexpected.

On to the Homestay

I've been at my home stay for a few days now, and feel like I'm beginning to fit in with the family. I have 3 new sisters from 6-19 and a nephew that is one in addition to a mom and dad. Everyone is nice and is working hard, maybe a little too hard to make me feel welcome.

My new town is inland a bit and is a more rural community in the Dennery quarter. I've started meeting the neighbors, which isn't hard because my new mom introduces me to everyone we pass, plus it is pretty much mandatory to greet everyone you meet on the street (this is not the case in the capital) or when you get on the bus. I take the bus into two a few times a week and its about a 45 min ride to get into town and then a 30 min walk or another bus ride to get to the peace corps office. The bus ride isn't too bad cause its a straight shot and everyone always has a seat cause the buses are really jut big vans, plus it is a beautiful drive.

I still have not been anywhere near a beach, which seems like a sin because I've been on this island paradise for 10 days already. I have signed up at the library and opened a bank account however, and am begining to learn Kewyol, French Creole. Tomorrow I visit my future work site, and hopefully am not thrown to the wolves immediately, but given some time to figure things out.