Its hard to believe 6 months have passed!

This morning as I woke up sore for hiking through the bush for 6 hours the previous day, I was nervous about how the day would unfold before me. I had a staff meeting at the secondary school to discuss the coming school that starts tomorrow. The previous week I had a meeting at the primary school start 3 hours late, and a meeting at the secondary school start 1 1/2 hours late. So as I roll my sore body from bed my head is filled with thoughts of will this just be another meeting I'm given stones to hold.

After I pay my rent I decide to take the bus instead of walking the 15 mins to school cause its hot, and I'm in jeans cause school is casual till the kids get there. I just check weather.com and it tells me the real feel for st lucia is 102, and I wore jeans, I guess I've gotten used to the heat. I get to the school about 5 mins before the meeting starts, and to my suprise there are other teachers there already. Then an even bigger suprise for me, we started on time...ok it was 5 mins late, but here thats on time, if not early. Granted a lot teachers weren't there, and a lot never showed up, but who cares the meeting started on time and only lasted an hour. The best part though was when the principal said there will be 3 classrooms just for english and 3 just for math, this is a hige victory because it allows the english and math teachers to create a much more student friendly environment, now the trick is to get them to do it. The other challenge is that the students show up tomorrow, and the rooms will definitely not be ready for optimal learning by then, but it seems that is normal here.

Next it is over to the primary school to make sure the schedule I've created works for the principal. She isn't there, so it means using my phone credit, something that isn't really a big deal, but everyone here including myself sees as a big deal. People will actual call someone and hang up after the second ring so that they call you back, and phone calls tend to be brief and to the point with very little chit chat to save money/credit. Schedule works for her, so another success of my day, its only lunchtime so far so good. Now I'm trying to figure out how to best decorate math and english classrooms for students that are 12-18 years old but do k-4th grade level work. If you have any suggestions feel free to let me know.

I'm excited to get back into the school routine, see what happens with the welfare lunch program, my afterschool sports program, and the literacy and numeracy stuff I'm putting together. It'll also be nice to see my kids again.

I've finally gone out hiking, I did two smaller trails, and hopefully will be able to conquer some of the tougher ones before too long. I also had the chance to go sailing for the first time, just kinda got lucky with that, it was a lot of fun. I made pizza with my kids, in which they tried to tell me I was doing it wrong, of course 9 year old Lucians know how to make pizza better than me. The one was very knowledgeable about it he even knew you had to put flour under the pizza so it didn't stick. I'm not really sure where he picked that up. I also went with some friends on an around the island, ate lunch at a great view point, relaxed in baths, and played beach football, a nice way to spend a sunday. Most importantly I discovered a new beach that is one of a short list of favorites, by dicovered I of course mean it was the first time I went there, its not a secret beach or anything.

Well now its off to help a friend move. Ciao

Summer Time, and the living is busy!

So here I am thinking, sweet summer time, I mostly work with schools so things should slow down a bit, boy was I wrong. It seems I am every bit as busy with work, but because its summer, my social life has exploded. I really just want to lock myself in my home, and turn my phone off sometimes, of course the invites are always for good things so how can I say no?

My days for the past couple of weeks I have been spending teaching life skills, and basketball at summer camp. While the camp may not have been put together as well as I would have liked to have seen, its has been fun and I've gotten to know a bunch of kids and grown ups from my community that I may have not met otherwise. I rotate groups for life skills, but I have mostly the same kids everyday for basketball, which is a lot of fun. We start with a few skill drills, then we play my favorite game knockout, which they love too, even though sometimes it takes a long time for the kids to put the ball in the basket. After that we play a little 4 on 4, which makes me wonder if that's what it looked like when I first started playing. The kids forget to dribble and just run with the ball a lot, and double dribble all the time, but its a lot of fun. I try no to play with them because it just wouldn't be fair to what ever team I'm not on, plus if I play I miss a lot of the little things that the kids make mistakes with and may need help on. There is one girl that consistently shows up and plays with all the boys the other girls tend not to stick around the whole time. It was a proud moment for the female athlete in me when she got picked second amongst a group of 10-12 year old boys.

I also have found a running buddy, and we run in the evenings 4 times a week, which not only lets my exercise, but lets me explore new parts of the Valley, its a rather sprawling area. The other day I found a hill with a great view, granted its a massive hike to the top, especially when trying to run it, but once on top you can see all of the valley and the ocean. Its the only place in the valley I've found so far that you can see the ocean from. I'm still playing basketball with the guys, and enjoying it, unfortunately its a little less regular that I would like but better than nothing. The other day I ended up playing barefoot, which made me feel like a true Lucian because the young people do everything barefoot. I also played tennis this morning, which was well interesting considering I don't really know how to play tennis, none the less I had a great time, not sure I can say the same for my much more experienced friend I was playing with.

After tennis, it was off to a grant writing seminar all day with the counterpart I am working on my after school sports program with. It was a really great seminar, that really made both of us think about our project a lot more, and also gave us a lot of help to get our proposals right! The only down side is it means a lot more work, thankfully I'm really excited about this project so I don't mind it at all.

I've also gotten to do some fun an cool things in the past few weeks. Last weekend I baked a cake from scratch with my kids, it didn't come out right though, the cake tasted more like bread...I blame the recipe we used, but maybe baking cakes just isn't my thing. The kids really liked the homemade chocolate icing, even though it was grainy because of the freshly grated cocoa. They of course wanted to lick every bowl and every plate that had icing on it. On Sunday, I woke up at 5:45 so I could get to a friends green house before it got to hot to spend my morning harvesting cucumbers. Its this really peacefully relaxing process because its just you walking through these rows of cucumbers cutting ripe ones and putting them is a massive nylon bag. In about 2 and a half hours with collected about 700 lbs of cucumbers, which then get shipped off(in a plane) to the UK so they have fresh cukes in the grocery store. I even got to go to the depot where you drop the boxes off for shipment. I hope to be able to continue with this process regularly, but I never know what will come up. After being a farmer it was time to change into my nice clothes and head over to a friend of mine parent's wedding reception. Definitely glad I brought more than one nice non-work outfit. His parents had been together for 25 years and were finally deciding to get married, it seems that that a lot of people get married after they have kids here, but when he first told me I will have to admit I was a bit confused.

The weekend before that we had a going away camping trip for EC 77, the group of volunteers that came in two years ago, and will be leaving in about a month. It was a lot of fun, we camped on the beach, and lucky for me the morning of my birthday I got to wake up on the beach with the sun rising over a little forest while I went for a swim in the ocean. I will have to say that may be my favorite way to wake up, and definitely not a bad way to begin my birthday. After cooling out and having pancakes cooked over the fire, I began the trek back to my home with 2 friends that spent the day with me relaxing and eating the best meal of my life, handmade ravioli with spinach, mushrooms, and goat cheese, with a roasted red pepper cream sauce. The fabulous birthday dinner was made possible by my wonderful parents/Aunt and Uncle that donated to the Aria Birthday fund. By the way you will also be buying me my first ever real paints so I can make that transition from pastel to paint, very excited about that!!! Not only did I have great food, and friends, but by far the best part of my b-day was not only that my kids remembered that it was my birthday, but the youngest one picked me flowers from her yard and got her mom to help wrap them up. The second I got home they all came to wish me a happy birthday, they had been waiting since the morning when they sadly came to check me and discovered I wasn't home. Of course I also spent time reading and just relaxing with my 4 regular kids, and even made my friends join in on the reading to them when I had to work on cooking.

Before all of that was Carnival, which is really a month or so long, but the main event in Castries is in mid July. Its pretty crazy thousands of people dress up in these elaborate costumes, some rather scantily clad, and dance/walk through the streets for hours. I will have to say the highlight came from seeing three peace corps staff members jumping up in a band, which means they were in a specific group that all had the same costumes and they were dancing and partying in the streets. All the villages have smaller versions of the main thing in Castries, and there are lots of other events associated with it. They have different local music contests and the such, one of which not only did I go to, but I also knew some of the musicians playing. The panorama is what I went to, its a collection of different steel pan/drum groups from around the island that play pieces that they personally arrange.

I think those are pretty much the highlights of my life over here the past month or so. I just finished reading a great book about life in the islands called Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid, it really gives some great insights to the two sides of island life and I highly recommend it to get a better feel for the unknown part of island life.

The pictures from above are the flowers my kids gave me, my birthday dinner, the fun with cake, and harvesting cucumbers. Please note that the bottles in the last picture are of malt, which is a really thick nonalcoholic drink that fills you up and quenches your thirst. At first I hated it, but now when I'm hot, thirsty, and working hard its just what I want!