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