It’s Official!!

It is official, my site placement has been announced. I will be staying in St Lucia for the next 2 years!! I am beyond thrilled and happy. I will be in the southern tip of the Island in the Vieux Fort area. I have one of the most remote sites on the Island. Everyone I have talked to has said that I will be in the country up in the mountains 🙂 Totally fine with me! I will be about an 1.5 hours from Castries and I am also the farthest Peace Corps Volunteer from headquarters. I also don’t mind and I know there are buses that go back and forth so I will have to wake up very early each day to get to training for the next month. I have Pre-service training in Castries till the end of August and will also be staying with another host family until I live on my own starting in September 🙂 But I am excited to be living by Vieux Fort and equally excited to have the LDS Church only 15 minutes away from where I will be living!! Such a blessing and I am so grateful for Peace Corps consideration in my placement! I’ve heard rumors that there is a set of sister missionaries in Vieux Fort, that would be amazing.

As for what I will be doing, I don’t know everything yet. I know I will be working in a school and in many grade levels and primarily helping with literacy interventions, library work and extracurricular activities. I have heard amazing things about the Principle of the school and I am excited to get to work 🙂 I will be the first Peace Corps volunteer in my community so pressure is on to work hard and make a difference. This is all becoming so more real.

Also, among all the Eastern Caribbean Islands, there is only 1 really accessible International Airport…you can guess where that airport is…Vieux Fort! Bottom line is, it will be very easy to visit me. I leave in a week to my new site and while I am so excited to leave and start this whole new journey, I am torn with having to leave my current home. The people here have been so loving. But my host mom is so happy I am staying on St Lucia! She said she will visit me often and has offered to help me move into my own place when that time comes. I can’t wait for that time to come!

Lastly, I have to share how we were where told our site placements. We were sorted…by a hat…that’s right Harry Potter fans, we had a pointy sorting hat that was narrated by our Country Director and she had us all sit in a chair and wear the hat and we found out which of the 4 (seriously! 4 Islands…4 houses…) islands we would be serving in. It was epic, especially when most of the people I am training with are from the true Harry Potter era. It was incredible and actually pretty hilarious! We even decided which islands would be which house at Hogwarts. Dominica is Slytherin because of the boa constrictor population there…St Vincent is Hufflepuff, Grenada is Ravenclaw and everyone in our group agreed that St Lucia is Gryffindor 🙂 This whole thing was just so hysterical. I admit, I was in the group that requested this idea to our CD once we realized the correlation. I now can say I have had an actually sorting hat experience. It was awesome!

Crazy Carnival!

Can you tell model school and our training portfolio work is all done?! I have more free time now that I have turned in all my hard work for grading. My last post of the day will be about Carnival! Since I don’t know the ages of those reading this, I will keep it PG and NOT post any pictures…seriously, Caribbean people love to party! On Monday, my host mom took some of us trainees to experience St Lucia’s Carnival celebration. Every Island has their own and basically, people sign up in bands to jump into Castries. Jumping is getting dressed up in feathers, glitter, beads and not much else and parading and dancing though the streets. Alcohol is the contributing factor for this crazy behavior but its pretty fun to see each band parade through and to see the excitement and colors. The dancing or whining is pretty extreme and not something I will every be participating in but I did like to see the different themes and costumes participants wore. Each band has a sponsor and this year, there were bands who had the theme of Troy, Mother Earth, Olympus, etc. From what I heard, the costumes can run close to $500 a person and on top of that, they pay to join a band as well. But that fee covers food and an open bar that rides along side the jumpers during the whole Carnival. Since its so expensive and the economy has tanked here, there were fewer people participating this year but it was still a great show and had great music to dance (like an American) along with. As trainees, we are not allowed to jump until we are officially volunteers. I don’t know if I would ever do it but it will be fun to see my peers next year having fun and integrating 🙂

Any Guesses?

I was walking along the beach and I saw this little sea creature. I first thought it was a rock but then I saw it gliding along the rock like a slug…except that it had a hard shell on its back. I tried to ask my host mom what it was…she said it was a sea creature so I looked it up when I got home. My first thought was a trilobite of some kind but those are officially extinct. Its called a chiton and its in the mullosk family. More exciting when I though it was a trilobite 🙂

 

The Magical Island Tour

This past Saturday, we took a tour of the island of St Lucia. Basically it takes 2.5 hours to drive around the whole Island but we stopped at all the iconic sight and did the tourist things here. My host mom and I stayed up all night cooking food for our full day adventure (mac and cheese pie, bbq chicken, fish, cherry pound cake, 3 kinds of juice, etc). My host mom’s brother has a taxi van (15 seater) so we had a bunch of people piled in, like my host mom’s co-workers, my trainee neighbor and her host mom, my host mom’s niece and friend, etc. We had a great time driving around, getting in and out of the car for every view point over every little fishing village. It was beautiful! Most villages are in valleys that lead into the sea so when ever it rains a lot or storms, the villages flood! I don’t know how they survive because it rains and storms a lot here, esp. during hurricane season. But they stay strong and are very good at repairing and rebuilding their houses and businesses. We left at 5am so that we could reach Soufriere early. Soufriere was the first big city we stopped at. This was where we saw the Pitons, two iconic mountains on the Island. We also had the sulfur springs to visit. Pictures below explain the sulfur springs pretty well. The water smelled lovely, like rotten eggs and was a murky grey color. At a 100 degrees F, I’m so grateful we left so early. If we would have got there later in the day, I don’t know how I could bath in that water with the sun and humidity. After soaking, you can continue up the stream and find the thick, rich volcano mud and just rub it all over you. It has lots of benefits, the locals here use it to tighten up their skin and keep them looking young. Honestly, it works! I have such a hard time figuring out how old people are here. Everyone looks so good for their age. After our mineral rich mud baths, we got a tour of the smoking volcano near by. The tour guide informed us that it is dormant but it always has smoke coming out of it. You can see the gases and heat bubbling up to the surface but I’m sure it was safe 😉

Next, we went to the botanical gardens and mineral baths which were one of my favorite stops. It was so beautiful and well kept. It was much like the Domes in Milwaukee and they even had a waterfall, with the same volcanic water but colder. After exploring the jungle garden and admiring all the different plants and flowers, we got to soak again, this time in mineral baths that were build long ago for people to use for medicinal purposes. They were tiled pools that had clear, mineral water pouring into them. It was very pristine and relaxing, warm but not hot and much different than our previous experience. I got to scrub off more of the sulfur experience, noticing that the bites on my legs were starting to heal up already. Lots of health benefits from volcanos!

On our way down to the southern tip of the island called Vieux Fort, we stopped at a black sand beach for lunch! Everyone went straight for the food…I went to the water! It was so different not to see white or cream colored sand. It made a beautiful contrast against the foam of the waves. There was a cliff and rocks and everything! Very picturesque. We took lots of pictures, I even tried to be the Little Mermaid and lay on one of the rocks, then lift myself up when a wave came…everyone knows the scene when she is singing about being a part of his world…anyway, my host mom thought I was crazy. They don’t watch Disney down here. After our photo shoot, we packed up, drove through Vieux Fort and saw the view of the whole southern area of the island up at the lighthouse. My camera decided it was tired and died then. Sad news is I can’t get the lens to open now. It may be broken, I will try to see if I can get it fixed. The rest of the tour was back around the eastern side of the island where not much is happening. Not sure why, the prison is there, we got to see that at least 🙂 We returned at 5:30pm, exhausted but so happy for having such a fun, eventful day!

Scenic Views around St Lucia

Volcanic Sulfur Springs!

Its an Epidemic…

So I read on line that the Chikungunya Virus has started to hit the U.S. It has been an issue in the past few months here in the Caribbean but is spreading fast. In my neighborhood, nearly every household has had someone affected by it. In my training group, 3 of my peers have been diagnosed in just the past 5 days. We are dropping like flies…or mosquitos I guess, but the good news is that is lasts for only about a week. For those who don’t know, Chikungunya is a mosquito transmitted virus and is a relative of Dengue so it includes a high fever, rashes, fatigue and very painful joints. What is interesting is many locals here truly believe that Chikungunya is airborne. Their argument for that the rate and way the virus is spreading seems too fast (since we are in the mountains, there are very strong breezes that keeps the mosquitos down in the valleys) and the fact that everyone is getting Chikungunya and not Dengue…apparently the same mosquito carries both viruses…so why are people only getting Chikungunya? I’m not saying the scientists are wrong…its just interesting 🙂 I am telling you, I have gotten every few mosquito bites here, like 3 or 4 in the past 5 weeks. I never thought I would get more bites in Wisconsin than in a tropical rainforest.

Model School!!

Well…I survived Model School. It turned out to be a wonderful week and the kids had such a good time, they wanted to know what they were doing the next week. Their faces dropped to hear that there was no reading camp next week. Its rare for any programs to be provided to kids during their summer break so they were thrilled to participate, even if we teaching literacy and conducting intensive intervention programs. My class had 9 very happy, enthusiastic children. There were 3 other trainees working with me so the ratio was not very realistic but it made classroom management a little easier…ok a lot easier 🙂 Our theme this week for our class was having a healthy lifestyle and how to keep our bodies healthy (lessons on hygiene, nutrition, feelings, exercise, etc.) We split up the lessons among the 4 of us and I working on teaching nutrition. In one of my lessons, I had the kids make a healthy snack (fruit and yogurt parfaits with bananas, mango, yogurt and granola – I let them cut their own fruit and do the layers, very basic) after we discussed the different nutrients we get from local foods here on St. Lucia. WOW! They LOVED that. I think they were in shock from having such a hands-on activity. After working at the Salvation Army during summer camp, I didn’t expect such a reaction. My kids at camp were never that excited.
I also go to help with the afternoon activities and teach the art activity. We had tables of kids work together to draw a landscapes, the trick was they each had their own color of marker and could not trade with their peers. They had to communicate and work together to draw a scene. It was very interesting to see them try to take each others colors and at first, it seemed they could not rely on each other to help. But soon, we saw them figure it out and we would hear them asking each other to help. All but one of the landscapes were of the mountains and the beach. We had one group draw the solar system which was very creative of them!
I tried to think of big difference between the kids I worked with in America and the kids at model school. I feel the kids in model school were very respectful. Every child answered by saying miss. Good morning miss, thank you miss, yes miss. Everything was very polite and when you asked them to listen or do a task, they followed instructions. I will say the kids here are more physical. They liked to play rough with each other and there really are not very many rules when it comes to their recess and lunch break. But the kids are affectionate to the teachers, I got plenty of hugs this past week and many would hold my hand and stand close to me. It was sweet 🙂
My favorite part of the week was my intervention group. We spit our class into different literacy need groups and I had the group that need extra help with their writing. I decided to introduce the PLEASE Strategy and by the end of the week, my goal was to have them write a developed paragraph. I had so much success with this strategy! My group picked it up easily and were able to write complete paragraphs. I was so proud of them! It was a great moment and very rewarding. This was my first experience of seeing literacy teaching having a direct impact and has me very excited to get to work at my post once I am placed. I find out on Friday where I will be living for the next two years!!
I also do not have pictures of model school due to the rules around photographing the children… I think there are some approved pictures, I will try to get them so I can post them 🙂

Caribbean Birthday Suprise!

So for my birthday yesterday, my wonderful host mother took Christina (the volunteer who lived where I currently am last year – my sister or sese), Shannon (my trainee friend next door, also a sese) and I for a night out on the town! South of Castries is a very sweet, secluded harbor called Marigol Bay. Great little restaurants line the shore and are located on the docks next to the water. It was so amazing to eat at a restaurant right along the water and the food was delicious! It was dark by the time we were done so we didn’t get pictures of the scenery but we did get some pictures of our little group 🙂 It was so peaceful and spectacular, I was in heaven. After we finished eating and taking pictures, because Lucians always take pictures of everything, our last surprise was visiting the same scenic look out over Castries that we went to before during the day. To see all of Castries at night was beyond words. You could see everything, the harbor, the lighthouse and every single home in the valley lit. The cool breeze was so calming. I would say it was the perfect way to end my birthday night but I got to Skype my family that night which was so wonderful.

Next week: Model School! We are going to be teaching groups of struggling students next week and I am really excited. I have been making teaching material and writing lesson plans, busy busy busy! Our theme for the week is living a healthy lifestyle and we are teaching decoding and writing as our literacy outcomes. I will be teaching a lesson on nutrition and I am going to have them make a healthy snack and learn how to write recipe cards. Can’t wait! Lastly, 13 days and counting until I find out where my site will be for the next 2 years.

Peace Corps Friends and Host Mama