Jounen Kweyol

Last October, I posted about Jounen Kweyol, St Lucia’s celebration of their Kweyol heritage, so I will just share some pictures I took yesterday of this year’s celebration at school.

           

  Ruby stole my watermelon rind and was ready to fight for it. Mongrels…

My new goal

I have a new goal to take more pictures. So here are a few of the past few days. Read the previous post first 🙂

       

   

Pictures of my teachers on the beach. The girl in the flowers is my friend and IT teacher, giving a perfect example of the photo shoot moments we had.

My neighbour who I cook with every week. She also watches Project Runway with me every Thursday.

I wanted to take of picture of Taj, one of the students I work with. The book he is holding is the first book we read together, which after weeks of telling me he could not read, exclaimed “Miss, I can read!” He just didn’t have the confidence to read before. He kept checking out this book since it has become his favourite so I got him his own copy to keep. Taj now checks out books every week and loves to read.

   

My friend (who I get my cocoa sticks from) and I working on shelling roasted cocoa beans.

Feeling Appreciated

Yesterday the island celebrated Teacher Appreciation day and the staff at my school took the whole day off from teaching to make sure we really felt appreciated. The morning was reserved for a special assembly where the teachers were blessed by the local pastor and the children presented poems, cards and gifts. I was bombarded with hugs and little notes and even a few chocolate bars! The kids are so sweet and I loved reading the notes they gave me. After the wave of appreciation from the students, they were sent home early and we teachers went out for lunch. We went to a nearby beach and had a great time eating and hanging out. We went for a lime on the beach and if you don’t know this, Caribbean people love getting their picture taken. So for many teachers, the walk turned into a serious photo shoot. Once they were satisfied with their pictures, we headed off for town where they had a teacher’s football game. It was the west team vs the south, which was our team to cheer for. And of course, south won! It was an exciting game but what was even more fun to watch is how passionate teachers got during the game. Many teachers would just run onto the field, upset about a call or arguing about a goal and it would take 5 minutes or so to clear the field so they could start the game again.  I think they all had a little rum in their systems, by little I mean a lot.

My neighbour and I made cocoa tea and dumplings, the go-to meal for cold, rainy days. And Thursday was a cold, rainy night. I have my own personal supplier of local cocoa and I often help her make the cocoa sticks they use for the tea. She takes cocoa beans and roasts them, then with added spices, grinds them and forms cocoa sticks. The tea is easy to make and everyone has their own version: basically they melt the cocoa stick with milk, more spices and a little flour to thicken it. It’s similar to hot chocolate. Then they boil pieces of dough in the tea to make the dumplings. It’s one of those comfort meals that really should be the national dish of St Lucia, which is saltfish and green fig salad.

  

 

School is back in session…

I have just finished my first month back at school! I am happy to report that my second year is going great, much better than the first. Since I am well adjusted to school, going back and starting a new year went way more smoothly as compared to last year. My coworkers are more open to new ideas and suggestions, we all needed some adjustment time. It has been a lot of fun planning lessons together and we are doing some really fun and differentiated activities with the kids. I am co-planning and co-teaching more often which makes my schedule very busy which is a great thing. I even have a new grade 3 teacher and she began working with me from the start, she is a great support. I am teaching art again on Fridays and the library is being used by every class and is run by the teachers, not me = sustainable! This is a relief since I actually don’t have time to any more like I used to.

I recently had some friends stay over at my place after a fun night out. Some ladies from church and I went out to eat pork wrap (delicious grilled pork, garlic and bbq sauce and slaw wrapped in a roti shell) and then karaoke, which is always fun to watch. Lucians LOVE their karaoke and just being there is entertaining enough, I didn’t have to sing (thank goodness). After that, we went to a street party in the next community over and stayed until 2am. Lots of music and food, it was really fun to just relax and hang out. Lucian dancing is all in the hips and they find it hilarious to watch people from America dance since we tend to dance everywhere else but the hips. So the whole night they would be dancing and then someone would shout to dance like me and they will would their best impression of “American dancing.” It was so funny to watch them do their own versions. The best part was the group of Americans that were at the street party too, all dancing in a circle and of course they stood out from crowd and became a new source of inspiration for my group of friends to mimic. After a long and crazy night, we all crashed at my house. I woke up early and prepared an American breakfast for them, waffles, real maple syrup, scrambled eggs, breakfast sausage, fruit, and lime and passionfruit juice – not so American but much cheaper. They ate everything. They loved it and kept taking pictures of the food. They are already planning another sleepover this month.

Speaking of food, my neighbor and I recently had a grilling party of our own. We didn’t have a grill but we put some cinder blocks in a u-shape and added some local charcoal (made from mangrove trees) and placed my two oven racks on top. It worked so well, we were both a little surprised. We roasted some bakes (like rolls) and corn on the cob (sweet and fresh imported corn that was very expense – about $13 for 2 of them) and lastly some chicken! I made a local garlic sauce to go on top. I diced some garlic and green onions, put a splash of vinegar and oil and a little salt. Perfection. It goes even better with pork, which is on the menu for our next makeshift cook out.

I have recently started to give piano lessons to a guy in the branch at church. He is a recent convert and is very interested in learning. He can play the steel pan so he has some musical ability and can count rhythms and beats. So I am teaching notes and fingerings for the piano and its going well so far. He is a fast learner and I hope he continues to practice so the branch can have a piano player of their own.