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.
Caribbean Kim 