St. Lucia : Tropical Wave

This week a few new things happened. I am proud to say that I have survived giving church piano lessons, my first guitar lesson, and my first tropical wave.

Thursday was a rainy day and rainy night, but it was also the first night of piano. Because of the rain, not everyone showed up. In some ways this was nice because we were able to ease into piano lessons. Our schedule is going to be full on days that everyone shows up. Piano is from 5-7 currently, but will most likely stretched to 7:30 or 8 due to the amount of people signed up. While this is a bit of a time commitment, I am so excited to use my gifts to serve at Trinity! It will be a blessing to interact with members outside of the normal church setting. On Thursday I also started guitar lessons with Casey. Guitar is not as easy as it looks and who knew that it would hurt your fingers so much! I have always wanted to learn guitar so Casey and I decided to trade and give each other lessons. He takes piano from me and that is followed up by guitar lessons.

Friday was unique to say the least. I woke up in the morning to what seemed like a normal day. It was a bit overcast, but nothing seemed too out of the normal. I decided since it was a cooler day, why not break out the long maxi skirt. (It has been too hot for me to wear anything but my short skirts.) I was looking forward to a day of rain because when it rains it’s actually cooler and I am for once not sweating. I assumed we’d have indoor recess because of how wet it was from the day before, but I never expected what was to come.

Friday around 9 it start to rain and rain hard! I have never seen it rain so hard and so long in my life. As I stood in my classroom, I watched our field fill with water and realized our windows were open at home. Whoops! Teacher Robin and Martina however were a bit more concerned than I was and told me I should go home, after all I do live just down the road. By the time I got around to going home it was 12 and our road was flooded. Martina and Mrs. Gustafe told me that I was going to have to go through the field which was soaked, so unless I wanted to ruin my shoes I should just leave them at school. So that is what I did. I have never walked through water up to my ankles before. I walked across the field to get the keys from Tanya and of course by the time I got over there I was soaked. The whole time I was thinking, “Why out of all the days did I choose to wear a long skirt today?” One nice parent offered to give me a ride home and then back to school, so I graciously took it. When I got home it was a mad dash to close windows and put a bucket down in the kitchen where the water was dripping from the ceiling. Tanya was the only one who had left her windows closed, however water had seeped in through the wall and was along her floor. Unfortunately, she had left her laptop on the floor and it happened to be right in the middle of that puddle. I quick dried that off and changed my outfit in time to catch my ride back to school. I am very thankful I left when I did or Tanya’s computer would have probably been toast and our water in our house would’ve been a greater problem. After 2 days of letting the battery sit in couscous, I am happy to say that her laptop works! Hooray!

Saturday was a day filled with relaxing. Jennifer brought us with her to the grocery store, which is always nice because we don’t have to carry our groceries home. Saturday night Casey and Kerne were nice enough to walk us over to Pastor Bram’s house so we could play Settlers of Catan with them and Ravi and Sheena. I am officially starting to enjoy that game, now that I know how to play it.

Sunday at church we had 2 couples visiting from the States. One of the couples is from Victory of the Lamb in Milwaukee and asked if we would join them for lunch. Pastor Tom and his family, Pastor Bram, and Mr. Erik and his family all went to Jambe De Bois. It was nice to visit with both couples and get to know a bit more about them, as well as enjoy a tasty meal!

Today is Monday and the ministry has called off school on the island due to a threat of more rain. This made me very happy! Last night our power went off in the middle of the night and I woke up sweating because my fan had turned off. I was not able to sleep until it came back on which made me really crabby this morning when my alarm went off. I had just finished saying to Abby and Tanya that I did not want to go to school when Abby read the message from Mrs. Murray stating we did not have school for the day. It was like I was in grade school again as I jumped up and down and squealed in delight because I could go back to bed! Unfortunately, I couldn't calm down enough to sleep, but hey, at least I will be able to have a lazy day at home! :)