St. Lucia : Beginning of March

Wow time has flown. I can't believe it is already March. In a few short weeks I will be on Easter break and enjoying island life with my wonderful roommates! This week, school was pretty normal with the exception of Friday when upper school was off campus having their sports day. Even though this did not affect my students, school seemed very quiet. We’ve been practicing for our sports day which will be this coming Friday. I hear that sports day is a crazy day that will leave me exhausted. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

After school on Tuesday, my roommates and I were sitting in the kitchen chatting like normal when a bus pulls up with a bunch of stuff. Sure enough, the place upstairs has finally been rented out. We now have 3 big guys living above us. While we still have yet to meet them, we now know a bit more about them from our landlord. They are students at the local med school and are not Lucian. This is good news! We were really nervous that with 3 guys, they would be noisy and have loud music, but so far so good! With the exception of Tuesday night when I woke up due to the sound of water running and weird noises upstairs, we have had no trouble with noise. In fairness though, Tuesday was a rough night in general as my fan had broken and so I was hot and didn’t have my normal background noise.

Wednesday after school Jen went to the store and bought me a new fan. I never knew how excited I would be over a fan, but I was actually giddy! Unless you have experienced St. Lucian heat, you probably wouldn’t understand. We were picked up around 6 for our Lenten church service. It was nice to be back in church and felt like it had been awhile due to us not being in church last weekend.

Thursday after school we were picked up around 4 for piano. It’s always interesting to see who actually shows up for lessons. While in previous weeks, I have not had many students and Abby has had more, this week I had all my students and Abby had one come in during the last 20 minutes of us being at church. After piano/guitar we headed out to eat with some people from church. Pat has been visiting St. Lucia for the last 3 months and set it all up. Again everything is on Lucian timing. Everyone was supposed to arrive by 7:30, but it was at least 7:45 before that happened. Dinner was officially served around 9:45 and we did not arrive home until midnight. While I was very thankful for dinner, I knew I was going to be tired for school the next day. Way past this teachers bedtime! The restaurant, Jacques, was super fancy and we enjoyed a full course dinner. As dessert was served, Ravi officially asked Sheena to marry him and it was such a special moment. Her ring is gorgeous and I’m so happy for the two of them!

Friday after school we came back and found out that we have a new wifi and cable provider. None of us were happy about this as we now are not getting reception in our rooms and our U.S. shows/music stations will no longer work. We decided we needed to get out of the house so we went out for French fries at Spinnakers. This was followed by stargazing and drinks on the beach with Casey and Kerne. It was so relaxing to be able to watch the stars with the waves crashing the background. We also had some added entertainment from the guests at the hotel. One came over and asked where we were from. We tried to convince him that we were Lucian, but he didn’t quite believe us because in his words “we are white”. I guess that is a pretty good giveaway most of the time.

Saturday was a frustrating day. We woke up and again I realized that the WiFi was not working in anywhere in the house but the living room. I honestly did not know what to do with myself. I walked around the house and talked with my roommates, practiced some guitar and piano, and waited for answers. How sad is it that my life changes so much the minute that WiFi doesn’t work. Our landlord and another guy came over to attempt to fix it, but after over 3 hours of working on it, WiFi was still not working properly in anywhere but our living room. Hopefully on Monday they’ll get this all sorted out, but for now we’re sharing the couches between the 3 of us. We again left the house and headed to the beach. I’m pretty sure we can’t go anywhere anymore without some guy coming to talk to us. This time 2 guys on the beach came and started talking to us. So much for a relaxing time! Some people just don’t get the hint. On the plus side, we now know 2 more people by name on the beach. As we were leaving the beach we ran into Pastor Bram and a bunch of other people from church who were watching the sunset. While we definitely could have stayed, we all decided to walk home and head to the supermarket instead. By the time we got home, we ate, showered, and soon after I went to bed.

Today has been a very relaxing day. We left for church early this morning so that Jen could bring some of the Johnston’s to church. Pastor Johnston from Antigua preached today and we were able to meet him and his family. We were hoping to make it to Antigua before they leave for his new call to Mexico, but I’m thinking the chances of that are pretty slim. We’ll see though! After getting home we honestly relaxed all day. I attempted to make chocolate chip banana bread. It tastes great but the looks, well we won’t talk about that.