Funnyquote Friday

Every Tuesday night is an excuse to go down to Frigate Bay for Team Trivia, an event patronized by British expatriates, Ross students and PCVs alike.  Since it is too far down on the Southern Peninsula for public buses to travel down there, "grounded" folk like myself have to hitch lifts from other gracious residents of the neighborhood – in my case, my neighbors and their friends.  Practically, this means that I am regaled weekly with amusing stories from Nottinghamshire and The Old Country, and often partake in discussions about the quirky differences in our allegedly common language.  One such discussion led to naming car parts.  In the information age, of course, everybody calls parts of the computer (the CPU, RAM, monitor, mouse, keyboard) the same thing, since they were developed in the time of near-instant overseas communication.  But autos?  At the turn of the (previous) century, everyone presumably had to come up with their own names for things.  And as it were, popular acceptance of car part names varied greatly across the pond.  For example, when our friends' jeep is crowded, and I have to sit behind the back seat, in the trunk, it is not to be called the trunk.  It's "the boot."  As in, "into the boot wit' ya."  Alternatively, if you needed to check under the hood, Brits would give you a double take, since it is not called a hood.  It's called "the bonnet."  So from boot to bonnet, our names for things are very different.  More often than not, the British name is accepted as the end-all-be-all, but occasionally the American English word is considered more practical.  For as my British neighbor so adroitly observed, to all of our great amusement,

"You'd never see a movie called
Boyz In the Bonnet."

So... good news!  A great vote of thanks to the Jabez Sunday School Class of McConnell Baptist in Hiawassee, who have collectively covered the $300 to fund a donation of books to the library at the Dr. William Connor Primary School.  This means that my first fundraising undertaking in the Caribbean was a success, and the results should be seen very soon – as per my understanding, the books should have already been purchased, and will be shipped within days.  I now have to prepare the library for the incoming book barrage!

Cover design by Yours Truly

Additionally, I just finished putting together the event program for the Remarkable Teen project, a youth empowerment project as envisioned by my colleague here on St. Kitts.  The same creative mind that put together the Healthy Breakfast project has, for this latest idea, collected the names and inspirational stories of 25 teenagers as nominated by the community.  The honorees will then be presented their awards at a specially called session of parliament.  Unfortunately, I will be in the States come November 10th, but I'm sure the event will go as smoothly as envisioned.  At the least, I know the students are thrilled about their selection, and excited to be noticed for something positive, instead of negative.  The event program itself is a behemoth: 25 pages of profiles, each between 1/2 and 1 full page of 12pt, single-spaced text in length.  I had the pleasure of reading each person's story (ranging from the familiar, to the unfamiliar, and all the way to the horrific) and their strong, self-propelled climb to the place they find themselves today.  It's a terrific project, and I was happy to be able to contribute to it in a creative, productive fashion.

Mid-Service Training has been scheduled for the week of November 14th, so I anticipate being busy for those five days, with the possibility of being on a different island!  From my sources right now, the odds are 50/50 that we on St. Kitts could be shipping to a different island for training.  Travel costs and available facilities are, naturally, the biggest determining factors of that decision.  So I'm eager to find out soon, and especially to see some familiar faces after a full year of service!