Centipede Central

I am Hitler to ants.

Like Ender before me, I have attempted and committed acts of xenocide against the Formicidae family.  They seem to wait in-season, for warm dry spells with not much wind, before raiding my living quarters.  But when they do, they do so in calculated strikes of overwhelming numbers.  I have had to put up with (not one, not two, not even three, but) four different entry points all around the apartment since before leaving for COS.  I'm convinced that they only travel in single file, in order to hide their numbers.  But they can't run away from the fact that I have doused, wiped and disposed of thousands of their brethren over just the last couple of weeks, and continue to wipe the floor with their bony carcasses (literally).

The tangible downside to having hundreds upon hundreds of ants in your house at once is that the sudden infusion of protein invites other unwanted guests, specifically the hundred-or-so-legged variety.  The reader will recall that before now I have been stung by a centipede while laying in bed, to no great or lasting discomfort.  On the night before I was scheduled to fly to Antigua, I had another run-in with my Chilopedal nemesis, this time with no evidence save for the familiar stinging sensation localized on my upper arm.  I snapped awake, turned on the light, and collected a glass jar from the cabinet.  I then carefully searched the environs, subtly pulling back one sheet at a time, removing a pillow here, an article of clothing there, until my bed was nearly clear – no sightings of any creatures scurrying back to darkness.  What to do now?  But then, I had an epiphany, and I pulled back the mattress from against the wall, and... BINGO.  There, vertically astride the mattress edge, was the offending centipede, standing at about 5 inches long, but boasting venom claws reaching at least an inch from its body.  Unlike its predecessors, this one exhibited no sense of urgency about having its location revealed, but instead displayed a decidedly nonchalant attitude about moving.  It was as if it was saying, when it saw me,

"Heyo!  Oh, it was me you's lookin' fer, dawg?  Ohhhhhh, I was just here chillin'."

I quickly captured the scoundrel, suffering a simultaneous foot cramp in my nervous excitement, but nonetheless successfully incarcerating the villain in his newfound glass prison.  Completely bereft of my composure at this point, and also carefully monitoring the sting for possible swelling, I decided I would do better to relax for an hour, until sometime about 3:00 in the morning, before trying to once again fall asleep.

When the time arrived, and my hackles had relaxed somewhat, I was carefully walking across my bedroom floor and the bridge of my foot crossed something long and substantial.  Nerves frayed already, I jumped, only to realize I had just stepped on my shoelace.  I breathed a sigh of relief and casually moved my shoe off to the side...  And there, under the shoe, was a grand inch-and-a-half cockroach that quickly scuttled to safety as my body flung itself on the bed, suffering from a mix of harried anguish and mock amusement.  And that is the end of my funny story.

Close Of Service Conference is now over, and I am returned home to St. Kitts.  Three days, four nights of being wined and dined at Jolly Harbor in Antigua was a good break for many of us, and it was, as always, a great joy to see all of my displaced compatriots for what will amount to the last time during our Peace Corps terms of service.  The training was largely logistics for exiting PCVs: insurance offerings, travel accommodations, medical clearances, and the like.  It was, actually, a lot of hard information to take in, and I expect a review will very soon be in order.  But in the meantime, I am swamped with work, most notably preparing for the weeklong board games camp that is scheduled for next week – I'll add more about that later.

Funnyquote Friday

The NSTP's registered students in the A Ganar program hosted the children of the St. Christopher Children's Home, an orphanage for homeless children in West Basseterre, to a special luncheon as part of their Food Preparation Course's community service mandate.  The result was a snazzy white-tablecloth affair and a fully catered meal of fine Caribbean cuisine.  The kids had a good time getting to ride in the bus to the Challengers Community Center, then rub elbows with the older girls in the class serving as hostesses.  In fact, one particularly flamboyant girl was having fun chatting with A Ganar Instructor Ms. Gloria Mills, and teaching her to sing her own made-up songs.  One included, "My name is Erubo Nikki / My name is Erubo Nikki" to a tune that almost immediately got locked in my head.  At Nikki's insistence, Ms. Mills tried her hand at the tune as well.  Nikki patiently waited while Ms. Mills got the gist of the rhythm, but when she could hold it no longer, she protested, to everyone's great amusement,

"Hey, you are falling out of tune!"

More of the usual here.  If not for the measurable progress in my workout routines and my fictional baseball team, I would probably go crazy from boredom.  But I'm continuing to stay busy – in fact, school starts back up next week, which means I will be on the hook once again for maths tutoring at Beach Allen Primary come Tuesday.  They will be focusing on readying students for end of course testing, known here as the "Test of Standards" for grades 3-6.  So any progress I can make in students' understanding of traditionally difficult topics (e.g. fractions) will hopefully go a long way towards their performance on these tests.

I've been working on another extensive themed post, and haven't got around to finishing it yet, so that's why the delay in posts this week.  Because of this, I didn't get a chance to mention that I experienced a new island first on Monday: I got stung by a centipede!  Yes, a baby centipede found its way under my pillow one night, and when I shifted my arm while half asleep, I apparently confounded the little bugger because it saw fit to use its self-defense mechanism and sting me.  I was lucky: it caught me in a very insensitive part of my body, and led to no actual swelling – just a slight pain that went away overnight.  Though, to be sure, since I was now wide awake and subject to a difficult prospect of falling asleep with the thought of bugs crawling around uninhibited in my bed, I took an hour to collect myself, and proceeded to replace the sheets the next morning.  All in all, a pretty decent way to deal with a threat I had been warned of since day one of PST, and I'm all the more glad that now I can say I did.

Sugar Mas Is In The Air

The cats are earning their keep.  As you may recall, I'm watching my girlfriend's cats while she's on winter vacation in the States.  In under one week that I've been watching them, they've already managed to trap and kill four cockroaches and a centipede!  Nebula is the more personable of the two; she finds plenty of opportunities to find me and rub up against my arm when I am at the computer table (like right now).  Pigeon stays mostly to herself, but they both make their presence felt when it's feeding time.  The effort on my part is miniscule, as it would turn out: cleaning two small litter boxes and feeding the cats twice daily is hardly a chore, and more like fair wages paid in the name of free cleaning service.  (No cobwebs when you have two diminutive, omnipresent wanderers!)  Mostly they're a pleasure to have around, whenever Nubs isn't trying to pull my septum out of my head.

The Christmas concert was Monday the 19th; it didn't offer quite as many "edgy" pieces as last year, and eliminated all of the performances differing from singing a traditional Christmas carol.  Fortunately, my friends and I were in attendance foremost for the music, but I was disappointed to see that, perhaps, the planning committee felt that the free thinking, alternative works of poetry and dance (a few of a more political persuasion, in fact) were not in the spirit of the event.  Whatever the reason, we still enjoyed reaffirming our now veritable Christmas tradition of singing Handel's Hallelujah Chorus as loudly and as functionally correct as possible at the end of the service.  That's one thing that, come this time next year, I expect I will miss about not being here!

J'ouvert was a fun ride again this year.  What with it being my second go-around, I had a jump on most of the other Caucasoids that partook in this year's reveling.  Oh, and before you ask, I'm sad to report I have no picture and video this time, due to my one planning oversight: double-checking to see that the camera I brought along had an actual battery cartridge loaded in it.  Apart from this, the measures I took were largely responsible for the whole day going off without a hitch, so to speak.  I caught a lift to the meeting place no earlier than midnight, which means I had at least 3 hours of sleep before joining the others this time (plenty if you're not planning on staying up any later than noon).  I brought along both food and water this time, as much to sate my inevitable morning hunger as to avoid a regrettable migraine should the threat arise.  Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, I remembered to bring ear plugs along!  I cannot overstate how critical these little devices are at a j'ouvert jump-up.  Lastly, I did virtually all of my alcohol imbibing at the meeting place before going on the march, where the drinks were mostly harder stuff like mixed rum punch and the like.  By writing in big Sharpie® letters on my hand "BEER," I didn't even have to shout my order to the bar-trailer attendants over the cacophony of the soca blaring from over a dozen amps 100 feet away.  In the end, I had the equivalent of 2 beers during the march, which settled in nicely with the principle of always following hard drinks with beer chasers, and not the other way around.  All of this planning went a great way towards making sure I actually enjoyed myself during this year's revelries.  Now if I could just find a girl to wuk up with...

I think Peace Corps are the street performers of the world.  I say this for a couple reasons: first, because the similarities are too clear to me to be denied.  We move from a place far away to a new home, often with little or no experiential concept of the place we're going, and always end up trying to make a living doing some good works under impoverished means.  Even the people we're trying to help ultimately are presented with the choice to pay attention, or else to simply ignore us completely.  And, depending on who you ask, we probably have a comparable success rate.  Furthermore, we choose to live our lives under the wary eyes of the entire community we serve, winning some hearts and minds and confounding others.  Perhaps the last one is not unlike life everywhere for most, but when the only real currency one traffics in is personal contacts, and when one has as pessimistic an outlook as myself, a single bad connection is a tougher drain on morale than half a dozen good ones can make up for.

The second reason I've been cogitating on this is because I find myself at a vulnerable point in my term of service.  With a whole three weeks to devote in part to secondary projects, namely the ones I have let languish as the 2011 work year wound down, I nonetheless prove to have difficulty summoning the emotional energy to tackle them, fearing that my best efforts will somehow prove fruitless.  So instead of being able to address these concerns by actually trying to do the work on a given day, I am hamstrung into lounging around, choosing instead to read Fahrenheit 451, or catch up on my virtual baseball team, or write this blogpost.  Can anyone offer me any clarity on where the fault in my emotional expectations lie: in the inflexible goals that I set for myself before the holiday began, or in the fear that I've doomed my own productivity by not following through on them?  As someone who derives so much of his self-esteem from his own sense of productivity, this question is deeply concerning to me; yet even as I write it, I realize that the true answer is probably a third option that I have not considered at all.

Funnyquote Friday

Seen on a used car advert at the grocery store:

"Too good to be true!"

It never ceases to amuse me when I unwittingly discover that I've been an ant farmer for, well, who knows how long.  This morning, when I took out the garbage, I found that the traces of tuna salad that had clung to a disposable plate that had been thrown away a week ago was the source of a formic parade extending from my trash can to a nearly imperceptible crack in the wall.  Thankfully the vespoids had not been there long enough to attract other critters, namely predators like centipedes and spiders.  That's one surprise I wouldn't welcome with such a humor.  (Ugh, just writing about them already has me jerking my head at every sudden shadow, afraid it's another octoped intruder.)

I'm finding this ordeal of being the Design and Layout Editor of the Serious Ting to be somewhat daunting.  NEWSFLASH:  I forgot how poor I am about managing open, very unstructured tasks.  And what I'm faced with, every time I go to typeset another article for this edition (due to go to print at the end of this month), is a blank page.  Not a wireframe template, not a sketch drawing, just a blank page.  And it's ferociously staring right back at me.  Mind you, it's not the blankness itself that is intimidating; this text-entry page is blank every time I sit down to it, which is considerably often.  Rather, I think, it's the nearly infinite possibilities that can go onto it, each with their own pros, cons, flair, authorship, contrivance, taste, look, and feel.  Should I use a background?  Should it be a full-page photo?  Or should it be a soft gradient?  Should I go light to dark?  Should it be a vertical or a horizontal gradient?  Or should it be circular?  Should it be behind text, or should they be separated by an opaque text box?   Should the box have rounded corners, or square?  Or should the box have a soft, embossed edge with no stroke?  Should each item have its own box, or should they be all in one?  Should the thumbnails be fully enclosed in the box, or should they hang over the edge?
...
Or should I use a border instead of a background?

Bugs of Lore and Tugs-of-War

Alright! I finally got around to testing out my miniature charcoal grill at the house last night on a no-expense-barred dry run with Caribbean Jerk Chicken.  It turned out way better than I expected – it was bold-flavored and spicy, just like jerk chicken is supposed to taste.  The texture was a little grainier than I was hoping for, so maybe I go a little bit easier on the flour next time.  But other than that, it was a grand experiment in lighting charcoal with naught but newspaper, lighter fluid, a dozen matches and faith.  (Only three of which are actually flammable.)

More updates from the CreepyCrawly files: I've been getting much better at killing mosquitoes, sometimes tallying upwards of 5 a day.  And of course I wash my hands afterward.  But the vermin that stole the show this week was the Mother Of All Cockroaches – this sucker was two inches long, and was hella fast.  Its end was the flat end of a flyswatter when it dared to venture from beneath the couch for too long.  And the fun doesn't end there; I was greeted with surprise guests in my garbage bin yesterday, cleaning the house in preparation for a guest.  What were the ants lining up outside to find at the bottom of my garbage?  A litter of grubs! Yes, this certainly made my day.  It all came to a crushing end, however, when I Raided their lair and swept the confines clean of any infestation.  (I hope.)

The initial stages of the Iron Band programme were pushed back to next week, as this week at school is almost exclusively devoted to Inter-House Sports Day, held on Friday.  I'll be there all day helping out with the races and other events.  I'll make sure and grab some photos and video for the highlight reel this month, so each of you can experience your own Sports Day.  It's a major to-do here on island: every school plans their own full day of events, featuring the best athletes the school can boast in a variety of competitive heats, everything from the very legit track races to the less-so tug-of-war.  All of the community attends, many in the interest of getting an early peek at this nation's future track and field stars.

Too School For Cool, Part 2

In keeping with this week's theme, here is a look at the pageviews accrued by the site so far, and that data extrapolated over the remainder of my term of service.  With only a handful of months to work with, the projection process was far from scientific and delved more into glorified guesswork.  But the idea remains the same.  My ultimate goal, I suppose, is to match or beat the projection of 18,000 I'm throwing out there right now, and as such I promise a special site surprise when we reach half that mark.

I'm at an unusual and mildly frustrating point in my Peace Corps service, presently defined by a number of projects well thought-out but ill-managed.  As is the way with all of my projects right now, it would seem, there is but one thing holding up progress on the Iron Band: finding a viable and willing source of "instruments."  A good friend recommended I go to the resort hotels and ask their kitchen staff if they had old or unused pots and pans that could be converted into noisemakers, with no concern for human eardrum health, and so I plan to make a few phone calls this week and see if this is possible.  The culture here does not habitually put any inherent value on volunteerism or donation, so even this good idea may prove fruitless; even so, it doesn't cost me anything to ask! (assuming I can use the PC Office's phone, because otherwise it would cost me something.)

A meeting with the new EC Country Director on Friday regarding 50th Anniversary goings-on in the Federation will undoubtedly give me something new to report on next week.  But before then, I'm sure everyone will enjoy a special Review edition of the Funnyquote Friday.  I know I enjoyed making it.

Also, my life after the spider.

Icarus Would Be A Bad Name For A Plane

Yet more from the Mostly Annoying But Also Slightly Gross files: I discovered not one, but two nests of the local breed of sugar ant in my house last weekend.  One was hidden (are you ready for this?...) in the spine of a book on my bookshelf.  The little maniacs had gotten in Friedman's The World Is Flat sometime in the last two months and started nesting in there!  I wouldn't have noticed it, either, if I had not seen more than a few ants surreptitiously winding their ways to the book on the end and away from it.  So I Raided both nests and continued about my way.  Not to be outdone, after lounging and reading (something else) in my hammock for a while, I got up only to find a very young specimen of the same orange spider that has been haunting my steps lately lounging along with me in the hammock.  It met an abrupt and unceremonious demise.  Then, as if things could not get any more ghastly, I was enjoying the last runs of Stargate: SG-1 while they were still available on Hulu, only to feel something gently tickling my leg. (!!) A millipede had somehow found its way nearly up to my knee before being detected.  A poor choice, perhaps – its remains are currently being harvested by ants in the garden.  Okay, that's enough of that; I'm holding my breath for more soon! (or just because the pesticide smells like poison)

Thanks for your patience; here's the January highlight video.

Funnyquote Friday

Your quote this week comes from one Dominican student who, starting last week at the Dr. William Connor Primary School despite speaking nearly zero English, explained to me her difficulties in understanding those around her:

"No podría comprender al profesor, 

porque pronuncía mal."

I couldn't help but chuckle at this – the Caribbean accent was even getting in the way of a Spanish speaker understanding.  Hilarity!

I gave my apartment a good cleaning yesterday, which in light of the recent exhibition put on by insectoid residents of the premises was a good idea.  Between Tuesday and Thursday of this week I found another spider of the same species as the New Year's culprit, though this one was much earlier in its life cycle, being only about 2.5 inches and much more manageable.  I removed it from my ceiling with a fly-swatter.  Not moments after laying its deceased remains in the garbage can, I retired to my bedroom to find a large black cockroach about 1.5 inches long climbing on the curtains.  What was it doing there?  There were no survivors left to inform the council.  Finally, yesterday in my kitchen, I was approached by an inexperienced but highly persistent centipede, measuring only about 3 inches.  I was not as impressed with its number of thoracic segments so much as its unwillingness to die for its cause.  Squishing its multifaceted exterior between the rubber sole of my shoe and the tile floor dealt it no apparent bodily damage, and only served to pin it in place.  After half-a-dozen similar attempts, I even tried to sever its southeasterly half from its northwesterly half with a steak knife, but to no avail.  This guy... is a survivor!  Anyway, a solid pounding and Kleenex removal later, my apartment is presumably carnivorous critter free – if you don't count the dozen-or-so daddy long legs camped out in my bathroom, presumably getting an early start on the next Harry Potter release.

I don't think there's any other big news here.  I've never seen a post on this blog earn so many hits so fast before the last one, which is either a testament to its interestingatude, or just a natural offshoot of having an increased readership from previous months.  And yet no comments?  What up with that?

Funnyquote Friday

Today is a special 3-for-1 edition of your favorite Friday series.  These quotes come from the column "Readings from the Peace Corps Rulebook," a department of the EC's own Serious Ting, a periodical contributed to and published by the 100-or-so PCVs in the Eastern Caribbean.  Here are the quotes:

"It's okay to let spiders chill in your bathroom 

for months... until they are the size of 

a Susan B. Anthony."

" 'Silent Night' is followed by a j'ouvert."

"Everyone in your village has an uncle in 

New York or Miami."

Interestingly enough, I did have a monstrous spider attack in December of this year – a bright orange spider about 4.5 inches in diameter (mostly legs).  Don't go thinking it was just another Daddy Long Legs, I'm inundated with those; this guy was living under the couch in order to get in on some of the ant/mosquito action.  But despite its altruistic intent, I made it clear that it was not welcome to scavenge on the same 326 sq. ft. as me.  So here's hoping it's another very long while before one builds up the courage to show its unnatural mug again.

Yes, everyone here seems to have a relative in the States, or has visited the States in many cool places that I have not.  Even my landlord currently lives in the States.  One of my coworkers spent part of the month of August this year in Atlanta.  You can bet someone on this island has been to Helen, GA.  People here are telling me about how cool (and cold) New York is. 

Yesterday I was going through some of the notes in my Moleskine from Pre-Service Training, and I happened across some poignant entries: 

• 8/25 It's funny that in a few days we've managed to redefine the word "overweight."
• 8/27 Blogging the first of my "Funny Quote Fridays."  Hope it is a hit.
• 8/28 Did Yoga in the evening.  Much more relaxed now.
• 8/29 Slept well last night.  Musta been the yoga.
• 9/03 I'm looking forward to not walking on eggshells around my host family.  It's a lot of emotional energy.
• 9/04 Rode the bus home for the first time today.  Very empowering.  Looking forward to walking home on my own.
• 9/05 Erica discovered the [Nintendo] DS so now I think the damage is done.

Ah, the things you say to yourself when you think no one else is looking.  FYI: Overweight, in this context, refers to the state of one's luggage per airline restrictions.  And don't take the wrong impression from my entry on Sept. 3rd: at the time I was still a little shy around my host family, but I am since quite comfortable around them and feel like I could talk to them about anything.  They have always been very accommodating, and continue to watch out for me from a distance.  I know I am welcome at their place any time the need arises.

For a time after the 5th, Erica would find herself outside my room if my door was open and she'd peek in and say, "You have de puzzle game?"  Since the system has a pretty simple touch-based user interface, she latched on to it instantly, and loved perusing the menus and moving blocks and changing their colors with no help from me.  I didn't mind the company, of course, but every now and then one of Erica's grandparents would query from the other room, "Erica, you are harassing Chris?" This always got a laugh from me.

I am looking forward to having friends over for dinner this evening: home-style lasagna and sauteed green beans.  Yum!

A Week in Sugar City

I apologize for my truancy; between moving into my apartment on Friday and Saturday, preparing an 8 minute movie for the Swearing-In Ceremony on Monday, and not having internet at home just yet, this is the first time I have been able to get online since Friday.  I have some good stories, though, and pictures! So you are obliged to forgive me.

Tropical Storm Otto on the Bay Road

Let's begin on Friday.  I moved into my "new" apartment that morning, took inventory stock of everything inside, literally and metaphorically, and rued the advent of a home-cooked meal that would not be mine to enjoy until Sunday night.  I took some pictures and video of the apartment as it was that first day, so that will go up with some other highlights at the end of this month.  Later, I spent the evening working on the movie, and at one point tried to plug an APC surge-protector strip into a 220-Volt adapter plugged into the wall.  The result was a loud BANG and all of the wall lights went out simultaneously.  *shock and dismay* It was clear that I had tripped the breaker on that circuit, but I hadn't even plugged anything into the APC strip yet!  Anybody have any idea why that would happen?  Nobody here had a similar experience, to my knowledge.  Ultimately it was fine, as Mavis helped me find the breaker box in my apartment, and we flipped the circuit back on with no problems.

The Bay Road following Otto

The next morning, Saturday, I was up early and bussed into town to purchase a house fan and EC$140 worth of cleaning supplies.  I gave my place a good scouring, including spending 3 hours on the bathroom alone, but not before getting home and realizing that despite having keys that turn the knob to my bedroom door lock, none of my keys actually unlock my bedroom door.  *extreme dismay* After about two hours of phoning friends and considering options I was eventually able to re-enter my bedroom, and I learned my lesson at that point.  Ultimately, I was able to get my laundry done on schedule as well, with time left in the afternoon for two walks down to the grocery store. 

Front of my apartment at Mattingley Heights

Now with a minimally stocked fridge and pantry, a clean apartment and some clean dishes, I was ready for anything.  Except, apparently, waking up the next morning to find I had accidentally left out my dish of food from the night before instead of putting it away and cleaning out the dish which I had intended to do.  What greeted me was a dish full of ants and a steady oncoming stream to and from the wall.  *mild dismay* It was nothing that a little Windex and Raid wouldn't fix.  (The Windex is perfect for stopping the ants in place immediately and sweeping them up with a paper towel, rather than spraying your dishes and counter with Raid.)

A view of the front step

My host father is gracious enough to give me a lift to church on Sunday mornings, despite my living on my own now, so I attended with him again that Sunday at St. George's Anglican.  I really enjoy it there, I'm getting around to recognizing people and they are getting around to recognizing me, though slower than I would have expected.  With a service identical to an Episcopal service in the States (except being twice as long), it is exactly what I grew accustomed to the last two or three years before moving back to Hiawassee.  The two hour service took only two visits before I didn't even notice anymore, and I'm quickly becoming accustomed to the parish-specific customs and songs.  For example, instead of reciting the Lord's Prayer after taking the offering, the congregation holds hands and sings the Lord's Prayer.  But of course, the music is not written down anywhere, so one must learn by ear the tunes intended to be chanted in both the bulletin and the Book of Common Prayer.  Just a few more visits, and I'll have it, no doubt.

A common Friday night sight from my veranda

Monday was the Swearing-In Ceremony.  As anticipated, it was akin to a college commencement, with formal protocol and remarks from a variety of VIPs, American, Kittitian, Peace Corps, and otherwise.  The Deputy Prime Minister was in attendance, and spoke on behalf of the Prime Minister and the sitting government.  The Deputy Governor-General was also there as Acting Governor-General, presumably because the appointed Governor-General is currently off-island.  Peace Corps's own Eastern Caribbean Country Director was there and made her encouraging comments.

At the Swearing-In Ceremony

I had not had the opportunity to hear the Deputy Prime Minister speak before, even though he is the government's appointed representative from my district, but it turns out he has a bent for the deadpan.  At one point, he apologized that his schedule did not permit him to stay longer, as his assistant scheduled for him a cabinet session that afternoon, but forgot to ask "whether or not he wanted to go to cabinet."  He cited his preference for the present company, and, in apologizing for the absence of the Prime Minister, pointed out that, curiously, he "would rather be in cabinet," to much laughter.

Deputy Prime Minister Mr. Sam Condor

The movie I compiled was a hit, I think.  I got lots of positive feedback from PCVs and host country nationals alike.  Yay, iMovie.  I can say with confidence that the audience laughed in all the right places, and I think the music selection went down well.  Especially popular was the wipe-to-profiles segment at 2:25.  Some people asked how I did that, but a true magician never reveals his secret.  For my part, I thought the music was a perfect fit for each segment, and catchy, too: I had "Don't Stop the Tempo" stuck in my head for days after.  I would have liked to add some footage from some other activities EC82 participated in, but a lack of either material, time left in the movie, or time left to make the movie constricted me to the four segments that ultimately passed muster.  And despite all of the planning and time and thought and attention that had been poured into making the movie happen, I was still so nervous on Monday morning, that I had to stand up in the back of the room whilst it was playing.

Newly dubbed PC Volunteers with PC Staff

But it all went well.  My class of EC82 stood and took our oath of service, not unlike the president's oath of office in structure and content, and signed official forms to the same end.  My fellow PCV from Nevis was asked to deliver the remarks from our training class, and performed with gusto.  He hit all of the good points and kept it brief and entertaining.  I will have his speech, as well as more photo and video footage from the ceremony, included in the highlight video for October.  But if you're dying for more video now, my friend from Antigua posted a video of some of her clips from St. Lucia and the first month at her site.


With that over and done with, most volunteers took the rest of the day off (it was 2 o'clock by the time we were back home, anyway) and we celebrated the end of training and the official beginning of a 730-day commitment to improving community-building capacity and bidirectional cultural discourse in the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis.  For my part, I am still engaged in my projects at the school and at the NSTP, so more specific updates for those in the future. And that brings everyone up to date.

P.S.  1500 all-time page views today.