Health and Happiness

I was down with strep throat last weekend – it was so bad earlier in the week that I had to go to the doctor's office.  To the relief of my swollen tonsils, I was given a prescription for amoxicillin and sent on my way.  My condition, while not so painful as to be debilitating during the day, was disastrous on my energy level and appetite: I found I could only eat about 2 small meals a day and had to separate those with 2-3 hour naps in the middle of the day.  And all this without a fever!  At the time, I couldn't make any sense of it, except to wait out the July 4th holiday (Peace Corps Staff must take this day off, which means I couldn't see the doctor that day) and hope it was only a case of strep throat.  The doctor, short of giving me a throat swab, opined that it was indeed strep, and not a worse infection.  Still on the antibiotics now, I'm back at work, though I still have mild symptoms in the evenings for now.

My landlord, longtime resident of New England, landed in St. Kitts yesterday, quite literally "out of the blue."  I had never met the man face to face before then, but he wasn't interested in getting to know me so much as apologizing for the state of the yard which, to his excited confusion, was "bad like he'd never seen it before."  He cited his ignorance of the degree to which the yard had been neglected, but given the constant reminders that I sent his way, this doesn't seem plausible.  Simply because he was incapable of imagining grass that had grown knee-high and thick as brush does not excuse him from being loathe to arrange to cut it for six months' time.  He will undoubtedly be staying in the unfinished two bedroom apartment adjacent mine, which means I will now have to manage my sound level a little bit more carefully.  No blasting dubstep electronica through my 6-inch speakers anymore!

Busy, busy at work today – the A Ganar Datacard is up for submission once again, so my job just became more hectic overnight.  A very basic Excel worksheet, the Datacard is just A Ganar's streamlined method for collecting and rapidly organizing the pertinent data that marks the overall success of a given program implementation.  However, for the likes of the NSTP, this sort of data entry demands are not the usual fare, and since the necessary data that goes on this Datacard has not been regularly maintained during the collection phases, a mad scramble to conjure the correct input mere days before it is due is the m.o.  Further, it is my boss who tries to do the rounding up, but she is so busy with answering phone calls, attending offsite meetings and handling special requests, that she hardly has the time or presence of mind to do these menial bits.  I am required for nothing more than simply interpreting and inputting the data once it becomes available, a job that really any office lackey could handle, if there were any other person trained (and willing to learn!) on handling MS Excel.  The reader will recall that I did lead a couple of trainings in basic MS Office applications just last summer here at the NSTP for my coworkers.  However, since none have had occasion to use it since, I am still the only one who works with it regularly and can boast any sort of comfort level with it.

No word as yet on my prospective employer's hiring decision.  I am becoming increasingly disconcerted by their extended silence, it being now a week since I sent a contact e-mail their way.  All in all, the process involved in getting hired by this little non-profit, and the valuable time they have hijacked from my last half-year on island has been thus:

03 April
Application submitted
05 April -  28 April
Completed assignment deliverables
May
Wait for interview selections
May 29
First-round interview
June 05
Second-round interview
June 12
Reschedule third-round interview
June 19
Third-round interview
July 02
Send last contact letter

It's a harrowing ordeal, going through the hiring process.  I shudder when I think that my latest contact e-mail is sitting in an employee's inbox, and all the while he's thinking, Oh how laughable - he still thinks he has a chance at a job here!  I'm not even going to bother responding, I'll just let him sweat it out.  For a company that was careful to alert its applicants when they were taking an especially long time in May to make a decision, it seems inhumane to have waited to respond to my personal e-mails now that I've gone through the interview process.

Oh, and I almost forgot.  Here's the January highlight video, only 21 weeks late.

Funnyquote Friday

This past Wednesday, my boss was serenaded by the Food Preparation and Hospitality Training class in a chorus of "Happy Birthday."  The traditional follow-up here in the Caribbean is a second verse, set to the same tune, with the words, "How old are you now?" repeated four times.  It serves as a practical safeguard for avoiding the awkwardness of guessing how old someone is, and instead transfers the embarrassment to the birthday guest, who is almost socially required to answer now.  But my boss deftly responded, in the same sing-song tune,

 "As old as I look / As old as I look..."

Not much to add this week; I think I'll let the new (old?) video do the talking for me.  It's highlights from last December – hence the Christmas music.  But who couldn't use a little Christmas music in June?

HARD WUK Wuz Hyah!

Objectively speaking, I cannot blame my lack of updates the past few weeks on the usual biannual laziness (read: May and December), and instead refer the reader to the long, long week of activities that the NSTP had planned out for its 25th Anniversary celebration, observed this year.  Beginning Sunday, the NSTP was a collective guest at the Antioch Baptist Church in Basseterre.  That is to say, staff and students from the NSTP filled the center row or pews, and a special comments were made by each of two representatives of the NSTP - the interest of which was quickly overshadowed by the announcement of one parishioner's 90th birthday, which received tremendous acclamation.  All the same, it had been a long while since I was in church, and God used the opportunity to share with me.  He taught me, along with a reading from 1 Thessalonians chapters 1 and 2, to remind me of a simple truth: that success in my mission here will not be measured by my ability to help those that do not want to be helped.  This reminder altered first my perspective on closing out my assignments here a year from now, when the Peace Corps pulls out of St. Kitts for the foreseeable future, and second helped me to deal differently with day-to-day setbacks.  Just last Monday, in fact, the printer failed to print in black ink, and despite my best efforts of manually cleaning the printhead, would not submit to its share of the labor.  Even replacing it with its older predecessor has proved ineffective.  But rather than get discouraged, something that would be very easy for me given that in the interim the onus is on me, the IT "expert," to print copies in demand despite the lack of working hard-copy producing printing devices.  Did I mention the copier has been out of toner for a few weeks?

The rest of the week was no less hectic.  Monday was capped with a three-hour Facilitator Workshop and Professional Development Seminar hosted by the NSTP and patronized by our sister organization Project Strong, as well as ministry education officials and a keynote speaker from local conglomerate TDC, Inc.  On Tuesday, I submitted the final copy of the World AIDS Calendar, a project begun by my PCV colleague as a fundraiser for the Ministry of Health and as a tool for HIV/AIDS awareness and stigma reduction.  The cover art is to the left; it is a collage of works prepared by school children on the importance of accurate AIDS information.

Wednesday saw an office-wide excursion to Nevis with the Electrician class to see the new developments in alternative energy being installed here in the Federation.  Already, a fully functioning wind farm exists on Nevis, supplying around 3MW, sufficient to cover half of the island's electricity needs at every time except peak demand.  Furthermore, eighty acres on the western side of the island have been cordoned off for the new geothermal energy-harnessing plants, whose wells are scheduled to begin drilling come March 2012.  Both fully renewable and eco-friendly energy sources, the combination of the two would fully cover the energy demands of Nevis and St. Kitts for the foreseeable future, with enough leftover to sell to neighboring islands.

Finally, on Friday, I was up at 5:00 AM to head into town for the fitness "walkathon" hosted by the office.  Sporting my new T-shirt with the 25th Anniversary info emblazoned on it, I walked about five miles from the tamarind tree in Greenlands to the Sir Kennedy Simmonds Highway roundabout in Frigate Bay.  Leaving at 6:30, I arrived at 8:30, to a lovely rainbow and a light breakfast.  Due to the ensuing rain, however, the motivational speakers (one was none other than my APCD) had to be moved from the idyllic outdoor sanctuary under the trees to a stuffy classroom back at the office.  But we got through with the ceremony, and around noon I cashed in the goodwill that I had built up all week and bought a lift home, whereupon I slept for a solid two hours.

In other news, my food selection of late has been long on grains and proteins and lipids, but short on excitement.   In order to combat the diet doldrums, every other month or so I stock up on hot dog items and conjure up a meal once or twice a week.  (Not counting special spectator sporting events!)  This habit has led me to make the following observation: eating two hot dogs is just a little bit too much for my stomach.  That is, the preparation time is substantial enough that I am generally very hungry by the time I start on the first hot dog.  Then, after inhaling the entire first one, my hunger has peaked but not yet begun to appreciably decline.  So I begin the second with no sense of fear or indecision, only to be confronted with a sudden wall of pain about three-quarters of the way through the second hot dog.  The final two bites, then, are decidedly unpleasant: thoughts of "Why??  Why am I doing this to myself?" pervade my mind.  A pall of regret hangs over my decision to ingest the last four or five centimeters, but I bite the bullet (so to speak) and finish my cursed meal.  The diagram to the right further clarifies my deliciously deplorable experience.  Well, here's to Tomato Soup and Stir Fry the rest of the way.

I just finished November's highlight reel, so I've added it below.  Truth be told, I'm already working on the December flick, chock full of bits from the NSTP's busy week; but that will have to wait until next month to be posted.  In the meantime, enjoy:

.

July in November?

I went by the school yesterday in order to take picture and video of the children receiving the books from Hands Across the Sea, which did in fact arrive while I was attending to matters in the States.  However, the principal suggested that I might do better to come on Thursday morning of this week.  I said that even though it was Thanksgiving, I would be happy to come in briefly that morning and snap some shots.  So, sooner rather than later, we should have some new material for the blog in the form of happy kids and teachers getting an early Christmas surprise.

If I'm not careful, I'm going to forget about the special event tonight: starting at 7:30 at the Parliamentary Chambers in the Government Headquarters is the Remarkable Teen project presentation, which my dutiful colleague has spent months in preparations for, and who plans to welcome many government dignitaries to the ceremony.  I don't know how long it will go (or how long it will go over, for that matter), but I'm interested in seeing if the government leaders in attendance will appear sincere in their accolades for these couple dozen remarkable Kittitian teenagers.  The best part of it, I suppose, is that I'm free of any duties for the evening, so I have the luxury of just sitting back and enjoying the spectacle!

A couple of blog matters to tend to: first, here's a doff of the cap to 150 blogposts.  A milestone of sesquicentennial proportions!  Admittedly, I find it hard to imagine 149 other posts as trite and uninformative as this one.  And sadly, I have no real cake to mark the occasion, so this will have to do:

And in honor of this (quite pedestrian) achievement, I decided to prepare a little surprise for everyone; I know how long it's been since you last enjoyed a new movie from me, so I took a little extra time to make this latest video something new and exciting.  I hope you like it as much as the others, despite the content being four months old.  Feel free to share your thoughts and comments on the video below.

Funnyquote Friday

Your first funnyquote of the second half of the year comes from one of our lecturers during IST.  She is referring to individuals, any individual, that is overtly self-absorbed:

"We have a special term for them in St. Kitts: 

We call them 'I' specialists."

Well, the D. Connor Iron Band saga took a bizarre run down the homestretch yesterday.  What with a mere two weeks of school remaining, and less than 50% of members regularly showing up for biweekly practices, it was becoming clear that the air was beginning to run out of the program, at least for this school year.  But (in sticking with the balloon allegory) I was hoping that the trip to Challengers, and playing for the Girls' Brigade there, would see the school year's activities end in a *BANG* rather than a Fizzle.  Instead, upon arriving at school 2 hours in advance of our departure time on Thursday, I was informed by no less than six of my band members that they would, for various reasons, be unable to join on the trip.  Furthermore, of the remaining four, only two expressed concern over my decision to cancel the excursion.  Not interest in going, mind you – just concern over it being canceled.  And so they ought; the proposed benefactors of our performance had planned to put up EC$100 towards taxi fare for the students' trip, and provide everyone with snacks for the evening.  Suffice to say, they were anticipating an enjoyable experience to close out their own year, and we were unable to fulfill our seemingly simple end of it.  And while my anxieties of a disastrous showing are summarily relieved, my spirits are subsequently dampened by falling so very short of many people's expectations of us.  Though I do intend on using these experiences to guide my preparations towards further bolstering community involvement and, in due course, buy-in, in order to try and avoid this outcome in the future.

And what a surprise! The June highlight video is complete on time! As so many of you requested seeing the Iron Band's actual performance with no accompanying music, here is the June 3rd performance in all its raw glory.  Enjoy.

Of Grease and Caprice

Well, as mentioned on Friday, the long Easter weekend made for ample opportunity for some rather unique experiences, recounted here.

There is a Kittitian tradition of spending Good Friday cooking a lunch of Salt Fish and Fritters while the kids go outside and fly kites in the mild early summer weather.  I took part in the festivities by visiting a friend in Trinity, the next village over from my home, sharing an afternoon meal and enjoying local company over board games and dominoes.  (In fact, don't spread this around too much, but I actually beat a couple local friends in a dominoes best-of-three contest, and they take their dominoes very seriously! /needless whispering)  A good time was had by all, and I was able to get my mind off of being the only guy in the office that day who didn't know that Good Friday was a day off.

Saturday I got to try out a new technique for keeping in touch with family.  In the way that only he could come up with, Dad set up the Scrabble board in such a way that the webcam on their end was looking down onto the reflective letters on the board and on my stand, and the four of us together played a couple rounds of Skype rock-'em sock-'em with letters.  A truly novel experience, it made for a pleasant evening that followed a day otherwise dominated by ennui.  But now that Easter weekend is over, I do anticipate more of my friends from home being available for Skype-ing.

I did attend church on Easter Sunday, naturally.  And apart from the overtly ornamental garb worn by the clergy and the use of the Easter-only passages in the BCP, there wasn't too drastic a change in the Eucharistic service.  Which was fine by me; on a hot summer morning in a stone building filled with warm bodies and no A/C, I didn't particularly care for the service to go over the requisite 2 hours.

Monday, on the other hand, was a day like no other before.  It started with the trappings of a beautiful early summer day, inviting those of us that had been cooped up in our 328 sq. ft. apartments all weekend out into town, into the sun, onto the ferry dock, where the community was holding its annual Greased Pole Walk for Easter Monday.  The rules are simple: walk out onto an anchored telephone pole that has been slathered with pink engine grease, keep your footing long enough to reach the suspended ham at the end, and untie the ham whilst still clinging to the pole.  I took good video capture of all of the goings-on, and compiled it in the highlight reel for this month.  Spoiler alert: the whole event only took 8 1/2 minutes before the eventual victor nabbed the prize.  So our 2 hour wait in the sun was nearly for naught.

But we had that in hand, too: afterwards, to cool down, we trucked over to the Bird Rock Hotel beach, and soaked up some Easter Monday sun and shade.  I was lucky enough, while there, to make friends with a Ross student interested in a lot of the same things that I am.  She is on her two week break before summer semester begins, so she has lots of time to pal around with my PCV friends and I during that time – just long enough to share in our planned Cinco de Mayo celebration!  (Don't be the guy that asks when that is...)

Oh, and despite all the busyness, it seems I have the highlights video ready a little earlier this month:

Sounds Like Rain On A Metal Roof

Well, the Iron Band's first practice with instruments happened Tuesday.  It went, all things considered, as well as could reasonably be hoped.  All the students showed up, including half-a-dozen unwelcome guests who, on several occasions, tried to muscle their way into playing an instrument.  It was harder than I expected maintaining control of 10+ students without the aid of audible speech.  So for a good 30 minutes or more, all of our respective abilities to hear deteriorated somewhat.  As an aside, I have looked around in town for earplugs, but as of yet have not found them.

What I did find, however, were a couple different items useful for striking the various pots, pans, and objects that form the instrumentation of a traditional iron band.  For a mere EC$25, I was able to purchase 10 drumsticks, which should be enough for everyone to strike their respective instruments with.  In addition, my neighbor, who cuts the metal for burglar bars as a side business, had some scrap pieces of rebar that we ground the sharp edges off to be used on the pans.  With everyone getting a chance to "knock" on something, a good time was had by all, and the kids really look forward to future meetings.

The only exception to all this is one student by the name of Shakimba, who you will no doubt be hearing plenty about for the coming months.  For all of those readers faithful in their resolution to pray for me and my mission here, I ask you to remember one more item: Shakimba is an 10 year old boy who, in addition to being placed in the lowest stream of 3rd graders, displays classic EBD tendencies.  He has difficulty participating in group activities, and deeply resents both disciplinary action and being singled out for any reason.  While it is widely understood that he shows a strong competency for drumming already, making him the prime recommendation of (not one, not two, but) three different staff members, of their own accord, the clear reason they suggested him was due in large part to his need for a positive group activity.  And now that the responsibility of engaging him in those activities lies with me, and I don't have any material training in dealing with EBD students, I request your prayers for him and me in the days ahead.

Well, that's about it for now.  So, right on schedule, here's the highlight reel for March.

Happy 50th, Peace Corps!

A change of pace for today: the APCD from Antigua was our guest for the entire training day, and we learned about a method for beginning, maintaining and measuring cultural behavior change.  Useful for weeding out deeply set, perhaps ill-conceived or even destructive cultural behaviors, I believe the training will come in handy if I need to introduce any programs of this sort at my school.  Primary school age is exactly the right time to go about combating any anti-social behaviors, since kids are still receptive and malleable at that age, and I have the unique distinction of being an outsider, who (unlike so many other cultures) Kittitian kids are actually more willing to listen to, share with, and speak honestly about sensitive issues.

Maybe I'll elaborate more on this sometime, but until then, the February highlights video is complete.  Leave a comment if you like it!

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

Thanks for the short hiatus; I'm ready to get back to business.  And starting us off is your quote for this Old Year's Friday:

"I think it's just despicable that you're in 

a short-sleeve shirt and shorts..."

Give my grandmother some credit: she has been stuck in North Georgia in seven inches of snow and sub-freezing weather for a week.  And the cabin fever and uncomfortable chills can make for some serious envy for those of us struggling with 75° weather, 12-hour sunshine and ocean breezes. 

And now for the news from Peace Corps Land.  The country directorship of the Eastern Caribbean region changed hands, on schedule, as we were told it would.  Remarkable, however, was that the new director visited us here at St. Kitts and brought with him some disruptive news: the new batch of EC83 PC volunteers scheduled to start in February of 2011 have been reassigned to different posts, leaving the Federation with no incoming PCVs for at least one year.  This means that upwards of 10 NGOs on island, including the Ministry of International Trade which I have started teaming up with on an island-wide entrepreneurship program, will not be receiving their promised 2-year volunteers.  (Which means, in their case, that I'll probably be picking up a lot of the duties that were intended for the newbie.)  Presumably, requests for 6-month response volunteers can still be made, though nothing is certain.  Since a dearth of funding is the primary culprit for choosing to send the volunteers to other EC islands, we volunteers remaining on St. Kitts have a few concerns yet.

Christmas Eve dinner at a fellow PCV's house in Middle Island was a great holiday joy.  Never have I ever spent Christmas away from home before, but I cannot imagine an easier first step.  Everybody was pleasant and cheerful, the food was unparalleled, and Santa didn't do too badly either!  With a gift exchange at the end of the evening, I walked home with a sheet of rum cake – a very merry carb-filled Christmas indeed.  Also, a note to self: Christmas enchiladas a must in future years.  Who knew that not only were the colors naturally festive, but also that they paired well with everything?

I did have a traditional Christmas meal with my host family, but it was on the afternoon of the 26th, which worked out fine for me.  I was pleased to see them, bake a homemade, homegrown pumpkin pie for them, and fill up on a solid holiday meal before staying up all night in preparation for J'ouvert.  For which, after some deliberation, I decided to join the Digicel-sponsored J'ouvert troupe, which many of my friends, and about 500 people in all, also marched.  We started from Bird Rock at about 2 A.M. and marched the Bay Road over several hours, joining up with 4-5 other large troupes and all congregating at the Circus by dawn of the 27th.  Paint, noisemakers, and cups littered the streets where thousands of people had spent the daybreak (J'ouvert means daybreak in French) dancing and marching to really, really, REALLY loud soca music.  By the time I got home that morning, I had to decide if whether my refrigerator was running double time, or if my ears had not stopped ringing yet.

Well, I guess that's about it.  I'm staying busy with projects that I lined up for myself before the winter holidays, and the weather is still so perfectly acceptable that I can conceivably go to the beach or hiking in the interior any day I want, and don't have to wait for a warm weather day.  And now, for those of you that were good this year and read all the way to the end, here is the December highlights video.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Carnival

I had a relaxing weekend: just one trip to town to do some Christmas and housewares shopping.  No cooking, no real laundry to speak of, some basic house cleaning.  So with nothing much to update, I thought I would take this opportunity to write about the anticipated upcoming holiday events, namely Carnival, Christmas, and J'ouvert.  The December calendar looks something like this:

17 December – Official opening day of Carnival. 
If you're familiar with Carnival, you'd think that it was held during Mardi Gras, the week before Lent.  And you'd be right, except that apparently among all of the countries that hold a regular Carnival season, some refrain from competing for interest from the largest ceremonies, opting to hold their own at a different time of year.  St. Kitts holds its Carnival pre-Christmas.

18 December – Soca Monarch.
St. Kitts' own American Idol for soca stars.  Some of the island's best calypsonians will be there.

25 December – Christmas.

27 December – J'ouvert parade at dawn.
People begin to gather before 4:00 AM, and start off on the march through the circus by 6:00.  Historically, this took place the very morning after Christmas, but was bumped to the 27th this year.  I'm still in the process of looking for a troupe to join – it's a very big commercial endeavor nowadays, with many of the high-visibility corporations on island sponsoring catch-all, low-cost troupes.  Most of my friends who are also going to participate have already confirmed with one group called the "Red Devils" which just isn't for me.  So I'm still looking.

1 January – Grand Carnival Parade.

3 January – Last lap.
With no more days left to celebrate, celebrate the last day with one last go.

So that's what I look forward to following my birthday.  But won't I be working, you ask?  Yes, but I will not be going into the office starting the 17th, seeing as how it and so many other businesses are closed for holiday through the first week of January.  I have already taken steps to ensure that I have work to engage me throughout the month of December, namely the Entrepreneurship course initiative currently underway.  So no worries.

The highlights for November have been chosen, sorted, and recorded for posterity.  Enjoy.

Funnyquote Friday

Your quote is an excerpt from the PCV Caribbean Cookbook, provided to every new trainee:

     CURRY EGGPLANT
     1 Medium eggplant
     4 tbsp. Butter
     Juice of 1/2 lemon (about 2 tbsp)
     102 tsp. sweet or hot curry powder
     ...

Whoa! I like curry and all that, but when I get around to trying this recipe, I'm going to go on the assumption that it should actually read, "1-2 tsp..."

I am quite discontented that, for most likely another week, I have to resort to going to Ballahoo for internet service.  So if you're wondering where I am when making these posts and why they are coming at odd hours of the day, there you are.  But any excuse to visit my favorite restaurant in town is a good excuse!  For that matter, anyone that has plans for visiting me in paradise can expect to get their first meal on island from here; it's classy, sharp, "chillax," and (most important for an aspiring PCV) reasonably priced.

I tried out my first secondary (tertiary?) project yesterday.  A fellow volunteer is heading it up for her Service Learning Project, and it's a rather involved project empowering students to create, market, and distribute their own varieties of cereal.  Where do I come in?  I am helping her create a commercial that will (hopefully) be aired on the local television stations to both popularize the Healthy Breakfast Cereal Entrepreneurial Project and to provide a valuable PSA for viewers regarding healthier eating habits.  This involved getting motion capture from 19 3rd graders singing and dancing a song written specifically for the commercial, and then having them individually demonstrate certain healthy lifestyle habits.  All in all, the final product is about 90 seconds long, and so far is scheduled to air on television beginning on Sunday.

In other news, the October highlights video is complete!  It's way longer this time – nearly 15 minutes.  You'd be surprised just how different the apartment is with the new decorations and arrangements I've made in the two weeks I've been here, but I'll have to post the updated pictures later.  In the meantime, enjoy!

Talk and Chalk, Chalk and Talk...

I am pleased to report that I had a very productive visit to my school attachment yesterday.  The principal and management staff had, in the two weeks I was absent, come up with three specific, long-term projects for me to work on: first, develop some low-cost math activities that engage the kids and reinforce the curriculum.  In fact, the title of this post is a reference to what the math teacher at school dispassionately called the current math activities that fit into the school's budget.  I recommended, in the interest of affordable materials, playing cards and origami activities, but will be developing other new ideas over the next few weeks.  Feel free to submit other ideas as well.  Second, to organize and somehow expand the students' library on-site.  Third, to introduce some new alternatives for after-school extracurricular activities.  At first blush, the last item sounds like a great opportunity to push an introductory chess program – but the sheer reality is, that's exactly what it would be: pushing.  Since the most important aspect of introducing a Peace Corps initiative is to be sure that the program is infused with self-sustaining elements, the better part of which is measured in community "buy-in," I have to defer to activities that have that wide acceptance built in.  And the best idea so far?  Music.  Specifically rhythm, soca, percussion, each of which I have some familiarity with.  So I'm starting to get excited about the idea of co-facilitating a youth rhythm band.

If there's anything I can say to reflect just how much more comfortable I've become with my surroundings in just the past week or two, I would.  I hitched my first lift with a coworker, I walked all the way to the last part of the island I had not been to, I got my ATM card validated, I ate lunch in the city on my own, I shipped a package from the post office.  Best of all, I ran into a coworker at the bank the other day, and there is no feeling like being spotted by a local friend and her feeling comfortable enough to stop me and say "hi."

There has been some mention of care packages sent my way, and the need for shipping info.  Let me first express my greatest thanks to those of you considering remembering me in this way.  But if I could implore you into delaying your generosities for about a month, that would be far more ideal.  The reason is this: while I am staying with my host family, I have basically all of my immediate needs met: food, shelter, laundry, etc.  I am only wanting in cash resources, and that is as much a learning process in budgeting as anything else.  HOWEVER, by this time next month, my situation will have flipped 180 degrees, as I will be entrusted with a moving-in allowance from the Peace Corps to help with household appliances, food, and toiletries.  But even so, there will be a need for something, whether it is because I cannot find a particular commodity or just an affordable one.  For example, a simple stand-up fan, which would normally run $20-30 retail in the US, here is a mind-blowing EC$275, or USD 100.  So I will not know until then exactly what those needs will be, but I will be very forthcoming at that time.  Thank you all again.

Video.  So stop your clamoring for pics and check it out: