First Week of School

The island of St. Lucia is very beautiful from the little of what I have seen to date. I have only had a chance to see the top northern corner and am looking forward to exploring more and more of the island as time passes.

The people are quite friendly for the large, large majority, from the street vendors, to the homeless, to the many well-to-do people who are behind the school. The school has an enormous amount of backing and so we end up with favours or evenings and do's here and there.


And tomorrow, continuing on in this vein, we, the new teachers on the island, are off to ride a gondola to the top of the rain forest canopy, approximately equal to being on the sixth or seventh floor of a building except we will be on an open platform. Once on the platform we are tied into a harness which allows us to follow the zip lines from one tree to the next. There are guides to help explain what we see along the way. We will see if those of us that are leery of heights find the day exhilarating. Stay tuned for stories and pictures since ideas for the next blog entry should be easy to find after a day like that.

To return to the locals, many are bilingual. Amongst themselves they speak a Creole patois that lets a recognizable French word sneak in every now, but for the most part, it is quite difficult to pick up the gist of their conversations. When they need to communicate with us, they effortlessly slip into a beautiful-sounding, Caribbean-lilted English.

As for our work load at the school, we teach four one-hour and a bit classes per day (it must be the Caribbean influence....none of the classes seem to be exactly the same length :-) ) The classes are small so far, 14 or 15 in mine, with a guaranteed max of 20 so even if they do grow, they won't grow much. The day starts at 7:45 and finishes at 2:30 but we are encouraged to participate in extra-curricular activities after school which means we finish somewhere around 3:30.


To date I have found the classes to be a delightful mix of students from many varied ethnic backgrounds. Although at times difficult to understand on the first go, (I just pretend I am old and have trouble hearing) and although we are all speaking English, the collection of accents and varied vocabulary is almost musical, especially for someone like myself who enjoys hearing other languages spoken.



A hot lunch is provided and my schedule and duty see me arriving as one of the last to eat lunch. On the first day, our principal June had to intercede on my behalf, since there was little left to eat by the time I got there. Not wanting this to occur on a regular basis I made sure on the second day to introduce myself to our cook. I explained to her how not only would I always be last, but also how I would also be very hungry. I asked her if she could make sure she put some aside for me. The rest of the week has gone extremely well. So well in fact, Dale, who is one of the first to eat, is left wondering how his portions are turning out to be considerably less than mine. He gets one drumstick, I get two. He gets a serving of rice, I get a mountain. He gets three pieces of pizza, I get five. I am loving it :-). There is something to be said for those who are last will be rewarded.

All in all, life is good in spite of the fact that the school’s textbooks and our personal items, that were shipped in early July and that have been on the island for a month, have yet to find their way through all of the custom officers’ paperwork. One must be creative when creating lesson plans without access to texts, curriculum documents and, for those of us doing math, calculators. Ah the joys of island life :-)

Thanks to Sue for the pictures.