Shake, Rattle & One Leg or Two?

The big event in St. Lucia last week was an earthquake that struck onThursday at about 3:00 pm. The epicenter was in the ocean near Martinique but we felt it here. It was 7.4 on the richter scale. It was enough to make the walls shake. (as well as my knees) I was glad we were at home when it happened. The scene was quite chaotic in Castries where we often go to the market. People were running out of buildings and screaming. There was a bit of structural damage in St. Lucia and people were left pretty rattled.
The rest of this week’s blog will be a collection of thoughts and stories. I'll add pictures from the Island that won't necessarily correspond with the story but they'll give you an idea of the beauty of St. Lucia.
I was reading some of the reviews from visitors at various St. Lucia resorts recently. One tourist, while praising the natural beauty of the Island and the generous and kind nature of the people, commented that the weather was "boring, always sunny and 30 degrees". I can't really say that it's boring but it's certainly something we expect every day. Nice sunny weather, a few clouds. We were quite annoyed and dismayed a couple of weeks ago when we awoke one Saturday morning and had to cancel our plans to travel that day. The sky was overcast, threatening rain...just not a good day to do the exploring we had planned. It struck us how spoiled we had become, expecting perfect weather every day. It seems the rainy season has ended. Whereas we had short but heavy rainfall sometimes two to three times a day in October, we now haven't had a shower in at least three days. I expect it will get quite dry in the coming months.

Most of this week has been spent going to the immigration office to straighten out our documents. It turns out that the Customs people at the airport and the Immigration people in town don't always agree on what needs to be done in order for the teachers to have permission to work in the country and for the spouses to be able to stay longer than six weeks. We have been hobbling through the process with one of the supervisors at the Immigration office. We were stunned to see yesterday that all of the information she is gathering from our passports and work exemptions etc, has to be hand written into a large ledger. None of it is computerized. It's no wonder the poor woman looks frazzled. She promised our documents would be in order by this Friday. We need to get everything sorted out in order to leave the country next week and then return in January.

We had a lovely evening last Sunday at one of the three Sandal’s resorts. It was a Japanese dinner that was organized as a fundraiser for the school. There were four different rooms in the restaurant, each with a different Japanese specialty. There was the Sushi room where all the sushi was already prepared, the raw fish room where you could prepare your own Sushi, the teriyaki room which had a lot more than teriyaki and the stir fry room. The food was excellent as was the wine. There was also a silent auction where Sue, one of the other teachers, purchased a four serving set of dishes as well as two large vases. We're still not sure how/if she will bring these things back home to Moncton. If not, we'll enjoy them while we're here.

Since we are staying until May/June of next year it's important to find people to provide the regular services we have at home, ie. hair cuts, leg waxing, etc. For any of you who have any experience with waxing, you know that once you've gone through the pain of leg waxing and you're at the point where you only need to do your legs every six weeks, you will do anything you can to avoid picking up the razor again. Hence my quest to find a place where I could get my legs waxed. One of our roommates, Wanda, and I walked to many beauty salons and spas in our neighborhood to check out prices. (It's awkward to phone because we don't always understand the accents.) The prices, when they did offer the service, were quite high until I found a little beauty salon that offered leg waxing at 40 EC dollars...that's about 16 dollars Cnd, close to what I pay at home. I quickly made an appointment. I showed up a few days later and was escorted into a back room. I knew it wouldn't be the same as in Canada but I was still surprised to see that in order to wax my legs, I had to sit on a chair across from the girl, with one leg propped on her lap. It was fine to do the front of my leg, but then I had to twist and contort my body so that she could do the back. I couldn't help thinking how fortunate it was that I hadn't asked for a bikini wax. The girl was pleasant. She told me how she was planning on joining the British Army as a way to get a college education. She wanted to become a nurse. My affection for her dwindled however when I handed over 50 ec's and told her to keep the change. I thought a 10 dollar tip was quite generous. She looked at me all confused. "But Mam", she said, "the price is 40 ec's per leg". Per leg! Who gets one leg waxed? Who gives the price of waxing per leg? I told the story to one of the other teachers at the school. She had also been quoted a price for eyebrow waxing that ended up being for one eyebrow. Once again, who gets only one eyebrow waxed?

I’ll do my best to do another blog before we leave at the end of next week. We're both anxious to get home although we're not sure how we'll react to the freezing temperatures and all of the snow Moncton has received this week. For those of who who read this from Moncton or the Maritimes, we hope to see you over the holidays and if you're available, we’re planning our goulash party at the cottage in Cap Pele on Saturday, December 29th. We are even bringing back some St. Lucian paprika just for this event. Hope to see you there.