Success!

Monday the afterschool program went a little more smoothly, largely thanks to the help of Ms. Elsa, one of the teachers there. We got some homework done, and since I explained how they should behave upstairs, the kids weren't crazygonuts all afternoon.

But Wednesday was even better. After my meeting Monday morning at Campus A (it's where the first two forms [equivalent of grades 7-8] of VF Comprehensive Secondary School take place, in VF Town), two girls showed up on Wednesday. My Grade 2s didn't have homework, so we read together for an hour, and I went home feeling totally content--rather than tired and with a sore throat like many days at VF Infant School.

Next Monday will be the last day for the term, but next Wednesday I'll meet with the parents of children in the program to sign them up to volunteer time and donate food for the program, and to let their other Infant School kids in. Awesome.

In my role as a PCV, I am "working" 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I knew that already. What I didn't expect was that I would get so much experience in occupational roles I didn't imagine before. In the 6 full months since swearing in, I have gained some of the basic skills for substitute teacher, special needs educator, nonprofit developer, school secretary, and most recently public advocate.

Wednesday while watching my afterschool kids outside I met a young woman who looks somewhere around my age. Her daughter is a Pre-K girl at the Infant School, so she's in the phonics lessons I teach. This girl is pretty bright, though, and at the top of the Pre-K class. She doesn't seem to need to be in this class, all but for the fact that she's very quiet. I suspect that at the beginning of the year she was put into the class rather than regular Kindergarten because she was shy and overly cautious of the adult administering the diagnostic. She and her mother live in Belle Vue (a $2.75 bus ride into VF Town each way for adults, which the mother makes as many as four times a day, five days a week, to take her daughter to school), and earlier this term the mother tried transferring her to BVCS (where I work on Fridays) without success. All the relevant administrators except for the BVCS principal (whom I love working with, by the way) approved the transfer. The reason: BVCS doesn't have a Pre-K program. I said I'd talk with the principal.

Today I showed the principal the results from the test (a "game," I told the children) I gave my phonics groups on Wednesday, illustrating that this girl is farther ahead in phonics than her classmates. Perhaps, I suggested, she might take some tests from BVCS to see whether she would be able to jump into a Kindergarten class at a different school after having been taught mainly preparatory content in Pre-K. I know it's a long shot, and I told that to both the principal and the K teacher at BVCS. They also seemed skeptical, but guess what--they agreed at least to let me give her some tests.

I'll start seeing on Monday whether this will be a sucess or just a learning experience.

Darling Muffins, Daring Tortilla Soup

Last week I bought some whole wheat flour, with the idea that I would make healthier foods. I think it's sort of working.

The bread that was becoming staler by the day in my refrigerator, the bread that I bought vaguely a month ago, had so little left that I salvaged what was still soft and threw the rest in the freezer to make breadcrumbs later. I wouldn't buy bread for a couple of weeks, I decided, so I made some wheat tortillas to go along with my salsa (these days I make food that I can take to work for lunch without reheating, since none of the schools I work at have functioning microwaves...quesadillas were last week's menu).

The tortillas came out pretty well. I used the same recipe as usual, except that half of the flour was whole grain wheat. They're not quite as flexible as my usual batches, but of course they have an earthier taste.

Sunday night, after I made these, I didn't want to eat a quesadilla like I would for the rest of the week, or even a taco. Over the phone my mom suggested soup. She meant just putting the soft tortillas right into the soup, but I had a different thought.

I cut the tortilla, fried it in my trusty canola oil, no extra salt, to make chips. A couple spoonfuls of salsa went into a saucepan, as did a cup or so of water, a few chopped leaves of spinach, some slices of carrot and fresh tomato, an extra dash each of cumin, cayenne, and black pepper so the water wouldn't dilute the flavour too much. Into a bowl went the soup, the whole wheat tortilla chips, and some shreds of cheese.


I didn't expect much, but it was some of the best tortilla soup I've ever had, to be completely honest. And I'm picky about my tortilla soup.

Later in the week I found a recipe on Taste Spotting for some whole wheat carrot muffins, but I didn't have all the ingredients. Oh well, time for some improv :)

Darling Muffins

1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/4 cup molasses
1/2 cup sugar (or just under)
1 cup milk (I used evaporated)
1 large egg (I used 2 small eggs--in the States eggs are generally the same large size though, so use that)
1/4 cup vegetable oil (I have soybean oil this round)
1/2 tsp vanilla

1 cup finely shredded carrot
1/4 cup raisins or assorted small dried fruit
(I would have added 1/2 cup chopped nuts, if I had any)

1. Combine dry ingredients (first set above) in a large mixing bowl, make a well with it (push most of it to the edges of the bottom of the bowl, leaving empty the middle), set aside.
2. Combine wet ingredients (second set above) in a medium mixing bowl, wisking well. Pour into well in dry ingredients, mix thoroughly. Add carrot, fruit, nuts. Preheat oven to 400F.
3. Pour into greased muffin tins or paper cups in muffin tins. Bake for 17-21 minutes. They're done when a toothpick poked in comes out clean.

Because I have small muffin tins, 18 darling little muffins came out. I didn't have paper cups, so I made some from wax paper as suggested.


I meant for them to be healthy-ish, so they're not really sweet, but they're incredibly moist and have a nice round flavour. Better than bran muffins, for sure. Perfect with tea as breakfast or snack for your darlings, with a dollop of peanut butter if you don't have chopped nuts around.

Pi in the Sky

I have been trying to stick to the positive aspects of my experience here in St. Lucia, but sometimes everyone has a few days when things just don't go as planned.

I mentioned recently that this past week I would have meetings with the parents and secondary school students to get the afterschool program at the Infant School going. No one showed up to the parents' meeting, and only teachers from the Infant School came to the would-be training session on Wednesday. I had sent home letters with some Grade 2 students to inform their parents of the meeting, or to call me to schedule another time to meet if they couldn't make it. No one called.* I had asked the counselors at two secondary schools in town to find some interested students and have them show up at the infant school for a training workshop, but no luck there either.

*I can't say that nothing was my fault, since I realized later this week that I had put the wrong phone number on the letters, so perhaps parents had been trying to call me to no avail.

I didn't let the no-shows get off so easily. On Wednesday I sent the same Grade 2 students home with consent forms and another, shorter, letter, in hopes that their parents might fill out the forms and let their children attend the program. I'm requiring parents to donate either time, food, or materials to the program so that we don't have to charge for enrollment, so I need to make sure the parents get my real number so I can build a schedule.

I also had an encouraging and useful conversation with some teachers who want to help with the program. Their advice included advertising refreshments at meetings, calling parents directly, recruiting new Infant School students to participate, and holding the training workshops at the secondary schools.

Throughout the week, though it was disappointing, I was surprised that I didn't get stressed out or depressed about everything. Right now all I'm going to do is see if anyone comes to the program on Monday. I think I'll take advantage of the parent-teacher conference day the Wednesday before Spring Break, since most of the Grade 2 kids are in the same class, and meet with the parents briefly while they're waiting to meet with the teacher, to see if anyone else wants to participate.

Chocolate Dipped Banana Fritters

Berney sent me a food challenge in his Valentine's Day/Birthday package to me. There was a bag of sausage-flavoured croutons and some nice air-filled milk chocolate. I was instructed to make something with both of them, so here are the results.

Adapted from the PC EC Cookbook--I reduced the portions, and sort of didn't know what I was doing when it came to frying. Next time I make them, I won't have the oil so hot because many of them blackened but were still gooey on the inside. It was even more of an adventure, since I had never deep fried before.

Ingredients (scaled down for just me)
1 small ripe banana
3/4 tsp sugar
dash cinnamon
about 1/3 of 1 beaten egg
dash vanilla essence
1/8 cup milk
1/4 cup flour
oil for deep frying
2 Tbsp milk chocolate, chopped
1 Tbsp crouton crumbs

Directions


If you really want to know the specifics of directions, let me know and I'll post them. I think this should be enough for now, though.

The results were that the sausage flavoured crouton crumbs were a little overwhelming, so I'm glad I only made 3 or 4 of the fritters with them. I was inspired by a pancake breakfast the day before. I remembered how I like to sop up some of the syrup from pancakes with my sausage when I have them together (oh dining hall how I miss you), and so combining breakfasty flavours was my goal. It sort of worked, though the chocolate-only fritters were better tasting.

I think next time I make them, I might omit the sugar altogether, since bananas are pretty dang sweet by themselves. Then it'll be a breakfast-worthy concoction :)

I'm getting tantalizingly close to the start of the afterschool program. Tomorrow I'm meeting with parents of children nominated to be the first to participate. Wednesday I'll be training volunteers for the program. Next week Monday (the 16th) will be the first day! I'm super excited about it.

Other than working on that, I haven't been doing too much the past couple of weeks.

Sunday, Feb 22nd was Independence Day, so we had Monday off from work. I went to hang with some PCVs in Piaye on the beach, then we went to Jess's house for delicious meatball subs and FUNFETTI cupcakes! It was a great time.

The next day some of us went over to the airport here in Vieux Fort to welcome the new Peace Corps Trainees. They look like a wholesome bunch. I'll be excited to meet them more in-depth in the next months.

Last week on Friday I had a great time subbing for a Grade 2 class at Belle Vue Combined. Somehow it seemed like I barely needed to be in the classroom. Even the children who were struggling with the assignment were doing the work. It was a different experience from what I'm used to, subbing at VF Infant and VF Primary, and even working in a 3rd grade class in Chicago when a substitute was there. I'm trying to figure out what the causes of these differences are, so that I might be able to give the teachers and principals in VF town insight to promote calmer classrooms.

Later in the day I went to see the end of the Interhouse Meet for VF Primary. It was a track meet for the four different sports houses at the school: Sunflower, Hibiscus, Evergreen, and Bluebell. Though I was only there for the last two races--the girls' and the boys' relays--the competition was very impressive. It was also a fun atmosphere. The Infant School children were there supporting their older siblings (there was a school-wide workshop for the teachers that day, so no classes were held), as well as many people from the community and some secondary school students who were helping out.

Yesterday Fae came over in the late afternoon, just planning to hang out, and I was going to cook dinner, but then she mentioned that if she had more money she would "sponsor" (treat) me and we could go up to Castries or Rodney Bay and do something. Well I've been pretty spendthrift lately, and I've barely gotten out of Vieux Fort, so I decided we should just go do it. We went up to Castries and met her friend Tricia, who took us up to Rodney Bay. Tricia is in a band, so we went to watch them (after splurging and getting a medium BBQ chicken and pineapple pizza at Domino's). It was a great time (even though I kept yawning; I didn't get enough sleep the night before!).

It may seem sometimes like I do exciting things all the time, because those are the things I find interesting enough to write about, but these things come in little clusters somehow. Most of my excitement comes from cooking. I'll do a post about those things soon :)