First Day in St. Lucia

I'll add pictures later.

Yesterday was my first day in St. Lucia! The plane was half an hour late, so everything once we got to the island was also delayed. Lots of loading and unloading all our baggage, including carrying some of it up a hill, was involved. After dinner, I tried to find internet, but it's not available in the building I'm staying in. Today I found out that down the hill, where I am now, and where our meals and training are taking place, has fairly good connection.

We've been very very well fed. I don't think there's been any dish I haven't tried, even if it has onions! There's been fish at every meal, including breakfast. I feel like I've already gained a couple pounds. Lots of fruit and vegetables, though, and lots of starchy ones at that--like green banana and breadfruit. These items, as we learned today in training, make up almost half of the Eastern Caribbean diet. Lots of legumes, fish (of course), and some meats, too. Today boiled dasheen was served with lunch--it tasted like taro root, and felt like a slice of not soft tomato (actually it felt like yellow plantain, which is also a starchy fruit).

Lots of training the next several weeks, and lots of training today. But the two most exciting things today:

The US Ambassador to the Eastern Caribbean came to speak to us. I have a couple pictures of her. They gave us these coins that they had made. Well, they're more like medallions. It was neat.

But the really exciting thing was that they gave us our full assignments! I'll be living in Vieux Fort, on the southern tip of St. Lucia (so I'll get to see St. Vincent on clear days), working in the Ministry of Education in that district. My job description includes things that I had been describing before I even knew exactly what my job would be: helping teachers with students that need extra help, developing ways to assess those students, working with schools and the Ministry to develop extracurriculurs, working on various projects like that as needed.

It looks like most of the other people who knew they were going into "youth development" are going to be teaching or working in schools as teachers' assistants, or something like that. I like to pretend I got a more important job, although I know it's not true. I do like it, though. I think it will really give me good experience in developing programs though. I'm really looking forward to it.

I also found out the host family I'll be staying with for 7 weeks is a married couple, although I don't know if they have kids or not. I'll be living in Vieux Fort.

I don't have a transformer yet (EC uses 220 volt outlets), and when I asked a St. Lucian who works for the PC here she said they cost like EC$250--about $93 USD! :-/ I only need one, since the only thing that I have that plugs in is my laptop. The woman I was speaking to said that my host family might have one, if I'm lucky. Well, actually I'm looking now and I might just need an adapter, since my computer's power thingy says 100-240v. That's good. And either way, I think I'll look around at prices first anyways, since it looks like I might be able to get one for $20-30USD including shipping online.

For some reason, the microphone on my webcam wasn't working with Skype, so after several other things I uninstalled Skype, but now I can't reinstall it--it says the setup file isn't a Win32 application. Anyone have any suggestions? I really want to call my mom. :(