Rocking that *International* Paradise

Our day in St. Lucia on the cruise, we took an island tour with a company called Spencer Ambrose.  Spencer’s brother, Neptune, was our tour guide for the day, and he took a group of 10 of us (our group of 4 girls, a couple, and a family of 4) around the island in a large van all day.  I really looked forward to this day as a day I would see panoramic vistas, charming local life, get to sample local foods, and enjoy a few key sights of the island.  Unfortunately, I ended up sitting in the middle of the 3 rd row of the van.  Even taking motion sickness medicine before (and during) the 6 hour tour, I spent the majority of the day staring fixedly out the front windshield, concentrating on the next bend in the road, trying to keep nausea at bay.  **Important sidenote: my friends sat in the row ahead of me and I’m sure would have switched seats with me had I asked.  I didn’t ask.  So I really can’t complain much.  I’ll let pictures do most of the talking for the day. 

On our cruise, we stopped on 5 different islands.  One of the best days we had was on Barbados.  We lucked into a really pleasant taxi driver named Rodney, who agreed to take us to the Wildlife Reserve, then to a beach, and then to drive us through the capital city of Bridgetown—for a very reasonable price!  Rodney was great, too, because as he drove he explained the things we were passing.  We saw the hotel where Tiger Woods got married (rooms start at $1000 per night, and Tiger rented out the ENTIRE hotel for a WEEK.  Yipes!), a mansion owned by a Russian billionaire, the Mt. Gay rum distillery, and several pretty beaches.  When we got to the wildlife reserve, Rodney helped us buy our tickets and told us he would meet us at the entrance in an hour.  The reserve was really cool.  We walked along paths through a forest where animals roamed and lounged with no fences.  We saw tons of tortoises, deer, rabbits, and 2 peacocks!  They reportedly had monkeys, but we weren’t sure we

I knew even as I was walking towards the school’s entrance this morning that I’d made an error in choosing my outfit for the day.  My school director stopped his conversation with another teacher to say good morning to me, and when one of my 8 th grade students said hello, she definitely looked me up and down and smiled a bit too wide.  By the time I reached my classroom, I had been told how nice I looked by 2-3 more people, and the halls weren’t even full yet.  When I stopped into the office to check my mail box, the secretary asked me which awards show I was headed to, and when a male teacher said good morning, the intonation read less as “hello” and much more as “How YOU doin’?”  All of these comments were combined with a look that took me in head to toe rather than just meeting my eyes.  Second period when my students came in, I was seated at my desk.  Even so, they commented on how nice I looked, and asked where I was going.  (Why is that a common question when one look

I’m falling a bit behind on this blogging thing, and it’s not because I have nothing to say…it’s because I have too much to say.  Last week I was on a 7 day Caribbean cruise over my spring break.  The problem with blogging about great vacations is that I prefer to tell stories rather than chronicle events.   And with a week’s worth of events, it’s hard to choose which stories to tell.  Our trip started (and ended) with 4 girls and lots of luggage.  It probably took us close to 15 minutes to figure out how to fit all of us and all of our bags into Heisha’s car so she could take us to San Juan on Sunday.  But we did it!  All of us had bags at our feet and on our laps, but we made it fit.  (Later in the week, all of this luggage translated to a very messy stateroom).  Here are some highlights of life on the ship for the week: -Rachel and I knew the ship really well.  Which meant when we led the group, we generally ended up turning around once or twice.  J   But by about halfway th

If it’s not one room, it’s another.  I have talked before a bit about the fact that my house here has some quirks.  Some, of course, are easier to live with than others.  (I prefer the little lizards that make their way inside to the leaky shower stall, for example).  But for the most part, our house is live-able and I have very few complaints.  Around Thanksgiving, we started having problems with our wiring.  It began with the hanging lamp over our dining room table.  It just stopped working; and it wasn’t a faulty light bulb.  We put up with this for a while.  But then in February, the other light in our dining room also stopped working, as did the outlet on that wall.  Illuminating the dining room became a process of bringing a lamp, cord stretched to the max to fit, on a table by the window…making the dining table dimly lit, at best.  And then our fridge turned off.  As did the microwave, which uses the same outlet as the refrigerator.  This is where we drew the line and insisted