Day One - Cockroaches and Global Domination

Cockroach sightings: 12 and counting.

I think these cockroaches know that they give me the heebie-jeebies so they're taunting me. There's just something particularly unpleasant about squishing a cockroach the size of your palm in a wad of toilet paper..

Roaches aside, today was a great day. We got going fairly early and spent the day at Ocean Academy. It's about a 20 minute walk to the school from our house. When we got there we met Heidi, one of the founders of the school who is also the principal and a teacher there. The school is smaller than I expected, with only about 30 students in Forms 1-3. We sat in on Heidi's English class and the math class that followed. Next week is exams week, so today was all about review and exam prep. After observing some classes we met with Heidi and Hilda (the woman who will be taking over for Heidi, as she is going on maternity leave). We got a chance to talk about what Ben and I will be doing at the school and the different projects that we can take on. We came home for lunch (pb&j!), and headed back to the school in the afternoon. We spent the afternoon in the computer lab helping out a bit. We attended the staff meeting after school, which was helpful in terms of getting the opportunity to introduce ourselves and to start understanding and becoming a part of day-to-day operations at the school.

After meeting with Heidi and attending the staff meeting, my role in the school is still a little up in the air, but I feel like it's headed in a good direction. It sounds like I will have plenty of opportunities to incorporate Peace Games, even if I'm unable to get a regular class period to teach, which was originally intended. I may even be able to introduce Peace Games to the primary school, which would be great in terms of creating a project that will be sustainable here on the island. Nothing is defined at this point, but I think there is a lot of potential. Maria and I had a good talk tonight, and I'm feeling really good about where things are going.

Tonight we had dinner at a Chinese restaurant around the corner while watching a terrible movie starring Bruce Willis and Chris Tucker (10 points if you can name the movie). The food was cheap and tasty ($7 Bz for a heaping plateful of veggie chow mein). After dinner Ben and I walked around downtown for a little while. We walked to the beach and on the way back stopped in at a store to buy some soap (one of the things we somehow neglected to pack.. oops).

Tomorrow is Saturday, so it'll probably be a chill day. Hopefully I'll get around to taking some pictures while I'm out exploring..

Here's Ocean Academy's website. You should check it out:

http://www.cayecaulkerschool.com/