Bursting Bamboo!

It's almost October! Which in St. Lucia means it's time to get ready for one of our favorite holidays. Not Halloween, but Jounen Kweyol, which is the celebration of the Kweyol heritage!
While I was doing dishes one evening. I heard what sounded like gun shots. I looked at Luthur a little worried and asked him about this noise. He said that the police were probably having a shootout with someone and we shouldn't go outside. This didn't sound quite right to me, he started laughing, and told me that it was just the kids bursting bamboo! I should have remembered from last year. This is something they do to celebrate Jounen Kweyol. The take a piece of bamboo, hallow it out, put a hole on the side of the bamboo at the bottom, put kerosene in it, and then use a stick to put fire inside to fire it like a canon. (Sounds like something my dad would have done as a kid!) Almost every evening I'm going to be hearing this until the end of October.
The last weekend of the month several communities will hold celebration around the island. Last year my village got to host, so we won't get to this year.
School is going well. I have learned how much the grade K's learned last year when I got this years grade K's and they were using their finger poking the screen to close windows and select things on the computer. We have a lot to learn!

New Direction

Wow! Summer went by really fast. It was not at all what I expected it to be, but what is, especially in Peace Corps. So a week after school closed we were told that some construction was going to be done on the computer lab. They were going to retile the lab, so everything was moved out. I figured that it should only take 2 weeks for the tile to be taken up, it to be retiled, and everything to be put back in. I couldn’t have been more wrong. As I type this, the only thing that has been done is the old tiles were removed (and are still sitting in a pile in the lab). So that shot my main project for the summer, computer club. So instead, we got together and played cards, made journals, finger painted, made play dough, and set up our own bowling alley. It was fun, but not what I expected.

Now we’re getting ready for school to start on Monday. We have some new teachers and energy. It should be a really good year. Right now both of my projects at the primary school are in limbo. The computer lab is torn up and the computers were placed into the library (the only other secure place) and are blocking the books, so I’m trying to figure out what to do for the beginning of this term. I’m still going to be at the infant school one day a week working with them. It is also the last month for our principal who retires at the end of September. This term is going to be interesting!