A little of this, a little of that

I took Nala (my cat) to her new home the other day =( but I still keep hearing the jingle of her bell around the house. I'm relieved that I found her a good home, I know Nadia is going to love her and take great care of her. But I'm still sad. It was just another one of those things that made me stop and realize, holy crap.

I had my conference call with the Eastern Caribbean directors the other day too. This was so that they could start figuring out where they can place us according to the needs on the island. They seemed to love the fact that I had international experience and the fact that I've been reading other people's blogs and doing research and am prepared but at the same time very open to the fact that anything is possible. I'm not setting myself up to have particular expectations because I just don't know. They asked me if I had any ideas about secondary projects or anything, and I told them that I was under the impression that it was better not to go in with any concrete plans because we were supposed to go there and figure out what the community needed and act accordingly. Mavis seemed to love that...

All the volunteers I'm in contact with (both on the island already and those leaving in a couple of weeks with me) are going to be working on Youth Development. I haven't found any blogs or anything of people who are going to be working with Institutional NGO development. So I'm pretty sure my work is going to be pretty different from the kind of thing I've been reading... but I'm actually really excited about that.

I was going through the travel section at Barnes and Noble today, through all the books on the Caribbean (I know most of it isn't useful because it's geared towards tourists, but still), and a bunch of the islands have their own books. St. Lucia, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Antigua... but not St. Kitts & Nevis. Oddly enough, I'm kind of happy for the fact. It makes me feel like it's not this huge tourist island and they DO need my help there.

Oh, and I also just discovered that there's a medical school on St. Kitts. I know that med schools are big out in the Caribbean, I just thought St. Kitts was too small to have one and I'd never heard of it before.

I know there's still quite a bit to go. First theres pre-staging, then the short time in St. Lucia, then training and a host family before actually swearing in as a volunteer. But still...