Heroes Day

Yesterday was an awesome day. In the morning I went to bake and decorate a chocolate cake with Marilyn for one of her friends. Uff the climb up to her place was intense. When she said go up up all the way to the top, I didn't take her literally. But she really meant ALL the way up. It was a workout. Hopefully I'll be working with Marilyn on establishing the baking workshop for working mothers (hence combining my two passions!)

Later in the afternoon I went to the Diabetes Association meeting and helped brainstorm for the World Diabetes Day and Diabetes Awareness Week we'll be coordinating in November. I am supposed to write an article for the newspaper but I just remembered the Peace Corps rule about checking with the Country Director before taking part in any media publications. So I should check in with our APCD first...

Then I went to the SOS board meeting. I am really looking forward to working with this group. All the members I've met so far are really really nice and they have some awesome ideas. The organization has a whole lot of potential that I hope to be able to help them reach. Before the meeting Gallio (the president of SOS) and I went and grabbed some fresh fish from this place on market street. I have to get used to eating fish with an intact head and eyes and fins that's full of tiny bones. The meeting adjourned at about 9.30 but we were 'liming' outside till after 10.30. One of the other members was gracious enough to drop me back home instead of letting me take the bus back home that late at night.

 

 

 From the ferry ride back to St. Kitts 

Today was a national holiday: Heroes Day. So I decided to go over to Nevis for the first time and spend the day with Julie Ann and Maggie. I thought that maybe the ferry would run later and more often today, similar to their weekend schedule. It turns out that everyone likes to chill out on holidays instead of taking advantage of business opportunities like they do in the states. The island was dead, there were barely any buses on the road and most businesses were closed. Nobody was really out in the streets or anything. It was actually really nice.

So I got on the 11 o clock ferry and a couple of expats that own a house in Nevis started talking to me, and then a local Nevisian sat next to me and somehow we all got to talking about fishing. Apparently he goes every couple of months and says he will invite me next time they go. My goal is to catch my own fish and cook it. Someone else will have to descale and clean it up for me though.

The ferry terminal at Nevis is nicer than the one in St. Kitts. I don't know if it was because of the holiday and everything being dead, but Nevis is just a quieter and calmer place in general. And smaller. We went to Julie Ann's host house, where we decorated the cupcakes I baked for our presentation on water safety tomorrow. Our presentation is on things that sting, and being the ambitious people that we are, we decided to decorate the cupcakes as different things like fire coral and jelly fish and have people guess what they are. It should be interesting. Julie Ann's host brother, Shakir the 12 year old, is hilarious. A typical adolescent boy playing video games, eating whatever we let him, and making fun of us the whole time.

After that we walked over to Pinney's beach. We hung out at this beach side restaurant/bar and watched the liverpool game. Will came to Nevis with his host family and joined us as well. The four of us then took a walk along the beach, where Maggie decided to kill the endangered honey bee and Julie Ann and Will had some kind of debate about how men walk differently than women? It started drizzling towards the end and we had fun being knee deep in the water while it rained a little on us. The water here is beyond warm, btw.

I am absolutely loving my life right now =)