Eid Mubarak to everyone =) I had my first interaction with Muslims since leaving home, over three months now! I took Will and Julie Ann with me to the Eid potluck held by the Windsor Medical Students MSA. As with most MSA's, the group seems to be more on the conservative side. I was a little surprised that they had the brothers and sisters completely segregated. I'm glad Will and Julie Ann were able to experience a little bit of my culture. Ironically, Will said it was really nice to hang out with 'Americans' which made me a little sad that my fellow Muslims were more American than desi. But oh well. The girls were all extremely nice and hopefully I will be able to go to more of their events.
After a whole week of baking and cooking for Thanksgiving, I had to stay up late and bake brownies as a part of the breakfast fundraiser SOS had this morning. Despite my worries because of the lack of coordination and member involvement, it went surprisingly well. If things had run on time, we would have sold out a lot earlier. We had meant to try and catch the St. Maarten boat rush at 6.00 am but because everything ran late, we didn't sell out till around 10.00. We made quite a decent amount, and it looks like we will be able to fund all the great events we have coming up. I think things are starting to look up for SOS =)
This past Wednesday we had a board meeting scheduled, but PAM (one of the political parties on the island) had demonstrations in the city. According to Peace Corps regulations, I wasn't allowed to go into the city. As volunteers, we aren't allowed to associate ourselves with any political party and have to be very careful. The different parties have different colors (which we have to be careful about NOT wearing, so no red or yellow for me while on the island) and we aren't allowed to take part in political conversations either. And therefore we had to stay far away during the demonstration.So our board meeting has been rescheduled for Monday evening.
Last week I gave a presentation at one of the high schools as a 'Youth living with Diabetes'. I thought that I would be presenting to the same kids from the high school quiz we held, but it ended up being kids from the 2nd form instead (2 grade levels below the quiz students). They didn't have the background understanding I had expected so I don't think my prepared speech was as applicable. Some of the questions they asked were quite absurd while some were actually really good. A couple that stood out were: 'Can you get diabetes from having sex' and 'If your pancreas isn't working anymore, do you have to take it out?'
An unfortunate incident from this week is that my phone was stolen =( A lot of children from Will's neighborhood attended the Thanksgiving dinner. My phone was primarily sitting in Will's room, and for the most part there were always volunteers hanging out in there. However, one of the girls apparently decided to pickpocket it, which I didn't realize until the end of the night after all the chaos was over. We know this because Will asked some of the children later on and they saw her with it and heard her talking about it =( We tried to convince her to return it but she denied it and pointed fingers instead. Needless to say, I'm a little jaded with children right now although I am trying to be very understanding of the fact that the temptation is hard when you see things that you want and can't normally have.I'm more upset about the loss of all my contacts than the actual phone, because my primary contact with a lot of people here has been via phone.
Another random update, I no longer have the kitten I was fostering. They found another home for her, which I am actually relieved for because she was a handful and more than I could handle right now. Right now I just don't have the time or energy to invest in properly training a kitten and was looking for an already trained calm cat. Apparently bottle fed kittens are a little crazy, and she was just too much for me.
A lot of the work I am doing right now involves a lot of assessments and planning. Things are running slow, which can be frustrating but I think I am slowly getting used to it.
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