The Adventure Continues with a Change in Venue

Hello to you all!

I know it's been an inexcusable length of time since I last wrote here but, to be perfectly honest, I was having to work through a lot of things that simply permeated my mind and I didn't think they were appropriate to write about for the whole internet to see.

Many of you already know about what's been going on in relation to my Peace Corps experience, but I know many of you don't, so before I explain where I am and why I'm where I am now, I figure I should at least give a brief explanation.

At the end of December, I had a pretty terrible safety incident in my apartment on St Vincent. I won't go into detail here, but please feel free to e-mail me or whatnot if you want to know specifics.

Due to the traumatic nature of the event, I simply no longer felt safe on the island that I have called home for the last six months and a couple weeks ago, I finally made the decision that I needed to move to another country for my own peace of mind and in the interest of preserving my mental health.

That's the very short story of how I've now ended up on the island of St Kitts. The full name of the country is St Christopher and Nevis, but it's rare to see "Christopher" written out as "Kitts" has become the standard abbreviation. It's a country made up of two islands, and they look remarkably like a baseball and bat.

The trip here wasn't without some delay and drama in and of itself. Liat (it's jokingly said that the letters stand for "Leave Island Any time") is notorious for having things go wrong and is, unfortunately, a necessary evil when traveling in the Eastern Caribbean.

My journey began on Monday, the 7 of March, with a 5am taxi ride to the airport. I boarded my plane on time at 7am and, according to my itinerary, should have landed on St Kitts at 10:45am after stopovers in St Lucia and Antigua (you also can never get a direct flight within the Caribbean).

After landing on St Lucia, we were forced to go through security again, but fortunately most of my plane from St Vincent was slated to travel together on the same plane to continue on to their destinations so, although this caused a slight delay, the flight was held for us.

Once everyone was through security, we were told we could go out to prepare to board the plane. We were all standing waiting outside, when we were told that we would have to go back into the waiting area due to "technical difficulties." We weren't told what these were, just that they existed, so with a lot of grumbling, we all headed back into the lounge. Within 20 minutes, we were told that things had been taken care of and we were once again outside waiting to board the prop plane that would take us to our various destinations.

We boarded without a hitch. I stuffed my large carry on items into the overhead compartments and sat with my "single serving friend" who was on his way to Puerto Rico to board the cruise ship that he works on. The plane began to taxi to the runway and the engines were being revved for takeoff when the flight attendant suddenly went running up the aisle to talk to the pilot. The right engine was leaking copious amounts of fuel and had somehow gone undetected until people looked out the window...

Needless to say, they didn't take off and kill us but instead we were sent back, once again, to the lounge. By this time it was obvious that we were all missing our connections in Antigua and would have to be rerouted and rescheduled. I ended up not getting to Antigua until after 1pm and there wasn't a flight to St Kitts from there until 7:45 pm...so my 3.5 hour day of travel was increased by 10 hours and I missed my own welcome party that the volunteers had planned.

On the plus side, I have an utterly wonderful apartment here. I even have amenities such as hot water, a microwave, a blender, cable, internet, water, and electricity included in the rent, and a/c (although I don't use it because I'd have to pay extra if I wanted to). I have a spare bedroom as well, so if you're thinking about visiting the Caribbean...

And I suppose that you're all wondering what I'll be doing in relation to work. Or maybe you aren't in which case you can just stop reading now. I'll be working in at least two locations. One will be the Sandy Point Primary School where I'll be in charge of the library and the other is the Special Education School where I'll be working with the classroom of autistic students! I'm especially exited about the latter.

I haven't yet visited the Special Education School, but I've been to Sandy Point a few times now and it's really a nice school. They have a wonderful faculty who all seem very knowledgeable and they even have a full time reading specialist on staff who works with students one on one who are falling behind in reading. The library has a/c and the school also has a computer room (although the computers aren't all set up). The school day is longer here: 8:30-3:30 as opposed to 9-3 on St Vincent. I'll make sure to take some pictures in the next couple days to show you all!

Anyway...That's where I am and what I'm up to. I'm feeling safe and secure here and will hopefully be able to finish out the next year and a half of my Peace Corps service without a hitch.
I hope you're all well at home as Spring approaches!