Student Interactions and Fish Friday (YUM)

Time here in the Caribbean is an interesting thing. It moves slowly, but before you know it so much has gone by. It’s about 10 AM on a Saturday and I’m still feeling groggy, waking up, sipping some water to refresh my body and jog my memory. It has been a very long week. This week has proven to be the most challenging yet (although it doesn’t have much competition). Significant things that we had to do this week and the weekend prior included writing a comprehensive Java manual. This was no easy task to coordinate, research, write and edit. Fortunately for us we have a significant bit of experience divvying and delegating work to one another.

The past weekend consisted largely of working on the manual. Aside from that we spent that Saturday at Grand Anse beach, something I would like to be doing today (although today’s weather may not approve of this activity). That was a glorious day, in-between work, enjoying an unparalleled beauty on many different levels. At the end of that day my back was quite crisp, I neglected to apply sun screen. The following day we had completed a first draft of our manual and were prepared to teach with it. We would soon realize that we had not given the students enough material to work with. They were sharper than we expected.

The week began with our ride being 45 minutes late. Being late for your first day of work is highly frowned upon and made us quite nervous. Fortunately for us our transportation was being supplied by the Ministry, leaving the responsibility in other hands than our own. We didn’t get to Gouyave (our first teaching site) until roughly 11:30, two hours late. Despite our extreme tardiness, we managed to cover material we expected to last both Monday and Tuesday. To compensate for the students abilities and prior programming experience we had to develop new material which we did by Wednesday.

Interactions with the students are hard to report. A lot of the time I did not understand what they were saying, at least initially. But as you hold more and more discussions with them they begin to either speak in a less confounded version of English, or your ear develops the ability to listen better; perhaps it is a bit of both. But either way my interpretation of our relations is not limited to verbal communication. Hungry from spending the entire day teach java followed by wiring all the computers in the lab to the internet (which all together took about 11 hours) we went to Fish Friday. The whole experience was a journey of the senses. The smells, the sites, sounds, views were all fantastic. I tried so many different types of fish I am getting hungry thinking about it. And I was delighted to see a percussion ensemble consisting largely of steel pan drums! At this point it really struck me that I was truly in the Caribbean.

Overall this past week has presented me with a new perspective. I’m really starting to feel at home on the island and am getting in the swing of things. Our driver was late for a cumulative total of roughly 5 hours. And he still has his job. Good people here on Grenada. Until later!