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Alas, I am finally here to report to you the happenings through mine eyes. I’m sure you have been anxious to find out what I will tell. I’ll have to back track to a couple weeks ago and from there until now.

Two weeks ago—beginning with Monday, the 16^th of July— we were beginning our training session with our last group. This group consisted entirely of IT Teachers of Grenada, an interesting dynamic to be thrown at us. Relatively speaking our “student” group was completely different than that which we had grown used to teaching. Suddenly the student body had become much older, much wiser, much more knowledgeable, but also much more willing and eager to learn what we had to offer. As a result of this we went through our material much faster, and in anticipation for this we added 3 chapters to our course book: more on arrays, methods, and objects. All in all the week was the greatest and most efficient week so far. One of the teachers put together a video documentary of the week which included a lot of teacher feedback. They had a lot of nice responses to our training session and it made us feel like we had really done something here.

The following week we did some work around the ministry. Wednesday the 25^th of July we had a continuation with the IT teachers. However, the topic of discussion for this day was network security, not Java. It was a nice and welcomed change but it was sad to think that it was going to be our last day of teaching/training here in Grenada. For the rest of the week we did IT help around the Ministry of Education building and a very brief introduction with a few individuals to PowerPoint.

The Friday of that week Josh, our driver, took us to his home town: Boca. Josh had coordinated a rather large event where we and a group of financial consultants (working for the Ministry) were brought to that small country town; experiencing what Grenada is like from a local perspective. While there we had the Grenadian national dish: Oil Down. Basically it’s a giant pot that is full of all kinds of stuff that I have grown accustomed to eating here, but would never have at home. Such things as dasheen (also known as taro, a big tasty root type thing) and other provisions, dumplings, salt pork and callaloo (which is kind of like spinach), all mixed up with coconut oil, curry and tons of other spices to make a delicious stew of Grenadian flavor. We also had the chance to mingle with the locals who were hanging out at the same spot; met some rastas and enjoyed the atmosphere.

This week has been unconventional in relation to our typical weeks here. All the summer workshops have ended. So this puts us in an awkward place with regard to IT unit duties. Typically during the summer the IT unit of the MoE is left without much responsibility. And now that they have an additional five employees it has been a bit of a struggle to organize enough work for all of us to carry out. So we have been doing a lot of sitting around in the office, which is both a burden and a curse. To make things more interesting we found out at dinner Tuesday night that we were being moved. Yes, we were being relocated from the University Club. So the paradise dream was over, or so we had thought. As it turns out we have been placed in the Grand Beach Hotel, a huge tourist spot. Good and bad. Basically I miss my villa but now we have two swimming pools, one of which is referred to as “The Fantasy Pool”.

Tomorrow we are going to Gouyave for dinner at Rene’s Mom’s. Since we will be in Gouyave for dinner we’ll be heading to Fish Friday following dinner, to eat more I guess. It should be a good time. I’ll talk all about it this weekend. Until then, lata.