A little more from the small island

Little Cayman

Our facilities......beautiful right? This is my dorm room for my weekend activities and the view.











What I get to wake up to every morning and where some of the field work takes place.










One of the perks of being a teacher is that we get to be apart of some amazing government programs for free. Sometimes the programs are not put together in a way that is...well, useful and then there are programs like the one I attended this weekend: CCMI- Central Caribbean Marine Institute. The goal: to have every child in the Cayman Islands Ocean Literate by the age of 12. It is a pretty lofty goal, but if you live on an island, one would think that being knowledgeable about this great body of water that surrounds you might be a little important, if not very.

I was surprised that the program takes teachers off island to another island- Little Cayman. Now, I already think that the island that I am currently is small, but Little Cayman takes the cake by a far shot. It is ten miles long by 1.6 miles wide and has a population of 150 right now.

It has some charm to it, one post office, grocery store, and a bank all in one building. People travel on dirt roads and you never know if anything will go right that day-electricity, the airline schedule, water, etc. My favorite part though was the fact that this Institute was located on the other side of the island and we had an entire beach to ourselves. The facilities were quite nice. Dorm rooms on the shore, a lab for examining sea creatures, an outside but screened in diner, and showers with nothing but the open ocean for a view( and warm water,too if the solar panels caught enough sunlight).

For the first weekend we sat under a Coral Reef Specialist from Miami University and she spoke about the following: what the ocean is, currents, sea life, coral reefs, diverse populations/environments, and many other topics. We then went out and did some field work along the coast and visited some of the National Trust Wildlife Reserves. We have some lesson plans to create over the next two weeks before we meet again, but it's all good. Why? B/C I get to live on the beach away from anything that reminds me of work for two more weekends. Not only that, but the best thing is that we get to see what God created and give Him due credit, if only the speakers would agree:(

Spring Break

Ahhhh.... Spring Break! It's ALMOST here. I have a couple more days to wait before I head out with a lot of stuff to bring back to the States. I believe that this week will probably be the most difficult for both Cristin and myself as we are going to be dealing with students who are "present", but not really. What will be even more of a challenge is watching students get picked up tomorrow (Monday) afternoon for an "early" pick-up to start their Spring Break in Jamaica, the Bahamas, or for most of my students, 7-mile beach right here on the island. I love how "early" is not the day before Spring Break on the island- but instead, it's the week before. After Break it is a 9-week push until summer. Wow!!

Lucky them....but on THURSDAY afternoon...it's LUCKY TEACHERS!!! Wahoo. I am very happy about heading home and just being with family and seeing my newest nephew Isaac. Countin' down the hours.

I am not leavn' on a jet plane yet, but I think I can land one now

On Wednesday we moved into our new place. It is quite the nice place, two big bedrooms, large kitchen and our own landing strip:)