It's a Great Big World

On Friday, I ventured to the southern part of the island because one of the veteran language teaching assistants was throwing a BBQ at the school she founded. A lot of the assistants this year are stationed down south, so I packed my adventure bag for an overnight stay with whomever and hopped on a zipline bus on my own. I figured I'd meet someone at the BBQ that I could stay with, and someone who would want to explore something the next day. A definite open book adventure.

The BBQ was pretty fun...

And my time spent the last couple days getting to know the other assistants has been very eye opening. I guess I've never really sat down with such a large group of people from so many different countries and learned about their daily lives. I listened to this one girl from Ireland talk about the conflicts there...the hunger strikes...things i learned breifly somewhere down the line in my education but never really thought about too hard. I met a girl from Germany who speaks four languages fluently and has studied at these amazing schools all over the world. In fact, most people in that room spoke at least three languages...have lived in different countries for a period of time, and really, just knew stuff about the world. And it makes you a little intimidated, you know, to talk to them...like do you ask about these crazy things about their country? Does it make you sound ignorant if you don't really know the story behind the Irish Potato Famine? My only basis for comparison is that I worked at a British themed pub for the last four years and we had branston pickle relish and celebreated St. Patty's Day--haha maybe that's something I should keep to myself?? Either way, it did really make me want to research some more history and geography of these places my new friends come from.

So...here's what the south of the island looks like:

a whale! 

And if you're wondering what to do on the beaches when it's too windy and you don't want to swim....(it IS winter here, after all...)

scrabble! the shimatz side of the family should be proud right about now...

And since I make it a point to study a little bit of french every night before I go to sleep, I'm going to share some French that I've been hearing a lot lately....