Thanksgiving filled with Blessings!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! We hope you all have a great Thanksgiving with your family and friends. We were able to spend the afternoon with the Wurdeman family and a visiting adjunct teacher. We had all the fixin’s including: turkey, potatoes and gravy, and pumpkin pie!  It was different having our first Thanksgiving ever away from family, but we couldn’t have asked for better people to spend it with!

We have so much to be thankful for here are some in no particular order:

The health of all of our family

All of our supporters

A blessed marriage

The opportunity to serve in the Caribbean

All of the WISE students and faculty

Skype (to communicate with family and friends)

Coke and Snickers (Maddie), Cherry Sours (EK) It’s nice to have those familiar tasty treats around

Access to a beach (Much different from our lives in Missouri)

Our education

Air conditioning

God’s grace

Electricity

Hot water

God’s provision

Roti and Roasted Breadfruit (local dishes in SVG)

And many many more!

 

Iguana and Games

Well EK and I had a first this week: we cooked and ate iguana! In St. Vincent  iguana season is from October to January.  People hunt iguana by catching them with their hands or using a small spear like weapon. Since the season has opened we often see local hunters standing on main intersections displaying their catch of the day, trying to sell the iguana to the people passing by; most of the time the iguanas are still alive!

I mentioned to our preschool assistant, Mrs. Marshall, that I had never had iguana. Mrs. Marshall likes to spoil me a lot to make sure I have the full St. Vincent experience, so the following week she came with iguana meat for me. Lets say it was one of the most intimidating cooking experience I have ever had, but it was worth it to say we have tried iguana.

Iguana Arm

before cooking

frying up the iguana

 

To prepare the iguana I placed it in hot water then removed the skin (it just peeled off). Then I added it to the pan with oil, garlic, leeks, salt and pepper. Then I squeezed 2 sour oranges over the top. The flavor was really good, the tail was the best part kind of tasted more like fish. The rest of it tasted a lot like chicken.

 

 

Tether ball

 

Our last adjunct teacher, Micheal Brown, brought in a tether ball and the students worked together to dig the hole and pour concrete and poof we have a tether ball.  None of the students have ever played before so we all had fun testing it out!

 

The student council lead our fellowship time this weekend which was a lot of fun. We played blanket volleyball!

 





Field Trip Day!

Today was a good day at WISE Preschool.  We drove to a local bakery so all of the kids could see how bread was made.  They all had a really good time looking at all of the equipment and smelling all of the fresh bread. Last week we learned about our 5 senses so it was a good time to practice our sense of smell, sight, and taste...they were kind and gave us lots of yummy treats to try! We tried to not use our sense of touch, some succeeded at this better than others :).

all the kids looking at the workers mixing dough!

Eying all the bread!

MMMM! They said their bakery makes about 80 to 90 lbs or white bread a day!

Compare and Contrast

Then vs. Now

Remember when you were in elementary school and your teachers would ask you to make to compare and contrast by making a list? Well I thought I would retreat back to my younger years and do the same with SVG and the USA!

Many people ask us how St. Vincent is different from the United States.  Here is a short list…along with some similarities!

United States	St. Vincent and the Grenadines
Drive on the right side of the road	Drive on the left side of the road (or in the middle because many of the roads are very narrow and curvy)
Missouri-lots of flat areas to ride bike or go on long walks	Lots of places to walk but almost all are HILLY!
Electricity is reasonably priced-we run AC all day long, have dishwashers, dryers etc.	Electricity of very expensive here, therefore there is no central AC, but only units, we have a switch that turns on our hot water heater so we only have hot water if we turn on the switch, and no dyers-we hang all our cloths out to dry.
110 watt outlets	220 watt outlets
In Missouri we were days away from a beach	In SVG we can see the beach from our house and its about a 20 min walk/5 min drive!
Wal-Mart, Starbucks, McDonalds on every corner	3 KFCs on the island, 1 Subway, and 1 Pizza Hut, oh and 2 Ace Hardware stores. There are lots of local stores that sell various items, but no one stop shops.
Cable TV	Cable TV-we thought we were going to miss all of the presidential election adds, we were wrong, they show them here too!
US Dollar	Eastern Caribbean ($EC) for every $1 US there is $2.65 EC
Hunt deer and turkey	Hunt Iguanas (season is October 1 through January) and lots of fishing!
Drove everywhere in our own cars	We walk a lot to the grocery stores and also take public transportation. We use the school van sometimes as well.  There are vans everywhere for public transportation and it costs between $1 EC and $1.50 EC (so about 30₵ to 50₵)
May see some loose dogs or cats from time to time outside	Goats are everywhere! Along with dogs and a few cows here and there.
Squirrels everywhere	No squirrels
Primary language is English	Primary language is English!
Four season (cold and warm)	2 seasons (rainy and dry) but always warm, since we have been her it usually always gets to around 85 or 90 degrees.
Few fruit trees	Almost every tree is a fruit tree: avocado, golden apple, sugar apple, breadfruit, mango, papaya, banana, and lots more.