Travels

Wow, I got really really bad at updating this...

So a few weeks ago we were in Trinidad and Tobago to do a visa run. Because we do not have working visas we need to leave the country every 3 months to renew our tourist visa. This semester the school sent us to Trinidad and Tobago. We were in Trinidad for about 5 nights and Tobago for two. The school paid for our time in Trinidad, Tobago was our choice though.

While we were in Trinidad we got to wander around Port of Spain and go see some pretty mansions, see the botanical gardens, go to a zoo and just in general enjoy being in civilization again. We also did some small excursions like taking a day to go to Maracas Beach and another day to go to the Caroni Bird Sanctuary to watch the scarlet ibis' all fly into this one tree to roost. It was awesome, the birds are bright pink and hundreds of them all fly to the same place at sunset. While we were in Trinidad we also tried lots of new Indian food like pholurie, doubbles and roti. We also tried the well known bake and shark while we were at the beach.

Yeah, I suck at updating. This post has now taken me weeks to write. It literally just sits here open on my computer, I might as well finish. The weekend after Trinidad and Tobago Dereek took me to Caracas so I could get a new camera. (Mine suffered an unfortunate death in Tobago, at least it's a nice place to die.) Caracas was cool, wish we had more time to spend there. Our hotel was interesting to say the least, we enjoyed it though. It was nice to get out of the two areas of Venezuela that I know though. I wish I knew the country better, I feel like I should since I live here. Here's some Caracas pictures that I took with my new camera. 

This past weekend we went to isla de plata. Hopefully I can put those up sometime soon. Maybe in a combo post with all the Halloween shenanigans that have been going on. The internet is always too iffy for me to post much at a time it seems. And I've been kind of lazy...

Week Before Elections and Getting to Trinidad

So quick update on school (I'm writing while in Trinidad, so these are gonna be fairly quick updates). We did a few fun things like practice ordering by making s'mores with the kindergarten class. We also finished our unit on senses by learning about Helen Keller and finding out what it would be like to be blind. I blindfolded the kids and had them feel their name written in braille (made using dots of glue on paper) We've also learned about the letter H and started getting ready for Halloween. Here's some quick pictures

Marcel making some patterns. I made up about 20 patterns for the kids to follow with blocks to help them lean what a pattern is. 

The pre-k and kindergarteners making s'mores

mmm s'mores

Marcel was the one who brought in the s'mores kit for us to use

Michelle eating her s'more

Cutting out the pictures for our s'mores worksheet

Steps to making s'mores. Learning how to put things in the right order.

What is it like to not have some of your senses? Martina reading her name in braille.

Sebastian learning what its like to be blind.

More lack of senses pictures. (Marcel)

Making our letter h houses

They came out sooo well. The kids did a really wonderful job.

H for house. They even came up with the idea to make a chimney. 

We read this book, ghosts in the house (house begins with h and so does halloween)

Then we made these cute ghosts

Marcel working on his ghost

The final product of our ghosts.

We've been doing a lot with the 5 little pumpkins poem as well. The kids are making their five little pumpkins sitting on a gate picture

5 little pumpkins sitting on a gate

On Thursday I had to keep the kids at school late so I let them watch a movie. All the parents were delayed because there were protests over housing because of the election coming up right outside of school. The parents couldn't drive into the school because the whole road was blocked with protestors so all the parents were late. Most of the kids were taken home around lunch time so my writing classes on Thursday afternoon were kind of a joke. It was nothing dangerous at all, but it was a huge inconvenience for parents to need to get through it so if they were at the school at noon getting the little ones they just took their older kids too so they didn't need to deal with all the demonstrations later on again. It was a hectic afternoon.

Well now we're in Trinidad. We took a flight from Barcelona, Venezeual at 6am to Margarita Island (in Venezeula) We spent from about 8am-2pm on the beach in Margarita getting tan and drinking Coco Locos, also then needing to rush to make our international flight to Trinidad. Our flight left Margarita at about 3pm. The flight went and had about a 15 minute stop in Grenada, then we flew into Port of Spain, Trinidad. It was late when we finally got here, so we pretty much just checked in, got some food and went to bed. We've now eaten breakfast and are about to out to the pool and figure out what we feel like doing today. We're thinking possibly spending Wednesday and Thursday night in Tobago instead of Trinidad. Not positive yet though. 

The beach in Margarita at 8am

The colors looked a bit nicer at about 11am. 

Off to the pool now! Enjoying a week in Trinidad and Tobago!