Easter and First Day in Grenada

Last Friday we had a small Easter party in the classroom and did some crafts and an Easter egg hunt. It was nowhere near as involved or fun as St. Patrick's Day, but I honestly still think it's kinda weird that I can do so much for religious holidays in my classroom. St. Patrick's Day also just has more fun things that go along with it than Easter. In my mind Easter is really kind of boring in comparison. But the kids got candy so they were happy.

The kids had to go around and find all the Easter words and write them next to the correct picture.

Some did it perfectly and others really just wrote random letters, but they all tried pretty hard. And look how big they look now compared to the beginning of the year!

We made Easter eggs with tissue paper and glue paint.

Michelle's Easter Egg

Luis

Marian

Luis and Kenvi reading Dr. Seuss

Easter Egg hunt

Luis helping Hakim find Easter eggs.

We found one!

Class with their candy prizes after the hunt.

Again.

We are now in Grenada doing a visa run. We left Anaco Sunday morning at 4am. From there we took the hour drive to Barcelona and took a plane to Porlamar. We had a long layover so we went and spent the morning sleeping on the beach. We got back to the airport with three hours to spare (because it was an international flight and we got yelled at last time for not being on time) I still do not understand why that airport needs three hours to get about 30 people to check in, check bags and walk the 50 feet through security to their gate, but it's Venezuela so we just go through it. Their form of "security" is also the national guard rummaging through your bag for about 15 seconds, not what I would call "high security." After boarding in Porlamar we flew for about 30 minutes to Port of Spain, Trinidad and had a layover there (but luckily we didn't even need to get off the plane) then we took a 50 minute flight to St. George's, Grenada. I'm so glad that an hour and a half total of flying took us all day to complete... 

When we finally got to our hotel Sunday night we found out that they messed up our reservations. It took quite a while to try and sort things out and I still don't understand what they did long. The manager didn't seem like the brightest lady and we were all exhausted. Thanks to Saliha's negotiating skills they ended up putting us up in a villa and giving us an extra night here for free. Pictures of the hotel will come later....

On Monday we slept in a little bit (since no one had slept for about 36 hours) and then just spend the day in St. George's. We wandered around and went to the spice market. Grenada is known as the spice island so everywhere smells amazing. We bought a whole bunch of spices that we can't find anywhere in Anaco. We also found a guy selling homemade wines. I got two little tiny hand painted bottles (one of black wine and one of ginger wine) to bring back to Anaco for Dereek and I since we drink wine all the time with dinner. I wish I could bring more but I'm not sure how easy it's going to be to pack glass bottles of wine into luggage without them breaking... 

We also went and hiked up to Fort George and got a lovely view of the city. Like any other fort there wasn't a ton to do besides walk around, but it was breezy and the views were amazing. One of the last things we did was sit at a small restaurant/bar that is right on the water and have a drink before coming back to the hotel. We came back on the earlier side since we were all getting tired and all had some work to do that involved utilizing the internet whether it be for grad school or job searching. Overall, it was a good first day and I've decided I love walking around this island because everything smells amazing.

Spices and wine

Wine and spices

Cruise ship and sailboat ship

Thought this ship with five masts was pretty cool. Would've loved to see it with the sails up.

Walking up to Fort George

Who would've thought, but that building is actually a gym. And yes, we are in the fort right now.

Cannon and pretty blue water

Panoramic of St. George's 

Pretty colorful houses.

Again.

 Another Panoramic

And another...

Picture of the bay.

Inside the fort. I liked these yellow flowers growing by this old shuttered window.

A little run down.

This building with the red roof is the hospital. The hospital might not be as bad if you had an ocean view room..

Basketball court inside the fort.

Really old, but cool looking church in St. George's

Selling fresh fish straight off the boat.

Waterfront bar/restaurant.

Saliha and I waiting for drinks.

That's about all for now, we're about to get some breakfast and head to the beach near the hotel for the morning. This afternoon we might go to the more famous Grand Anse beach, but we're not positive yet. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be doing some snorkeling at the underwater sculpture park and maybe one other site as well.