We have officially made it to the halfway point. I can’t believe I have been in St. Lucia for almost a month already! I am definitely going to miss everyone here when I have to go home! The other day I was looking at my pictures from when I first got here. I had no idea then of what I was getting into. At first all of the different places and people seemed so foreign, but every day they are becoming more familiar. I know my way around better, and I have made great connections with my family, the teachers, and the students here. When I first got to St. Lucia I felt so lost because I didn’t have a routine to follow, but now I have been able to fall in to a pretty consistent daily routine. I still get confused at school because the schedule is very complicated, but I have a good idea of what is happening, and I know to not be surprised when the schedule changes. There is a lot of going with the flow. I am also becoming more familiar with the common greetings here. It took some time getting used to it but now I understand. At home most people exchange a greeting like this: “Hi, how are you today?” followed by, “I am doing well. How are you?” Here a common greeting is: “You ok?” followed by, “I’m fine. Okay.” At home that would be a conversation someone would have if they thought something was wrong with someone else, and the response, “I’m fine.” usually means that something is wrong. Here it is the same as asking someone how they are doing and then someone saying they are good. I have also been learning how to adapt in a classroom with limited resources, and appreciate what I have back home! In my classroom here I have paper I can use and each student has a white board, but other than those supplies I am very limited. This week I taught a lesson about using an encyclopedia. It was difficult because we don’t even have a set of encyclopedias for the school. We also don’t have easy access to computers and the internet, so I was unable to show my students online encyclopedias. (We have about 16 computers for the whole school and out of those only a few have internet connection.) I adapted by drawing a set of encyclopedias on the board and asking questions about our imaginary encyclopedias. Another resource I have at home that I miss having here are big pieces of paper. At home I have the ability to get paper to make posters whenever I want. There are rolls of paper at school I am able to use. Here I do not have that opportunity. I had a group of students who wanted to make a poster for an assignment, but their biggest problem was getting poster paper. They ended up using the back of an old poster in the room. It is tough not being able to provide the students with the supplies they need to be able to make creative projects like posters. Teaching here has proven to me just how fortunate I am to have so many resources available to me while I am teaching back home.