First Day

Today was our first official day at school. It brought a mixture of emotions, at least for me. I was excited, nervous, and anxious all at the same time. The teachers I am working with are great. They all seem to be very inclusive and willing to help out the newbies.

My room is still in a state of disarray. At some point during the summer the maintenance guys scraped most of the bubbled up paint off the walls in anticipation of the walls be repainted during the summer break. Well, school starts in 5 days and the walls still are not painted... I have been told that they'll be painted before school starts, I even got to pick out the paint color I wanted, but I'm not holding my breath for the task to be finished on time. With all that said, I can't fully set up my room until the walls are painted so I'm doing what I can as I can. The desks are in place, at least the ones I have, I'm short seven desks for my biggest class. Our class sizes range between 31 and 35 students.

In more exciting news, Josh has a teal blue office, it's pretty grand. I guess that's the island style, lots of offices and houses even are painted in tropical pastel colors. Josh's school is the largest on the island with about 1200 students and mine, SSHS, is overcrowded with about 900 students. He has about 265 students under his counseling wing. All of the other counselors are females which means it's gonna be just like working at the office again. Except now he has his OWN office that's actually about the size of the office we shared back home.

There have been many changes to the school system since we arrived which have had us on our toes the last couple of days. Josh's principal went to the states for vacation and is now on permanent sick leave and that's all we know. But in order to fill her position, two days before teachers report, the commissioner decided it was in best of the students for the principal of my school to take over at MHS (Josh's school). So, one of the vice principals from my school will now be our principal. It has left everyone in a whirlwind to figure out what's going on and to define what void they need to fill.

Needless to say, it's going to be an interesting year, for both of us. We have loved almost every minute that we've been out here. Church, Sunday, was a bit difficult, at least for me. That was the point that I've felt the most home sick. But we have done so many cool things since we've been here. Staying busy has helped keep our minds off the fact that we're so far from home. We will, hopefully, move into our apartment tomorrow so pictures will come soon, I promise!