The Castries

It's not actually celery juice at all, but "Golden Apple" juice. I actually enjoy it a lot now and drink several glasses a day.

The training has been going well, if not a little tiring at times (I haven't sat through 8 hours of classes a day since High School). But it's tolerable and I'm actually learning some interesting stuff about cultures, safety and security, and many other things. Today we got a break from the regular sitting in hard wood chairs all day, and got to leave the compound. We got on a bus around 8:30 and were taken to Castries, which is St. Lucia's capital city, and where Peace Corps has their regional offices. After a few hours of more training sessions, we were given a lunch that was basically a tortilla with curry and chicken inside of it. I forget what it was called, but it was delicious (except for the chicken bones). We received some shots and vaccines, then were sent out on our own for a scavenger hunt throughout Castries. We divided into teams of about four people. My team was Saira, Maggie, Julie Ann, and myself. It seemed that a lot of the exercise was not just to get to know Castries, but to figure stuff out on our own. Earlier in the day we were given two weeks of "walk around money" (which really doesn't amount to much, maybe $2.50 a day), but it also included transportation money, along with many other expenses. We were told we had to use some of our money to get a bus, go to downtown Castries, and find things on our list. Such things included the library, an ice cream shop, a Cathedral, and the market etc..



It was kind of intimidating getting on the busses at first. They're not really busses as much as they are vans. Very crowded vans. We managed to find a stop, and get on a bus when it came. We weren't too sure where the bus was going, but when we asked someone, they kindly informed us it was going to the correct destination. Eventually we made it down town, gave our money ($1.50 EC) to the bus driver, and got off. We had basic tourist maps of Castries and were able to navigate our way around town fairly well. We found everything on the list so we wandered the streets for a while afterwards. Around 6:30pm we met up with the rest of EC80 and got back on the bus (which is another story in its self, which I should be reminded to tell some time) and headed back to the retreat for dinner. Everyone was pretty exhausted, but it was a good exhausted. It was nice being out for the day.