Another weekend, another adventure.

Saturday night was a top-secret covert mission to meet some of the new trainees who flew in last week. They are currently sequestered in Ti-Rocher, in the south of the island, for training, before they ship out to their islands of assignment. Every Saturday, there is a fish fry in another town, Dennery, which isn’t far from Ti-Rocher. We figured that many of the host-families would take their Peace Corps kids to Dennery, since our host families had done similar things for us. So a group of us current volunteers decided that we could also just happen to check out Dennery on the same night.

There were about 5 of the new trainees there with their host families. They don’t know where they’ll be assigned yet, but they were still curious to ask a lot of questions. We were all the same way. It sounds like training is going well and that the group is cool. One girl already decided to go home deciding the PC wasn’t right for her for right now.

Prior to the new trainees coming, I had talked to several on email and via the Yahoo-PC discussion list. One of these girls, Cari, helped on her end to set up the whole Dennery thing. I knew that she had been following my webpage (as well as Deb’s and Robin’s) for a while. She knew me when she got off the plane, which was a little funny, since I don’t know her at all! But when we all met up in Dennery, Cari and her friend, Heather, both say first off, "We think Cheeto is so cute!" It was really funny. So I had to tell them the latest Cheeto story…

When I feed Cheeto, I try to dilute his cat food with other things so that it will last longer. Lately it’s been some gross kind of corn flakes that I have around the house. But apparently Cheeto didn’t like them either. So he was crying and crying for new food, and I told him to go out in the garden and find his own. This has been sort of a joke with Paul and Mary and their cat, because one day Mary told Tiger to go find his own food and he came back with a fat rat. Anyways, I told Cheeto this, and about an hour later he came back in the house with a lizard half hanging out of his mouth. He had to play with it and torture it for a while, then he ate it whole. About five minutes later he came in with another one and did the same thing. I told him to get out and do his lizard thing outside. The problem with his lizard game, I think, is that he eats them while they’re still alive. So they kick and wiggle in his belly, and he barfs the lizards back up again still whole. It’s really great.

…So the girls really liked that story.

Other than that, we just hung around and had a drink at the fish fry. They were having a Digicel promotion there and guys were getting up on a stage and singing their own Digicel raps. It was pretty funny. By the way, I finally caved in and bought a new Digicel phone. It’s tiny! And since I traded in my old phone, I got $75 in free minutes.

After the fish fry I went out with Deb and Sam. Deb had been at a work fundraiser, so by the time we made it to the bar, she made a beeline for the dance floor. Sam and I cooled out on the deck by the water. Things were off to a not so good start because the place was empty and none of our usual friends were there. We had the average amount of losers trying to talk to us. I got cornered by a guy who’s a cop. I was pretty cold to him, and after awhile he got vex. I said, "listen, pal, every guy who comes up gives me the same line, and I’m just not interested". He said "I’m not like all the other guys!" (Margaret says-- if she had a dollar for every time she heard that one….) I said "well just no then."

But Sam came upon some better guys. We had met some of them a few weeks ago, and they honestly weren’t like all the other guys. I’m sure there are similarities deep down, but they were pretty cool. This one guy, Kendal, is the captain of a catamaran that does tourist cruises for the day. So he invited us to go on a cruise for Sunday. Sam and I figured that if we could go as a team, it would be ok. Deb and Shan were both busy.

The only other highlight was this one hilarious tourist guy. He was kind of a loser and there all by himself. All of the sudden, he breaks out into this dance. Sam and I were crying, it was so funny. No one else seemed to notice. At least when Noel does his Irish jig at the bar, he does it for an audience, plus he has talent. But this guy was just a joke. He went on for like 10 minutes in the same spot. Then he kind of leaned over like he was stretching, but turned that into some kind of bicycle pump-dance. It was too much.

So Sunday Sam and I headed into town for our catamaran adventure. We picked up a boat full of tourists who were in on a cruise. They had to pay $80US! We motored down to Anse Cochon to swim for a little bit. There, who should come on board but Margaret, one of the other PC volunteers. Apparently she is friends with Kendal’s brother, Xavier. So we swam, then hung out on the boat. In Soufriere, we dropped off all the tourists so they could go on a tour. We went to find some food, then went back up to Castries on the empty boat. It was a nice day and the tourists weren’t too annoying. Sometimes they can be too much:

Tourist: "Where are YOU from?"

Me: "I live here"

Tourist: "You LIVE here?!?!"

Me: "Yep"

Tourist: "Well what do you DO here?"

Me: "I’m here with the Peace Corps."

Tourist: "Oh, I think that’s SO NEAT! You’re doing a REALLY GREAT thing down here!"

Me: "…"

It’s nice of them to say, it just makes me feel a little funny to hear that.