Apparently someone had said that the day we had a black president, pigs will fly. Well right around the 100 days, the swine flu.
Tasteless, sure--but that's life. ^_^
Being sick stinks--the flu especially. I got it probably late last week, but it didn't really hit me till Sunday & Monday. You know the kind that makes your who self ache whenever you move your head. I'm fine now and no it wasn't swine flu. Just regular, good 'ol make the life miserable flu. Figure I most likely got it from doing all those reading assessments at the school the past couple weeks. Coming into close proximity with more than one kid sniffing back his cold is a fairly reasonable guess. And for the worry worts out there (cough...mom...cough), the Peace Corps has issued us special tablets to go into our medical kits to be taken if the avian or swine flu should outbreak here.
Outside of a brief run-in with the flu, I've still been keeping busy. Sunday night I went to the larger venue of Gospel Fest in Kingstown. I went to show support and take some pics for the Super Kidz group from Spring. This larger gathering was to bring together all the top performers from the zonal areas; our zone was from the blog I detailed in Chateau. There were many performances, some of them very cool. Now although I'm not a Christian--I know a good performance and these were very entertaining. I must admit, the swing dancers really through me for a loop when I saw that!
Here's a few videos of the other groups. I'm not putting up the pics/videos from the Super Kidz--although they were great, it was the same songs & dance from the other show and available on an earlier blog.
The photo albums from that night are here:
Part 1
Part 2
This one should be a group called KLT, somewhere from the Windward side
This one is a dancing couple from the Marriaqua Valley on the Windward side
This one features Jason Mighty--that night's special performance. Hailing from Jamaican, he is well known in the Gospel circles and the crowd ERUPTED for his hour or so long performance. This was his closing song and one that is extremely popular here. Alright, I admit I don't know the name of the song. Gospel was never really my cup of tea.
The stands are overflowing with Vincentians at Victoria Park
In other updates--
ECHO, the drum and dance group is coming along slowly. The kids want to do a sponsor walk to raise some funding for more drums. They should be doing a sponsor walk from Chateau to Spring Village--roughly two hours along a mountainous highway road. They plan to grab the drums and play along the way. I'll be hoping for a good turn-out, although I'm not to sure how driven they are to walk around and ask for their sponsors. Oddly, I'm finding a bit of a reversal on this one... The kids that are normally very motivated to do the drumming and activities don't really want to do they walk and complain it's too hard/far. Many of the other kids--the ones who often don't take things seriously and goof off seem more determined to make this walk work.
Time will tell.
We'll also be expanding into the dance section very soon...getting a small boombox would be great and is on the equipment to get list. The kids caught me watching some breakdance and beatbox stuff and have decided they really want to give that a try. Oh my...yet another skill I have very little talent or knowledge and will be relying on the WONDERFUL resource of Youtube. The most & best beatboxing I ever did is a rather nostalgic moment of youth--I must have been 16 or 17. I recall there were either 11 or 13 of us packed into by buddy Greg's station wagon, also called the shag wag with the winter orb air conditioner. We drove around and everybody made a different sound effect or rhythm line and complied it into this cacophony that might have bordered music. Good times. The breakdancing...is entirely all new turf for me, but I'll admit I've got interest in learning.
I think I've found a semi-effective punishment for the kids that misbehave around me--typically during the Tuesday/Thursday after-school study sessions. They call them 'lines'. That's right, those wonderfully monotonous line after line repetition of some idea to reflect the ideal behavior or reminder of what they should not do again. The kids seem to really squirm at the idea of even 10 or 20 lines. Lucky them...I remember getting them by the page--front & back--at a time. Of course, I don't know if I should stick with regular lines. I'm considering carrying around a dictionary with me and have them copy definitions--maybe learn something along the way. Yeah, I understand it's a negative punishment and we are supposed to be doing positive reinforcement practices but if the PC wants to get on my butt about it then they should have sent a person with more experience working with youth.
Got another village council meeting tomorrow night...crossing my fingers for good turnout on this one. We are voting in the constitution framework and hopefully putting some things in place to start mobilizing and working the various sub-committees of the council. We will also be listing the ad-hoc committee to start putting together what we'll be calling the "Spring Village Enhancement Project" which will contain several smaller development efforts in a wide variety of areas across the village. I'll do a full blog on that alone once we settle on more specific details.
On an entertainment note--I watched to very good movies in the past week or so...
Normal and The Children of Huang Shi. Normal is a gender-affairs drama and The Children of Huang Shi is a war drama and I recommend them both.
And on that note...I'm out for now. Plenty on the mind to go ponder.
Stay happy and well
ciao tutti
~your local wannabe jedi
~Shawn
1 comment:
Nice post Shawn - love the videos!
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