October to May I'll be teaching English in two Junior High Schools in Pointe-à-Pitre, 6th grade through 9th grade. Not only will this year be a challenge because I will need to adapt to another culture and lifestyle, but also because it will be my first time teaching in a Junior High. To add to that challenge, the schools I've been assigned to are "REP schools," meaning that the students are typically more difficult. As one teacher described it, a lot of the students are immigrants from the Dominican Republic and Haiti and come from poor families, or they were sent to the school after being expelled from their previous school for violence. But...challenge accepted.
Guadeloupe is made up of five islands, and Grande Terre is the one on which I am living and teaching. There are around 470,500 habitants in Guadeloupe, and even though the official language is French, Guadeloupe people speak Guadeloupian creole, which dates back to the time of colonization and slavery.
Ever since my plane was about to touch down and I thought, "We're landing in this jungle?!", all five of my senses have been adapting to this new environment - from feeling like I'm constantly walking through the rainforest exhibit at the zoo with sticky skin, to smelling the salt water, algae, and fresh caught fish in the morning, to tasting the local specialties and the spices of creole food, to seeing the sun every day and some of the most beautiful landscapes and beaches, to falling asleep to the sound of crashing waves, crickets, and frogs.
To give you a better idea of the culture shock I experienced my first few weeks, here is a list of my first thoughts and observations:
1) "I'm living in the jungle!"
2) "How did these cockroaches get in my apartment?"
3) "I feel like a princess under this mosquito net."
4) "Oh hey lizard, what are you doing hiding in my towel?"
5) When night falls at 6pm, all the insects start singing and I can't help but feel like I'm camping.
6) When I passed a goat standing on a parked car and got cut off by chickens, I started to realize that almost everyone seems to have goats and/or chickens.
7) What time does the bus come? Nobody knows...
8) I discovered a new feeling of disappointment: When you can't find a certain food at the grocery store and realize you have to wait for a new shipment to come in from France.
9) People take their time for everything. If you want to take 10 minutes to pay and bag your groceries, nobody will have a problem.
10) People start saying "Good evening" anytime after Noon.
11) When children are punished in class, they are told to stand behind their chair or to stand in the corner of the classroom. I learned this one day when I was standing in front of the classroom ready to introduce myself to the class and the teacher told me, "Sit down, you look punished." It took me a while to get used to that, so I was told to sit down quite a lot. Apparently there is a saying in France that if you stand too much, it means you want to grow taller.
12) I discovered Gwo ka: their traditional dancing and drumming that one can often hear during the weekend.
13) Never, EVER, forget your umbrella. And even if you remember to bring it, people will advise you not to walk in the rain. But, I'm a Seattleite and I can't help it.
To get a better visual of what Guadeloupe is like, I put together a video that you can see by clicking here :
Video : "Welcome to Guadeloupe"
Stay tuned for more stories and videos about this paradise that Christopher Columbus named "The Island of Beautiful Waters."
