And the winner is… Antigua. I didn't think I was coming here. Grenada had been so much on my mind that I really thought I was going there, but here I am. My homestay is in a village called Sea View Farm and I live with Rosabelle Burleigh and her elderly mother Mabel Williams. We are several miles inland and up the hill from St. John's. There is no farm in Sea View Farm, but if you walk just a short distance down the road from my house, you can see all the way to the Sea. It's a small area, not much going on here. And not particularly where I see myself settling for the next 2 years. I'm going to take every opportunity over the next 6 weeks to get out and visit the rest of the island to really scout out the areas where I want to live.

5 from our class of 41 came to Antigua – 4 from ICT (me, Jim, George, and Lansana), and 1 from Small Business Development (Joanne). There are 10 other current volunteers already here in other sectors.

This Saturday we had the new PCV (us) welcoming picnic at Valley Church beach. It is a beautiful stretch of beach on the southwest side of the island, just below a large tourist area called Jolly Harbor. This area is separate from the tourist beach and nearly deserted. The water was a pale turquoise green that I have never seen before – absolutely beautiful.

I need to develop a new strategy regarding Sundays in the Caribbean. There is just nothing to do. Everything shuts down, there is no bus service from the East Bus station, and only limited service from the West station. Trying to determine exactly what that means is a challenge in itself. The bus drivers are independent and set their own schedules.

Not wanting to get on a bus to somewhere and then get stranded with no way home, I elected to stay around the village yesterday. I went for a walk, which took about an hour. I read, napped, watched tennis on TV, ate, I tried reading out on the front porch for a while, but finally had to concede to the mosquitoes. I'm beginning to really dislike Sundays; I can't wait for the day to be over! Like I said, I need to develop a new strategy. I have to find a place to live that is either within walking distance of town, or on a reliable bus route, or is so interesting on it's own that I don't mind being stranded there on the weekends. That's the challenge for the next few weeks.

Today after a tour of the Ministry of Education, George, Jim, and I took a bus ride out to Parham to do a little exploration of other parts of the island and scouting out possible areas to live. I liked the village in general and it is right on the water, but it's really out in the country and there is no beach there. It has a dock that Jumby Bay resort employees take to reach Long Island, but the tourist dock is on the "west side". It's relatively close to Seatons, which is where Joanne will be living. If it had more of a beach, I could see living here, although this is one of the areas where the buses only run Monday – Saturday, and then only until 6pm. As we were walking back to the bus stop, some primary school students were getting out of school; the boys thought it was quite amusing to call out "hello white people!" Two little girls took a liking to me and held my hand and walked and talked with me on our way. With all the tourists here on Antigua, they're pretty used to seeing others like us, but we still look out of place when we venture into the interior and small villages away from the hotels and beaches.

Tuesday morning I got my first opportunity to go scuba diving in Antigua! Karen, one of the current PCVs works for Nelson's Dockyard and was recently certified by a guy named Jonathon, a civilian from the US Air Base on Antigua. Her boss, Dr. Murphy and a coworker Manny needed to do their certification dives and she was going along for the ride. When she found out that I'm certified, she invited me along as well. We went to a reef on the north shore east of Long Island and did 2 dives. The water was a little churned up, maybe only 20-25' vis, but the temperature was 84 deg F. I was perfectly content in my shorty wetsuit.

Thursday we met with our Community Partners and got some very good clarification on what we'll be doing for the next 2 years. Jim and I will be splitting tasks but essentially doing the same things – teaching the ECDL/ICDL computer literacy course to students at the Antigua State College as well as training primary and secondary school teachers in the same course. State College has an agreement with ABIIT – Antigua & Barbuda International Institute of Technology to utilize their (quite modern) facilities, so the college courses will be conducted there. Training of the primary school teachers will be held at NTTC – National Technical Training Center, however each of the secondary schools has their own computer labs, so one of us will have to travel to their sites to train the secondary school teachers. The rest of the time will be devoted to other projects at the Ministry of Education. School starts next week, but they aren't planning to start us with a teaching schedule until the winter term begins in January, so that gives us lots of time to learn the system and curriculum.

Friday was our Swearing In ceremony when we officially became Peace Corps Volunteers. The media was in attendance; we were on the local news and even made this morning's paper.

Later that night several of us rode the bus down to Veronica's house in Johnson's Point then walked across the street to go to the beach. What I wouldn't give for a setup like that! The sea was very rough due to Isabel, but it was still wonderful to get in the water after enduring the intense heat that seems to prevail whenever there is a hurricane in the area. After the beach, we headed up to the neighborhood hot spot, the Blue Hawaii, for some local culture! It was all locals - pool, dominoes, and music – not packed, but hopping, then around midnight we headed back to Veronica's and crashed for the night.

Saturday morning Veronica had made plans to attend a neighborhood cleanup event at 6am in the next village called Crabbe Hill. Well, Veronica and the others never made it out of bed, so I went without them. I was expecting just a beach cleanup, but they had arranged with dump trucks and a bulldozer, and in addition to the normal trash, they went into every corner of the village and drug out old corrugated metal and other debris still there from hurricane Luis in 1995. After about 2 hours we had most of the small trash picked up and the large stuff brought out to the street, so it was just a matter of filling up the trucks and waiting for them to drive back and forth from the landfill. I left after that, but they continued most of the day until they finished. Before I left though, everyone took a break at OJ's Bar and Restaurant for juice and sandwiches. There I met and talked with Mr. Baptiste, the Parliamentary Representative for the area, and OJ, the owner of the restaurant. He introduced me to a lady named Anita who had an apartment for rent. Later, on my way home, I stopped in to see it – she has a 2-story home, both floors are separate, and she was renting out the top floor. It is a 3-bedroom apartment, up the hill a little ways, and overlooking the beach. Great location, beautiful view, and it was a nice place, but it was unfurnished, and more than I can pay. What a shame! A smaller, furnished place in the same spot would be perfect! Even still, I felt that I had made some progress by actually getting out and talking to someone and looking at a place for rent.

That night we were invited to a potluck dinner party up in the northern part of the island. The couple that hosted it own a large home with several rental villas (www.fountainhillvillage.com). I guess at one time they rented some of their units to base personnel and used to host regular parties for them, then through the base they met some of the Peace Corps volunteers, and now they include them as well. The evening was amazing. They have an outdoor kitchen and large covered patio area where we congregated. The food was wonderful, they're up on a hill and the view is beautiful, there was a nice breeze constantly blowing through so the temperature was perfect, and Edda and Umberto were the most gracious hosts. This is a definite must-do event for me whenever they plan more in the future!

Determined to beat the Sunday blues, I decided to go for a long walk. The original intent was to walk from my home in Sea View Farm to All Saints, but it only took me about 40 minutes to get there, so I kept going and went all the way to Liberta. The whole roundtrip journey took 3 hours. On the way there it was cloudy and kind of windy, so the temperature was not bad. The way back though, the sun came out and it was scorching. I have a hat that I picked up at the last Del Mar Fair with a large bill and built-in material that hangs down the back and shades your neck and ears – that was a wise investment! The walk and the heat wore me out sufficiently so I was content to relax the rest of the day!

The government water has been off in our house since yesterday and the tank on the roof has run dry. We have other cisterns filled with rainwater, but they're not connected into the house, so we have to fill buckets and carry them in to use that water. I'm hoping the water will be back on by morning or I'll be bathing from a bucket tomorrow.

Yesterday was a perfect day. Joanne’s birthday was last week and mine is this week, so we combined the celebrations and went sailing during the day and out for pizza and drinks at night. Alan is the son of Myrna, who has catered quite a few of the meetings that we’ve had at the Peace Corps office. Alan crews on a 38’ sailboat called Huey Too which races every Saturday afternoon out of Jolly Harbor and he invited us to come along. Joanne, George, and I took him up on the offer. The winds were light, but okay since half the crew was inexperienced. Even still, Captain Bernie brought us in to finish first, ahead of the 4 other boats on the course.

Antigua is a huge sailing destination and hosts a world class sailing event every year. I’ve seen photos – the harbors are packed with ships. If we keep sailing with him and learn more of what to do, there’s a chance that we could crew during the next race. Bernie and Alan have invited us along whenever we want, so I plan to make it as often as I can! A nice treat was being able to see Montserrat (25 miles SW) so clearly that you could see the smoke rising from the volcano.

Thursday I hopped on the bus to check out the southern part of the island down to Old Road. It is so beautiful there, the only concern is that the buses stop running at 6pm during the week and don’t run out there at all on Sundays. I found a few houses with For Rent signs, and called about them – the 2 that I reached were both a little higher than I want to pay, but they’re also furnished. Rosabelle says that people will often ask high to see if they can get it, but will drop their price if asked. That’s a possibility I suppose. It’s also very common for people to build a 2nd story onto their homes and divide it into multiple apartments, and that sounds like a good option to me.

Today I headed back out to Liberta, which is on the main road to English Harbor. This time I took the bus there rather than walk 1½ hours each way like I did last weekend, got off the bus and walked around the village, then caught the bus back home. Liberta is up the hill from a beautiful area called Falmouth, and as I walked out to the edge of town, I rounded the bend where the road starts to descend into Falmouth, and had to stop and just stand there for several minutes to take in the view. The site of Falmouth below, the harbor, and hills beyond is absolutely breathtaking. I felt like I had come home. Falmouth is too well-to-do an area to be considered acceptable for Volunteer housing, but Liberta is more modest and more in keeping with Peace Corps standards. It’s also right on one of the main bus routes that runs late at night and Sundays, so that’s a big plus. I didn’t notice any For Rent signs as I was walking, but I went home and put the bug in Rosabelle’s ear to see if she has any contacts there, and I’ll ask around with others as well. (Very few people advertise, except for in the high rent areas.)

The Ministry of Education has a project to network all of the secondary schools’ administration computers and computerize school records. Tuesday, Jim, Lansana, and I, along with others from the Ministry fanned out to do an assessment of the computer systems in the 8 public secondary schools on the island. The next phase is to accumulate the data and make a proposal for the necessary upgrades, then implement it. While the current status of their systems was quite poor and the computers that were there were being underutilized, there is active interest, and it seems, resources assigned to make it happen. The goal is to have the entire project completed by fall 2004.

Yesterday morning I attended a state college class at ABIIT – it is the same course that I will be teaching next term. I’m assigned to work with Ms. Rhonda Alexander, so I’ll be attending most of her classes, assisting her, as well as teaching some of the lessons. Overall the class went well; there is more student participation than most classes I’ve taken. The dialect isn’t generally spoken in the classroom, but even still, I have trouble picking up what some people say. Hopefully I’ll be better attuned to that by January. While the class went well, the logistics were a mess. In short, there weren't enough buses to transport the students from ABIIT back to state college, so many were stranded for several hours, missing classes. There wasn't a simple resolution in sight, so this problem is likely to continue for awhile longer.

I had a good conversation with Joan, the Peace Corps Program Manager for Antigua today. I explained to her some of my concerns regarding my 3-month Integration Plan and some of the activities and projects that we are expected to complete, and she was surprisingly empathetic and yielding to the approach that I was proposing. It helped to ease some of my worries and that was a big help.

Had a wonderful lunch out at the air base yesterday. The 5 new volunteers were invited out by Major Bibee, the base commander and one of only 2 enlisted personnel on the base. It’s a space tracking station for rocket and space shuttle launches, and I believe he said that there are something like 65 American civilians stationed there, as well as about 80 Antiguans employed on the base. They have a buffet set up in the canteen and we ate like we hadn’t eaten in months! It was a great spread.

This morning we went on a kayak/snorkeling trip with the EAG, Environmental Awareness Group. Paddles Kayaking ran the trip. First they took us out to the mangroves near Seatons and we kayaked around there for a while. Near the end of the kayaking portion, the owner decided we weren’t tired enough so we were going to race back to the dock. But first, he said he was going to pick one kayak team to win the race and if they didn’t win, they would have to kayak the rest of the day while the others rode in the boat. Well, he picked George and I to win! Then, he handicapped the others by giving the kayaks with 2 women, or a woman and child head starts, as well as told everyone else that they could do whatever it took to prevent us from winning, short of hitting us with their paddles! Well, in spite of all that, we still won! Back on shore at the end of the day they presented us with certificates and took our picture for their website http://www.antiguapaddles.com.

Next we loaded into the motorboats and headed over to Great Bird Island and went for a short hike to the top of the hill. Afterwards we went to a coral reef offshore and snorkeled around. It was shallow, so it was easy to get a good view of the reef. There were large elkhorn corals, brain coral, sea fans, tropical fish, as well as jellyfish. Then back in the boat and back to shore where the owner’s wife had ice-cold washcloths to wipe the salt from our faces (what a great idea!) and refreshments waiting for us. A well-run operation, they really thought of everything.

I’ve bathed from a bucket twice now. The government water is turned off daily; usually we have water in the mornings and it’s off by the time I come home in the afternoon. We have 2 backup tanks on the roof that we fill from the government water when it’s on. If it’s off for more than a day though, the tanks run out. We also have cisterns that fill from rainwater off the roof, but they are not connected to the pipes that feed the house. The water’s been off since yesterday and the backup tanks are nearly empty – there’s not enough water pressure for the shower. After kayaking today I needed to bathe so I filled a 5-gallon bucket from the cistern and used only about half of it. That’s 2½ gallons of water to bathe, wash my hair, and rinse. Not bad.

Found a fabulous place down in Old Road on the southern shore of the island today. It’s an apartment in a house that belongs to friends of Rosabelle. It’s unfurnished now, but they’ll furnish it for me and the price is within what I can afford. It’s very modern, has a beautiful view, and is easy walking distance to the beach. The downside is that the bus service doesn’t run late this far south and there’s no washing machine, so I’ll either have to do laundry by hand or take it somewhere. I’m going to call Joan first thing in the morning. The only reason she might not approve it is that both Lansana and Diana already live in this village. I may have to beg! (There are more pictures in my Flickr photo album in the "Old Road" folder.)