No School!!!

Yesterday I woke up and went to work as usual. I was preparing my lessons for the day at my desk before school started when a parent came in announcing that the government schools had all just announced they were canceling school for the day due to an approaching storm. The news was confirmed by Kelly, and of course the students who were sitting in class all yelled for joy.

It reminded me when growing up on Bainbridge Island there would be a thin layer of snow on the ground and the whole school district would cancel classes much to the delight of me and my classmates.

I hung around the school for another three hours waiting for parents to come back and retrieve their kids. Kari was in especially cankerous mood. He assigned his students who were unfortunately in his class with a board full of homework they were to do at home. "This is ridiculous!" He kept telling me, "It starts to rain a little bit and the minister of education shuts school down all over the island! I'm having all my students write a letter to the ministry of education to voice our outcry! All the Catholic schools are still in session. That is why the Catholic schools will always be superior to government schools!" He went on and on. I couldn't help but laugh at his irritation. In fact I was rather enjoying all the excitement and chaos that an impeding storm brings.

However as all the teachers were waiting for parents, Kari checked his email and found an email from the bishop of the Windwood Islands (off the coast of South America in the Caribbean) who said he would like Kari to come and be ordained in his diocese in December. Kari had been waiting for that letter for months, and he became elated, crying, and praising God. The rest of the day he alternated between trembling with excitement and breathing deep sighs of relief. "My poor kids," he said laughing, "they don't get to enjoy having their teacher in such a good mood! If only they would have been dismissed a couple hours later, they won't have had any homework!"



At around 11am Kari, Mrs. Bailey, and the Kindergarten teacher Mrs. Rolle all went out for an early lunch at the Cricket Club near the beach. (Cricket is still the National Sport of the Bahamas...an ironic legacy from British colonialism.) On nice sunny days the Cricket Club is a wonderful place to sit and sip on a beer and eat a hamburger and look out on the tiny strip of ocean and the cricket field visible from your table.  

I went to work in the Public Library until they shut down the library due to the impeding storm around 4pm. I then relaxed the rest of the afternoon in my apartment, and went out with Kari again at around 8:30 to celebrate the news of his ordination at a little Caribbean bungalow restaurant on the beach.

Throughout the night I could hear spurts of hard rain and strong gusts of wind. This morning I called into school from my doorstep as I looked out on the light rain that was falling in my yard. Kelly said that school had been canceled again because the government school had. Because so many students walk to school, they cancel public schools when there is a big rain storm or when there is flooding. So I've got another day off today!

"Happy Fiftieth Aniversary Mama Dorothy"

I was invited to one of the Anglican churches, St. Barnabas, this last Sunday to celebrate Mama Dorothy's 50th wedding anniversary. (She is the mother of Kelly and Marlene, and has continued to come into my class every week to give blessings and give hugs to all my students.)

The best part of the service was when Mama Dorothy and her husband the every silent George went up to the altar rail and their whole family and many of their friends gathered around them. The priest prayed a wonderful for them. Mama Dorothy must have been filled with the Holy Spirit and with deep emotion. When we all returned to our pews she could barely contain herself. And while the priests were praying for other people in the front, she kept praising and thanking God for all his blessings through her long and difficult life. She stood up and said in a loud voice, "Oh my God, thank you! Thank you! And thank you all for coming to celebrate with us today! Oh my children, follow Jesus! He is so sweet. It's the most important thing you could do!" The request she had for her anniversary was that all her children come to church with her.

The altar boys and some of the congregants looked at her like she was crazy. For a conservative and contemplative Anglican church like St. Barnabas, this kind of effusion of emotion was probably quite unusual. I thought it was gorgeous. I couldn't keep from smiling through her prayer. She is a true saint.

I spent the rest of the morning in the reception hall of the church at a sumptuous breakfast for family and friends of the aged bride and groom, and then was at their home all afternoon relaxing and eating with their family.

Vespers with the Orthodox

Last night I rode ol' Sweet and Smooth 15 min into downtown, past the Hard Rock Cafe, the Hilton, a giant cruise ship that came into port yesterday, and over to the little Greek Orthodox church for their vespers service. I was one of the first to arrive (and I was on time). A few men were standing off to the left in big black robes singing Byzantine melodies while several old women sat in the pews. Over the next thirty minutes the tiny church slowly filled up with middle aged couples and a family with teenagers. Toward the end of the service, an elderly gentleman in a black robe got up and said, "It is my pleasure to introduce to you your new priest as of January 2nd! This is Fr. Theo." Everyone looked at the young man standing next to him. He looked very young...maybe in his mid twenties...the youngest priest I had ever seen. Fr. Theo then said some words to his soon to be new parish, "I'm excited to meet each and every one of you."

I invited myself to the reception afterward, which turned out to be quite a feast: dozens of bowls of delicious homemade food (my favorite was a cinnamon tasting lasagna from the "home country" in Greece). I was befriended by a thin man in his late sixties who energetically came up to me and said, "Hi my name is Contantino, but you can call me Tino. It's Greek you know." He was wearing a T-Shirt that said, "NYPD" and had a shaved head. He had a way of firing off a million questions all at once, and moving on to the next subject as fast as he got on to one. He was a very nice guy though and literally introduced me to half the church.

It was the first church where there weren't any black Bahamians...just white Bahamians, mostly from Greek decent. Apparently there were quite a few Greek immigrants who came to Nassau in the early 1900s and were in the sponge export business.

I had some great conversations during the course of the long evening. I met a British woman who taught 2nd grade at one of the other schools on the Island, and she told me her interesting conversion story to Orthodoxy. I met Tino's twin brother Paul (who was also thin and had a shaved head) who was a history teacher in the public schools here for 30 years. I met a visiting priest of Holy Cross Seminary in Boston who tried to convince me to move to Boston, become Orthodox, go to the seminary, marry a nice little Orthodox girl, and become an Orthodox priest. And I met a banker, a headmaster, and stay-at-home mothers. It was a great evening!

Finishing off another week at school

My Starbucks just a few blocks from my house. 

This week has been a good one. I'm slowly getting into a consistent routine. I've decided to work harder this week and lounge around my apartment less.

I get up at 6am, at school about 7ish, finish school at 3pm, leave school at 4pm or 4:30pm, go home for a quick bite to eat and change my clothes, then it's off to Starbucks or the public library for another couple hours until around 7pm, a simple dinner in my apartment, an episode of Star Trek, Hustle, or Sherlock Holmes, a shower, and I'm in bed by 9pm. It's a productive and challenging schedule, but with plenty of sleep too. 

Me and my class watching a 5th grade presentation

The school week has been quite good. Other than a few parent teacher meetings that required much tact and discernment, and a few challenging moment working with disciplinary problems, the week was quite smooth. Since my class last year was very disorganized and chaotic, it's left a dark shadow on this year. Some of the same behavioral patterns that were big problems last year are just starting to rise to the surface. So Kelly is trying her best to nip the problems in the bud before they bloom. I'm trying to trust her in her decisions when I don't quite understand what she is doing.

The yellow library on the right with the bridge to Paradise Island behind

The library's air conditioned study room with squeaky fans

Starbucks: Study Center

 A lot of the parents that send their children to the school are hardworking middle class folk who are making sacrifices to have their kids in private school. Some are working at fast food restaurants, some are nurses, some are cooks. These parents have 0 tolerance for their kids to be goofing around in school and not staying completely focused on their studies. I had a parent this week bring her son into see me before class. Her son had been goofing off a little the day before, and right there before myself and a few students she pinched in arm pits and kept twisting. "Say you're sorry to Mr. Moore!" She menaced. I was quite taken back by this behavior, but kept quiet. "Sorry Mr. Moore..." He whimpered. "I can't hear you!" His mother growled, twisting harder. The boy tightened his lips and said in as strong a voice as he could, "Sorry Mr. Moore." "Sorry for what?" she asked. "Sorry for disturbing your class..." Tears were falling down his cheek by this time. "Go clean yourself up," she said. They left the room. I was feeling pretty uneasy at this act. I crossed myself and prayed, "Lord have mercy". The other students saw me and laughed, "Ah, Mr. Moore", as if they saw that kind of thing all the time. I had another student this week whose mother found out he had a poor grade or behavior note, and she stopped the car, got out and beat him so bad that the neighbors called the police. So all this "corporal punishment" is a bit of a culture shock! I try to be easy on the kids. Some of the parents won't do diddly about their student's misbehavior, but others will get out the belt and go to town. So this whole aspect of discipline here, and particularly with my class, is a fine line that requires a lot of intuition that I'm trying to learn quickly. Dealing with parents who are irate with their children is probably the most stressful part of my job right now!  

The Public Library reception area

Visiting the ol' Catholic Cathedral

Kari's girlfriend, Shavincia, is a Catholic, and Kari and I decided to go visit her church last Sunday. It was a big church with room for about 600 people if it was full. There were two things I really liked about the church:

1. Catholics understand the concept of the 'local parish', meaning if you are a Catholic, you just go to the nearest Catholic church to your house. The outcome of this is that their churches are ethnically mixed. This was as true in the Bahamas, as all the other Catholic churches I've visited. There were Asians, Whites, and Blacks all at the same church, reflecting the variety of the Kingdom of God.

2. Their music arrangement was unlike any that I've ever seen. Instead of having the "worship band" front and center like a concert, and instead of just having a choir, this church had all their musicians standing haphazardly along the side aisle. There were two saxophones, a flute (starring Shavincia), a drum, and a keyboard. It was quite solemn, but very joyful music.

And even though I couldn't take the Eucharist at the church, I went up and received a blessing.

A new incentive in being a teacher I hadn't considered...

My Worst Enemy

I thought it was about time to mention something of my archenemy in the Bahamas: dogs.

My natural predisposition is to be rather ambivilant regarding dogs. However here, I am petrified of them. It seems like they are in the front yard of every other house and will bark as you pass. Now as someone who has been allotted to Sweet'n Smooth (my bike) as my primary means of transportation, this is somewhat un-nerving.

What is more is that sometimes the dogs aren't chained up, and will bark at me and sometimes chase after me in the most vicious manner. This is what I most afraid of. 

It's as if I have been transported back into a primeval tooth and claw world. As I ride Sweet'n Smooth down through the neighborhood and know exactly where each dog is likely to be lying in wait to devour me. I have learned when to speed up so that I am hurling myself down the street at a tremendous speed and then I shout, "Hey boy! Hey boy! Hey boy!" as the dog begins to growl and start after me. It usually works, but is quite unpleasant.

I haven't actually been bitten yet, but it certainly has given me plenty of adrenaline rushes. There are some roads I no longer go down for fear of death. And I have begun to ride Sweet'n Smooth over the bridge to Paradise Island, locking it up, and then running a few miles there so that I can avoid having to run through the dark streets where one of my worse enemies may be waiting in the shadows to kill me.

My One Month Aniversary

I walked off the plane in Nassau on August 15. When the alarm went off at 6am on September 15, a tropical rain storm had enveloped my little apartment. I had breakfast and a cup of coffee as is continued to rain, and then as I was ready to leave the rain let up a little. I figured that it had passed and since I can get to school on Sweet'n Smooth in about 7 minutes, I set off. Giant puddles stretched across most of the road sometimes and I carefully avoided getting splashed by passing cars. Just as I was on the last stretch of road to the school, the rain started up again. I peddled faster and swung in front of some on coming traffic so that I could make my turn before I got drenched. I pulled into the front door of the school a little out of breath and soaked. It continued to rain the rest of the morning. One of my students dressed up in a fisherman's hat and rain jacket and escorted students from their cars into the school.
I've squeezed in an hour or so of a new class I call "Aesthetics", in which I let them rest and enjoy something of beauty. Sometimes I'll read them a story of a composer as we listen to their music. Sometimes they listen to music and draw. This week I've decided to start reading to them. The vast majority of my students don't get read to on a regular basis, and I believe it's SO important in the development of a young person's imagination. Story-time is almost a sacred thing in the human experience. We've started reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Some of the students have seen the movie, but nevertheless everyone is enjoying the original story.

Another highlight of the week was in Literature class. We are currently reading Kidnapped and we got to this part where one of the characters sings a little ditty about a sword fight he was in. I took volunteers to demonstrate what the song may have sounded like. At first some of them just started reading it like a poem, then a couple actually started singing, and one sang through the entire six stanzas, which had the whole class in hysterics. Great fun!

Shakespeare Rehersals...

Our bi-weekly Shakespeare rehearsals are going well. After an 8 hr day of teaching I'm rather exhausted by rehearsal time, but the students are bouncing with energy. We're still working on having everyone memorize their lines and remembering who is who. We've set the date for our performance to December 3rd, so we've got a bit of time to work on it yet.

Here's a little clip of them goofing off in between scenes.

A Saturday in Nassau

I rode Sweet'n Smooth around the town a bit on Saturday, and did a bit of exploring. I ended up at the Atlantis resort's beach front. I wasn't entirely sure if they cared I was there, but I fit in with all the other tourists, made myself comfortable in a beach chair, and had a nice little chat with a retired Navy seaman from New Jersey.

A Night Out on the Town

Here's Kari, Shavincia, Joey Bailey, and myself posing for what we thought was a picture! 

We had a nice little dinner together at an Italian restaurant before we went and saw a B grade action movie called The Takers at the local movie theater. It was a lovely evening out with friends. 

I'm finding Kari has quite a hilarious streak to him when he gets worked up!

Running through the Script

I caught this little clip as my students read through their Shakespeare scripts for the first time.

Launching into Week 4

As I've launched into week 4, I was just about into a nice routine, when our entire school schedule was changed yesterday. We were never told why. But there it was: daily 70 min classes of Grammar, shortened lunch breaks, and an after school class between 3pm to 4pm.

I tried my best to adjust to the new schedule, but it was quite hard today. It will probably be okay in the end, but I don't know any teachers who likes to have a totally new schedule 4 weeks into the year!

Today was also kind of like a perfect storm during Math class. We've been copying ALL our Math, Bible, History, and Grammar texts and worksheets out of a real book, and this morning the copier ran out of ink before my math lesson was ready. On top of this, we have brought in a new teacher-- "Teacher Natalie"-- who is quite a animated and intense teacher in her 40s to do our upper Math and Bahamian social studies. It was her first day of being in the classroom. She was supposed to do a little introduction for the students, but when the copies of our text never came, she ended up improvising for a 20 minutes with songs, clapping, and rapid questions and answers. It was impressive that she could just jump into a new situation like that and go for it, but she was kind of like an avalanche once she started and I had to interrupt her to get the class back on track. The copies finally came in the 11th hour. So I got up in the final 7 minutes, taught the rest of the math lesson in 5 minutes, and gave the homework out. It was a bit too chaotic for me...and I think my students felt the same way.

I've volunteered to teach 4th grade Math (more in my comfort zone. Some of you know the story of when I was substitute teaching in a 10th grade math class last year, and I couldn't read the answers!). But they haven't exactly told me when I begin, what I should be prepared to teach, and where my class is. So while all the school's disorganization is a bit frustrating, I'm trying to not to let it bother me.

Nevertheless, teaching continues to be a joy. The day passes very quickly.  I'm inundated all day with questions like, "What page was that?", "Can I get my binder out of my locker?", "How do you spell that?", "Mr. Moore, what do you think about iphones?", "Mr. Moore, she is annoying me...". Honestly half my day is like baby sitting, but then the other half I feel like I'm actually teaching them about more significant things like John the Baptist, the Apostles Creed, Vivaldi, hymns, Magellan and Cortes, the Alaska gold rush, and sentence structure. Bible class is probably my favorite because it's one of the few classes where we aren't being pressed to meet a bunch of content objectives, and we have time to have great discussions about temple priests, what the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem is like, and if they drive cars in Israel now.

I introduced the 'Drama Club' today to the play we will be doing: A Midsummer Night's Dream. I directed the same play when I was in Kenya 5 years ago, but I'm sure it will be totally different. I was exhausted after today so I showed them a video off of YouTube, so they could get a sense of the plot and characters of the play. Then I went around and wrote down a 'wish list' of which part each students would prefer to get. It will be the school's first theatrical venture, and the first time for most of the students to be part of anything thespian-like. But I already have seen some great raw talent!

Nassau's "Emerging Church"

This past Sunday, Marleen and I visited the "Emerging" church on the Island. I didn't quite know what to expect, but apparently it was one of the main churches that a lot of the Americans go. It was quite a culture shock to walk into the sanctuary (a gym) darkened with spot lights on slim attractive young singers on a stage. Behind them was a drummer with dreadlocks, a keyboard players without shoes, and a bass player. One could tell there was some money in the congregation.

As I surveyed the congregation, it was half black and white. The senior pastor was away, so a guest pastor from somewhere in Michigan was speaking. He was quite a suave, good looking, guy with a dark tan, jeans and flip flops. His sermon was all about Nicodemus..."Hey Nick, you are on the right track man!"... "So what's up with this cat Jesus?"...need I say more? I wasn't a big fan.

Then they had 'communion', but without any preface, prayer, or introduction. Though I was pained by the total lack of reverence and knew that the church most likely was memorialist in its 'sacramental theology' I went up and took the elements as a demonstration of my solidarity and recognition that they are indeed a part of the Bride of Christ, though I may not agree with a lot of what they are doing. 

After the service we were invited by one of the congregants, Dr. David Allen and his wife for lunch. Marleen had just met him that week at a education forum, and he was VERY interested in our school. His house was right on the water with a picture perfect view from his living room couch of the waves just a few meters away.

G.K. Chesterton once said, "You can tell a lot about a person from their bookshelf". This was certainly the case with Dr. Allen. "You could start a Classical school right out of your house, Dr. Allen!" I told him. Though he got a doctorate from Harvard Medical school in psychiatry, he seemed to be a very well rounded person with lots of books in philosophy, theology, and classic literature.  He grew up in the Bahamas and then went to school at St. Andrews in Scotland, and met his wife Viki at L'Abri in Switzerland in the late 1960s. She was a charismatic classicist from Berkely, California. She ended up going on and getting a PhD in Washington DC. They both are published authors and Viki teaches at the College of the Bahamas.

Needless to say, it was a very interesting conversation through the afternoon with lots of wine refills, critiques of the sermon, and tangents into politics, local news, educational philosophy--all the while a nice sea breeze was blowing through the sliding doors.

At the end of the afternoon, David said, "I've been thinking about this for a while, and I'd like to start a little Sunday evening get together where we pray and read Scripture and fellowship. I was thinking this might be something that people like Ben here would like to do." Then Viki piped in, "It would be kind of like a mini-L'Abri." I assured him I would be there next week! Though I doubt I'll be back to the "emerging" church any time soon.

The Bahamain Ball

Sorry for not writing this past week...just busy with things and then on Sunday the internet in my apartment was blown out by a lightening storm.

This past Saturday I went down to Paradise Island to lounge on the beach for the afternoon, but due to hurricane Earl, which is passing about 500 miles away, the water was a bit choppy and it started 'sprying' ('spitting') and I left the beach early. I needed to do some laundry that afternoon, but the tropical downpour had already started. I decided to brave it anyway, so I packed up all my laundry into plastic bags, hung them off my handle bars, left my swimsuit on, and away I went on Sweet and Smooth (my bike) through the downpour to the Wash House about 5 blocks away. I must have looked like I had gone through a hurricane myself when I walked into the big laundry room drenched to the bone. But like after every downpour everything dries out in about an hour after it rains, as did I.

Anyway, Kari, my colleague, invited me to a fund raising 'ball' that his organization was sponsoring. I wore my Sunday best and showed up to a mostly empty room on the second floor of an Anglican parish hall. Kari was at the top of his game. His mother was an MP (a government representative for many years), and Kari certainly has his mother's gift for public speaking and captivating an audience. He was the MC for the evening and eloquently guided the group through the evening.

There were door prizes (I won a battery-less squeeze flashlight), wine, catered food, plenty of speeches from budding politicians (all in their early twenties), and talk of excellence and 'class'. It was great.

I loved being there. It was a totally different culture--all the inside jokes, the authenticity and sincerity of everyone there, and the ethos of optimism and respect.

Kari's organization is called "The Brotherhood Society" which is interested in doing community service for men in the Bahamas, and help cultivate more 'cultured' young men.

A Birthday in the Bahamas

Well, it's been quite a birthday--Two surprise parties and plenty of gifts and birthday wishes! "May you have many more to come...unless God wants to punish you with long life so that you can suffer from all the things you did..." That's the kind of birthday comments I got.

But on the whole, Bahamians know how to give a man a good birthday!

Kelly brought a cake into my classroom at the end of the day and I cut it up into a couple dozen little slices for all the students who came pouring in.

Then Kari brought me to Marleen's house under false pretenses and there was another surprise party there. Kelly and Marleen's father had cooked most of the day for the dinner feast of roast chicken with special stuffing (made out of lobster and shellfish), potato salad, and they even made me a green salad (something that Bahamians don't touch...they say they just like fried stuff). The dinner was topped off with some sort of bread pudding with guava filling...a special Bahamian dessert. It was all delicious!

It was quite the special day...

That's me and my colleague Kari.

Here's a bit of my surprise dinner party! (Sorry that for half of it you have to twist your neck sideways!)