School Schedules & Logos Hope

Yesterday, Barb and I went to Port of Spain to visit the Logos Hope ship, which is basically a huge floating Christian book store. The girls had visited the ship with the Hope Mennonite Church youth group a couple of weeks ago, but we hadn't been able to make it down there until Wednesday. One of the issues faced by an island nation such as Trinidad & Tobago is that so many things have to be imported from someplace else. In planning for our classes, we have found that finding appropriate books on the island is very difficult. We could order from Amazon.com, but the shipping is rather expensive and takes a long time. Furthermore, the used books sold at lower prices through Amazon Marketplace affiliates cannot be sent here. The Logos Hope ship is one way that this need is addressed. It is a large ship in which one entire deck has been set up as a book store and sails around the world to various ports, selling books that otherwise might not be available to the local residents. Volunteers from about 50 nations around the world make up the crew. For the past three weeks or so, it has been docked at the cruise ship terminal in Port of Spain. Next week it sails on to the next port of call. It was interesting for us to be able to browse through the collection of books that is much larger than any bookstore we've found anywhere in Trinidad. We also took the opportunity to walk along the waterfront and explore a bit of the city on foot.
~Richard

No school tomorrow! We were very surprised to discover this afternoon as we were leaving school that we need not return until Monday. Our parents had their first faculty meeting at WITC this afternoon and so needed to pick us up early. When they arrived at the school office, the secretary told us that we needed to pick up our note before we left. We thought (or at least I did) that she meant that we needed to get the principal to sign a note or something for us to leave early. But then she showed us a note saying that there was no school tomorrow! It's amazing how such random things can happen and at such short notice here! But it just means we get to sleep in a little more tomorrow!
~Roxy

Speaking of days off school, Richard and I have been trying to figure out ours. Last week in classes some of the students informed us that in two weeks(which would be next week) we would not have classes because it was "spiritual emphasis week." We called the office to try to get an official ruling on this. They confirmed that and referred to a schedule. We were very excited to learn that someone had a printed schedule and asked for a copy of it.
So, we rearranged our class schedules and told our students about the changes in due dates, etc. Then, today we were invited to our first faculty meeting. While there, folks began to discuss spiritual emphasis week and decided to move it back two weeks. That means that we do have classes next week after all. But at least we did get a copy of the grading expectations and a tentative schedule for next semester including our potential classes. We had to trim things down quite a bit. They would love for us to teach more. At this point the plan is for us to step in for a local pastor who will be taking a sabbatical in January. So we told them that with doing that we can only teach one class each, although I have been asked to supervise a thesis project. I'm still considering that. Schedules and expectations are quite mobile it seems.
~Barb