Curaçao First Days

Yesssss! Finished 2 more Masters classes. That leaves me with one to go. Where and when I can do it is something I'm still waiting to hear about from the program coordinator.

When Zink and I got home, I continued packing. There was no way everything was going to fit... I was going to have to get rid of more things. I ended up with 4 bags to check in and my 2 carry-ons. So I had to pay $200 for the extra weight... well I would have paid for it, but they weren't accepting credit cards and I had no cash. THANKFULLY, my boiiii Zink paid for me. Zink is freakin awesome. He let me live at his place, took me out to eat and cooked for me multiple times, let me borrow his car whenever and we had so many great talks. My friend Doug decided to work at my old school and Zink let him stay at his place too. Not to mention that he took me to the airport at 4:30 in the morning and made sure that I got on okay. If the Superfriends were still around, he would definitely be there.

Matt, Kerry and Zink wanted to take me out to eat on my last night in GDL and told me about the best Italian restaurant they had ever been to. Matt and Kerry went there first and when we were about to leave, they called us telling us that it had been shut down and was no longer in business... I was bummed because they had been telling me about this place for a while. But the main thing that I wanted was to spend time with all of them and we got to do that. We went to another Italian restaurant and the food there was great too. Doug came too and invited some of the new teachers at ITJ. So there ended up being around 15 people there and then we all went to Rock Town to party. Probably another 20 or so people ended up coming there.

Matt, Zink and I were dancing to pretty much every song. It was a lot of jumping haha. Zink is pretty tall and of course the bouncers always came up to him. Luckily, his girlfriend's sister's boyfriend is in the band and talked with security so we could keep jumping around. Our group of friends were pretty much the only ones dancing but we didn't care.

It was bittersweet to saying goodbye to everyone and at the same time it didn't feel real. All of my things were packed (for the most part), I had my plane ticket, I had a place when I got there, I had someone picking me up from the airport and my job was starting Monday. But, it just felt like another night out. It hadn't hit me the way I was expecting. It was nothing like leaving all my friends in Sweden. It was nothing like leaving my family in NC. Maybe it is because I know that I will see Matt, Kerry and Zink soon again even though I don't know when soon will be. I don't know.

Everyone left by 3 AM and so we decided to go to get some tacos (Doug's first tacos in Mexico) and then dropped off Matt and Kerry and I finished packing and Zink took me to the airport. I had to fly to Mexico City and then to Miami and then to Curaçao. I almost missed my flight at both of the connections because of customs. I slept on all the flight the whole time heh heh. When I got to Curaçao, one of my suitcases had not arrived... and I'm still waiting for it. When I got out of the airport, the buddy the school had set up for me, Monique, was there waiting for me. She drove me to my new house and got me some food and explain things to me. Everything is great here!

I have a 1 bedroom apartment that is pretty close to the school and my neighbors a couple houses down are teachers at the school too so maybe I can carpool with them for a bit.

I slept a good 12 hours and then Monique took me to the grocery store to pick up some basics and then we went to the Mariott for a new teacher brunch. I met a lot of the new teachers and their buddies and everyone is super nice and really excited about being here. The food was plentiful and good and we had some great conversations. I mainly talked with Bob, who is going to be a 3rd grade teacher and was teaching in Saudi Arabi before this. He is a very neat guy with a lot of stories. I also talked a lot with Debbie, who was in Germany before coming here and is going to be teaching 2nd grade. I met so many people though... Ramiro, Erika, Chrissy, Deborah, David, Mike, Gretchen, Stuart, Gustavo and so many more that I can't remember right now.

Afterward, some of them were going to the beach, but since I hadn't unpacked and was still pretty tired, I decided to do things at home. I finished unpacking and organizing my stuff around 10 and then went to bed.