We're here!!

Good luck to you.

Welcome to St. Croix !

We're in some tough times, so maintain your situational awareness at all times and good luck !

Welcome to st croix. Enjoy the beauty. And keep a sense of humor.

Good Luck in the new lifestyle of island living - never let the frustrating moments get you down and never let the great things go unappreciated - keep us all in the loop and please just ask the questions that might help you along.

Congrats on your move I hope you enjoy it and remember, don't sweat the small things, Island living is a slooooooow paced world and nothing moves fast there. But this is the life you chose.

mike

Thanks everyone! I/we got a huge taste of the sooooooooo island lifestyle already!
LOL
I applied for a teaching job last December and didn't get hired until 2 days ago! Right before school starts! But I am so excited to start AND I can even have our 2 daughters attend the same elementary school I'll be teaching at! The principal seems very nice and the parents I saw seemed excited to have a new teaching coming to their school.

BTW, if you happen to see a crazy family yelling at a 26 lb dog calling him Croix, that would be us. The hubby thought the name would be cool and the kiddos agreed. And if you ever do see us feel free to walk up and say hi, to Croix too ( he's a lover and wants to just kiss and love you). We'll be all over the island since I'll be teaching on the west end and living mid-island.

We are truly blessed and with things coming together. And seeing how friendly everyone is I am pretty certain this is our permanent new island home. I haven't even been chupsed at yet and there were a couple of times I totally deserved it for my goofball mistakes of not letting the bag boy take my carriage to the car and showing off too much shoulder at church!

Now we have to work at the hubby getting a job in the restaurant industry. He's Bern a restaurant manager for almost 20 years and was a cool and a bartender before that. So if anyone knows of any job openings in either restaurant management or bartending ( yes I do know this is the slow season) and could give us some leads, that be amazing.

Have a great weekend!

Kara

give it time on the teeth sucking, it could happen any day. lol

Awesome! I'm so glad your perseverance paid off and I wish you luck. I had my interview and will start next year. I look forward to your future posts.

Good luck and have fun!

Congrats on following your dream and being there! Where are you teaching?

I'm teaching at the Claude O. Marlow Elementary School in Frederiksted. First day with the kiddos tomorrow! Excited and nervous all at the same time!

have fun at school

You applied last December? and working now? you are lucky. It usually takes a year.
Congrats! (:

Welcome to the island, you will see STX is a true community. If you want a guaranteed "teeth sucking" go to the BMV, Bureau of Motor Vehicles, you'll get two or three. Especially if you ask them to correct the spelling of your name...ha ha.

Hope your first couple of days are going well. I'm so anxious to hear about it - getting ready to start the application process myself. I hope you won't mind if I PM you for details after you've been in school for a couple of weeks.

Hey Everyone! Thanks for all the well wishes! So it's been 2 days teaching 4th grade and its been a real eye opener. The staff, parents and children have all been very welcoming. I can honestly say that the friendliness of all the people I run into is my favorite part of STX, so far. The other three 4th grade teachers have taken me under their wings and have been extremely helpful. And 2 teachers, one in second and the other in fifth must have seen the look of confusion and slight panic in my and my children's eyes yesterday morning as I was trying to figure out where to place them while I was supposed to be meeting my students at the same time. So these 2 teachers "adopted" my girls until the guidance counsellor could place them. Hopefully Ashlyn & Kyla will be able to stay with them for the year. The only complaint one of my children had was that their teacher scared her today when her teacher removed her belt in class and threatened some of the children when they were misbehaving. I just told my daughter that she will never have to worry about any kind of corporal punishment as long as she behaves.

The lack of funding for the schools here is a real issue. However, I knew this coming in but it was still a bit of a awakening. With that said, so many teachers are offering posters to help get me started and are sharing text books since there was a miscommunication about how many sets of curriculums there were on campus for my grade level. Turns out there were only enough for 3 fourth grades, and I and my students make up class number 4! But hopefully it will be resolved by Friday so I can plan accordingly over the weekend.

There has been some amazing things happening at my school too! A wonderful custodian spent the day in my class yesterday cleaning it from top to bottom! What a difference since I was only able to get into my classroom for the first time on Monday and it had been used for 5th grade storage for the entire summer. And today a parent stopped me before school started and told me that her daughter came home from school yesterday upset because the school day schedule. The mom said her daughter was also upset because none of her friends from last year were in my class. So she wad considering transferring her to a school she worked at. BUT, she said she asked her daughter to name one good thing about her day and her daughter said me, her teacher. And her daughter asked her mom to try one more day first before thinking of transferring. So the mom wanted to tell me in person that if she does transfer her daughter it wasn't because of me. And last but not least a wonderful thing happened yo me this afternoon st the end of school. One of the SPED resource teachers came by my room and noticed the lack of pretty much almost everything and she gave me a kidney shaped table!!

I am so blessed and thankful for the wonderful people at Markoe Elementary. I am truly where I am meant to be! And once things start running a little smoother I look forward to really getting out and enjoy this amazing island and will hopefully run into many of you!

What a great start to the year and to your new life there!

I wonder why none of the things that went to the dumpster from the closing of Elena Christian School couldn't have been recycled to your empty space? Good luck to all of you.

it all went to the dump? i thought it was going to all be used if possible. sorry to hear of more wastefulness

I can't say NOTHING got recycled, but the number of debris boxes that came in empty & went out full was enormous.