Bermuda Shorts: Part IV

After talking with some of my new Bermudian friends, I decided to head to Tobacco Bay Beach in the area of St. George.

So I took the ferry into Hamilton and skipped breakfast in favor of the first bus to St. George. Of course, it wouldn’t be an international adventure for me if it didn’t involve being lost or nauseous (see Brisbane, Australia).

The night before, I had received directions from the hotel worker which seemed simple enough. Unfortunately, I ended up going a bit too far and missed my cross street. I got to the bus depot just in time to see the bus departing to St. George. Fortunately, I had only a 10 minute wait for the next bus, but I was so ticked off at myself as my precious time in Bermuda ticked away.

Due to stops, winding roads, and slow speed limits, the trip took about 50 minutes. I scoured my guidebook trying to make sure I could reach my destination once the bus stopped. Unfortunately, my increased stress level, frantic reading, and lack of food and water combined with the winding roads to give me an all-too-familiar feeling of motion sickness.

When I was a kid, this was a terrible problem for me. Anyone in my family can vouch for the fact that I’ve thrown up all over the states of California and Hawaii. My international experience has been chronicled here. Just when I was at the point of asking the bus driver to pull over so that I could add Bermuda to the list, I decided to remove my pullover fleece. The change in temperature did the trick. I broke out in a cold sweat and instantly felt better.

The bus driver, desk worker, and locals had all told me to take a taxi from St. George to Tobacco Bay. Not wanting to waste any more time, I decided to follow their advice. After getting a taxi I barely had enough time to be aghast at how fast the meter was climbing before the beach appeared in front of me. The walk wasn’t even a mile long! Late, malnourished, post-nauseous, and suddenly poor, I was not in a happy place.

Thankfully, this changed that.

You gotta be a pretty miserable person if you can’t enjoy your time in Bermuda. So I guess I’m only a 50-85% miserable person. A quick snack of an orange and some peanut butter crackers cheered me up, and the entry into the Atlantic cheered me even more.

The water was in the high 60s, and though apparently chilly to most Bermudians, I found it to be no worse than an early morning snorkel at Hanauma Bay. Although the temperature wasn’t a problem, the water was a bit rough. With no lifeguard, no other people on the beach, and a gear rental lady who seemed totally unconcerned about my mortality, I decided to be a bit cautious.

In those Bermuda blue waters, I managed to see all kinds of brilliant new coral, a few fat parrotfish, posses of yellowtail, and large angel fish. For a moment , I thought I saw an octopus, but I’m pretty sure it was just someone’s shirt that had gotten trapped under a rock (I forgot my contacts).

When I got back, a roundish woman and her husband with the German accent asked me about my snorkeling adventures. The woman added that she had been keeping an eye on me since the waters seemed a bit rough. Not exactly the crack lifeguard team of Pamela Anderson and David Hasselhoff (Germans love him by the way), but I found the sentiment quite touching.

Departing TBB I walked back into St. George, and caught the ferry towards Dockyard. It was an idyllic ferry ride on a beautiful sunny afternoon. In addition to the scenery and sunshine, I was cheered by the fact that the ferry ride was such a cost effective means of entertainment.

I stayed only a short time in Dockyard, and barely made it onto the ferry heading to Hamilton. In total, my ferry cruise lasted nearly two hours. By the time I got to Hamilton, I was ravenous. This nearly caused a lapse in judgment as I seriously considered eating at KFC. The Bermudian version called Mr. Chicken seemed only slightly more appealing, so I held out. In the end, I settled on a fusion cafe that served a bizarre mix of Chinese, Indian, and Italian food. I settled on some chicken curry which surpassed expectations. After some whirlwind souvenir shopping for my students, I headed back to the hotel.

That night, we had a dinner at BI and shared the major recommendations and commendations with the board and faculty. Since I do not want to lose my right pinkie to the North American Division mafia, I cannot divulge the terms of the evaluation to outsiders. However, I came away highly impressed.

It was rough taking a week out of school to spend in Bermuda, but I’ve always been a giver. Maybe there’s a school in Bali that needs to be evaluated.

Bermuda Shorts: Part III

I was awakened by a horrendous sound from above. No, it wasn’t the feet of a thousand giant cockroaches, but a Bermudian downpour. I knew there would be no beach time this day.

We headed out for another session of meetings in which we finished up our evaluations and then went through the process of editing. This is a time consuming process. The reason being that the evaluation team is broken down into 27 sub-committees, each of which comes up with its own set of commendations and recommendations. For example, I was assigned to the areas of Philosophical Foundations, Media Center, English, Kindergarten, and Physical Education. If every sub-committee comes up with 3-4 commendations/recommendations, that makes for a rather girthy document which can be repetitive and impractical. Therefore, cutting must take place.

The process itself is rather brutal. When you spend several days boiling down your commentary of an entire area into a few sentences, you become rather attached to them. If you want to keep them around, you must get your committee cage match on, justifying each while being willing to flex on your diction. I think that writing with proper grammar really helps, as grammatical weaklings are naturally selected to the cutting room floor. Although I had to say sayonara to a few of my chillins, the majority of my recommendations and commendations moved on.

However, the process didn’t end there. It went through one more round with the principal, who got a chance to lay her own two cents worth of smackdown on the document. This should not to be confused with automatic veto power, just a chance to clarify and validate/invalidate through argument. Thankfully, nearly all my work survived again.

By the time we emerged from our committee cocoon, the sun had come out and the sky had cleared. We headed out to a fancy French restaurant in the town of Hamilton. Although I considered having the duck on the SDA dime, I settled for pasta. It was alright, but not as good as the haystacks that the cook at BI had served up for lunch that day.

We ended up finishing our evaluation on the ferry dock in Hamilton. The final component was to create a list of overarching commendations and recommendations–the “majors” of our report. This must have been a rather vexing scene to our dock companions as we discussed things like “probation” and “6 clear”

That night I made plans. I was in Bermuda and I still hadn’t set foot on a beach. Fortunately, the mood was about to change.

Bermuda Shorts: Part II

Since I’m seriously out of blogging shape, I had to take a little break in between posts. You know what works really well? A bag of Cool Ranch Doritos.

Speaking of crunchy things, I woke up Tuesday morning to this sight on my bathroom floor. It was the barely moving antennae that freaked me out.

After flushing la cucaracha grande, I noticed a mini version scampering about. Memories of Hawaii and Yap came flooding back to me.

There wasn’t much news to write about on this day. We spent the entire day writing commendations and recommendations, agonizing over wording, and engaging in lots and lots of interviews. Junior high interviews, high school interviews, administration interviews, faculty interviews, jumbo interviews, pineapple interviews, sauteed interviews, interview scampi…you get the picture.

All of our findings that day gave us the overall impression that BI was top notch. After our day, the team went out to the Coconut Rock in Hamilton.

Before biting into my lentil burger, we prayed while MTV played Beyonce’s “Irreplaceable” They must not know ’bout us, I thought to myself.

Since the evaluation had been going so well and our team had been a Germanic model of efficiency, we had planned to have some free time on Wednesday.  However, the weather ended up putting the kibosh on that.

So I went to my room and finished up my areas of the evaluation (Philosophical Foundations, Media Center, Kindergarten, PE, and English for anyone who is keeping score) while enjoying my bedtime story–the NBA on TNT.

Bermuda Shorts: Part I

Somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle, I found my blog.

This past week, I was part of an evaluation team for the Bermuda Institute. BI is the only SDA school in the country, and has nearly 400 students. Since it is part of the Atlantic Union Conference, I had the privilege of serving as a teacher representative.

After an early morning flight, I landed in Bermuda around 2:30 pm. Needless to say, I knew this would not be a typical Monday. If my view from the airplane hadn’t been a major tip-off, the view from my room at the Wharf Executive Suites definitely was.

After some time to unpack, our team of 12 was taken to BI for a whirlwind tour of the school, some dinner, and entertainment. The program featured various musical groups and presentations about the school’s program. One highlight was the steel drum band. The drums had the look of pounded-down oil barrels, and they gave me a goofy grin with their rendition of “Shut de Do’” Yet the grand finale was undoubtedly the performance of the award-winning BI choir, referred to by the MC as “the baddest choir in Bermuda and the North American Division” Having previously been a bit underwhelmed by the solo and smaller group performances, I had my doubts. But my skepticism lasted about a second once they opened their mouths.

We were sitting in the front row, and the sound that came from those kids gave me what Hawaiians refer to as “chicken skin” It was like listening to a Gospel choir from the movies, except with music I actually enjoyed. They also had some coordinated movements, which reminded me of my academy days when we performed an off-the-hizzle version of “Hey, Look Me Over” Of course, they had rhythm while we had laughter with our goofy hats and vests. Our evaluation team led the charge for an encore performance which they graciously gave us. Yes, the Bermudians found a way to put us in a happy mood–and it didn’t involve alcohol.

That night I went to my room, read through BI’s self-study, took advantage of my 200 or so TV channels, and said a little prayer of thanks for my lot in life.