photos!

A french blues band at a great little venue/bar! Le Batteur (not the beer, the person) is my mentor! Jean-Louis! They sing songs in English and the whole crowd is French or European at least. Not as good as those go-round but they were alright....

Le Marche! 

So many colorful and exotic fruits! And its still the dry season! In the rainy season they said this place really comes alive.

Two young metropolitan boys (this is the way they refer to those who were born in metropolitan france but live here now). They are the sons of a wonderful woman who has helped me get settled here. In her yard there is a mango tree (which is pretty standard here) and a garden of vegetables which she made us an incredible smoothie with! 

Wish I could upload more but the internet is slow and I'm antsy to get back outside. 

Enjoy!

le commencement

wow! i havent been updating because i figured mom and dad were the only ones who would read this [and i have talked to them already] but i have some followers!!! thats so fun! and also a little stressful........

so the keyboard in france is different. and my time in the cyber cafe is limited. so im just going for it here. i came to the cyber cafe on a bike that my mentor lent me. its pink and rusted and called Bianca! and i love it! but im searching online for a moped becuase i think ive found a place to live and its a bit too far from my school to bike unless i can accept my fate as the sweaty american teacher. its reeealllyyy hot here! and so humid! i think i found a place to live and its right on the ocean like i can hear the waves [les vagues] crashing from the bedroom. its in a great big house with a mango tree in the yard and a passion fruit bush/vine growing on the wall. the man that lives there is from africa [i think] and hes an architect and hes very kind and is renting 2 rooms becuase his chimdren are grown and have moved away. i think a british guy will live there too! its REALLY cheap which is rare. its a very expensive place to live becuase everyything is imported from france. honestly i dont know why the french dont just ditch french guiana all together. but im glad they dont! its such a wild place. the school im at has 800 students and they are a mix of every nation under the sun! i think its going to be incredible! 90% of the teachers are french and they are all really happy to have an american though i dont think my role is as important as i would like to have believed. by the way i think my english is getting worse as my french gets better. hopefully they will even out at somepoint.

i babysat for a german woman today and swam in her pool with her son and ate star fruit off their tree in the back yard. im currently staying in a hostel style place with 20 something other language assistants. everyone is getting along great and im so happy to have met these people. all very well traveled and bi/tri lingual at least! my time with the internet is running out so unfortunately i will leave without adding any photographs! but thank you, my many followers for taking interest in this adventure im on!

will post again soon!
all my fruit filled love
kayla

here we go then

no one i have ever known has been to french guiana. very few people i know have even heard of it. to get there, i will be taking a total of 5 flights and logging 11 hours in the air and 20+ hours in airports. i have, coursing through my veins, yellow fever, typhoid fever, dengue fever, malaria, hepatitis a, and, thanks to a slight mishap at the doctors office 2x the necessary amount of hepatitis b.

why am i doing this again?

of course, this will all be water under the bridge once i arrive. i received an e-mail from a man named Jean-Louis who works at the school that i will be working at and he couldn't be more excited to share his "treasure" of a country. he wrote in english, which is encouraging. and doesn't seem to be originally from french guiana (which means he may know what other parts of the world are like and he has made the choice to be there).

despite the sour tone of this first (ever!) blog post, i am thrilled for this opportunity. imagine the wildlife! this is truly an adventure. i only wish i had a few comrades to run around the jungle with me.

i'm getting used to journaling in the public realm so it is likely that my first few posts will be a bit awkward. not as awkward as this photo though

i'm sure it wont be long before im missing america. but for now i'm ready. ready for the spider monkeys, tarantulas, snakes, mosquitos, rain, rain, and rain. it will certainly be something to see and take part in a completely foreign way of life. i'm interested in people and what it means to be human in a place so different than the ones i know. 

it's 4:14 in the morning and i am alone in the international airport in miami. i'm going to snooze a while before the next leg of the journey. 

a bientot