La foret de Montravail

Colette and 2 of her school’s CE1 classes went on a field trip to a local forest in the hills in the south. We saw many of the local rainforest trees and plants — which are somewhat different here in the south of Martinque than in the more elevated north. There are petroglyphs there from an Arawak community that lived there some 500-1400 years ago, before the Caribs swept the Arawaks off Martinique.

Beginning the forest walk

The petroglyphs are on private property. The owner has lived there since a child, but has watched the petroglyphs deteriorate and many people have touched them and worn them down. She said that once the glyphs were 1 centimeter in relief, now only barely so. She pours water over the glyphs so you can see them. Apparently there are many undocumented Arawak sites on Martinique.

At Home

I can’t believe our second month has passed so quickly. School for the girls has changed from being fairly radically new to being a comfortable routine. The struggle of not knowing anything has become the practice of learning a little more each day, and seeing the progress. Work for me has been busy and filled my days. We’ve not done much exploring, but have mostly still been acclimating. The dawn, and days and evenings and nights, the tropical surrounds, and regular swimming, the warm rain showers, all of these are now sweet new norms for us. I love running past the bananas and thinking of that as normal.

Colette and Olivia are adapting well to French school. I marvel at how they’ve improved in their writing and reading. French schools place a strong emphasis on note-taking of lessons (le dictee) in well organized notebooks. Lessons are written in French style cursive beginning in 2^nd grade, and include using blue, red, and green ink and ruler-perfect underlines for emphasis. The lessons are very concise and complete summaries that capture the essence of a many subject areas. Students have notebooks for each subject, and notebook paper here is lined horizontally and vertically, with 3 fainter horizontal lines between rows, helping to emphasize correct letter positioning.

School Parents Reunion

This Saturday morning we gathered at 8am with all the parents of kids in our school to listen to the principal and to discuss issues facing us. Last November, there was an earthquake that damaged one of the 2 school buildings, so the older elementary school kids have been relocated to other schools nearby. Some issues that parents raised were around how we can drop off and pick up our kids and still get to work on time, when they are at schools 20 minutes apart. The service that keeps kids before and after school has kids sit in chairs without desks until school starts or until parents pick up kids. Because this service (called La Garderie) is run by the mayor’s office, the principal said we needed to talk to them about providing the kids better service. A parent compained that the mayor had refused even to accept a letter with questions regarding the services of the Garderie. Another parent offered to organize parents to pay for fans in the often hot schoolrooms, but was rebuffed that this too was the sole responsibility of the municipality, and that parent involvement like this was not allowed.

There is a PTA-like group that puts together the school directory and helps parents answer questions of the school. However, that group doesn’t seem to have much power. Hopefully we’ll get to see and know how the school works well. Parents are not generally permitted on school grounds during school hours, so that’s something new for us. The teachers seem great, and we’re looking forward to getting to know them better. We’ve been able to chat with them briefly before and after school, and feel confident that Olivia and Colette are in good hands and will be able to learn well.

First Day of School

Olivia and Colette were a bit unsure about how the first day of school as English speaking students in a french school would go. As it worked out, it was a hard day and a good one. Both girls have good teachers in the school of 400. There are 21 teachers, so an average class size around 20 students, which is very nice.

Getting ready to learn

kids wear uniforms at school here.