12 September; Thank you, visitors!

Through my own contacts, as well as through my friend's blog, livingdominica, I have had many kind visitors to the island bring school supplies in their travel bags.These gifts are always gratefully received and are soon in use within classrooms.

Particularly so was the basket of pencils, crayons, paper and books I was able to deliver to a very sad teacher and her class, who had recently had to abandon their room and set up in a spare one with no resources. Their classroom wall had been demolished during hurricane Dean, when a huge boulder crashed down and, with a torrent of rain, had broken through the wall, damaging their book corner and destroying all their school room supplies.

I felt sad too and was so glad to have a basket of supplies to hand over to the class.

I unpacked a colouring book from my basket.
"Who would like to colour a page from this book?" I asked..... and the hands shot up with
enthusiasm.

I spread the gifts round the table tops and showed them a new story book. They wanted to listen to the story.

I'd covered some empty cartons with construction paper sent by some kind visitors. Such boxes are used to store work cards and their colours brighten up the room.

"Can you guess what was in this box?" I asked. "It starts with a kicking K" and I made the shape with my body.

They smiled and someone shouted, "A kettle!""Well done!" I said.

As I left ,the teachers and a group of the children who had said they were, "A bit sad" A bit unhappy" and "A bit angry" at their hurricane damaged classroom, smiled when they received the gifts and shouted,"Faaaantaaaastic!" and "Thank you".

Thank you to all those kind people who have sent things for the children of Dominica. You can see that your generosity turns tears to smiles and to jumps for joy!