First Impressions

Our first weekend was spent getting used to things at DIIC. On Friday Byron was kind enough to give us the full tour of the campus so we knew what was what. We started up a the very top of the school (it is all on one big slope) where the farm is located. As our tour guide met us for the tour his outfit caught me a bit off guard right at first. Byron is a very proper and reserved Canadian boy. He is always seen in nice pants and button up, collared shirts. So when I saw him coming in a pair of athletic shorts, a mud stained t-shirt, galoshes and a funny farmer hat I had to smile.

It is a bit of a hike to get to the farm. I think if we were here permanently we'd be in pretty good shape. Once we reached the farm I was blown away by how gorgeous it was. An interesting variety of produce swam among a glorious spattering of boulders. Up in the hills stood dozens of banana and papaya trees, surrounded by dense jungle. It was breathtaking. We wound around the maze of trees, locating all the key spots for collecting fruit.

As we made it back down to the main part of campus we viewed all the various buildings and got a little history on them. A couple of the building particularly stood out in my mind. They were memorable to me because they were a bit dilapidated from what I imagine they should look like. One of these structures was the dining and cooking area. The dining area was open walls, an uneven dirt floor, and a simple zinc roof held up by a few spindly and very bug eaten poles. I felt that if I so much as sneezed the whole thing might fall over.

The shower areas for the two dorms were fixer-upers too. They were located a bit of a walk from their respective dorms and looked like someone had halfheartedly pounded together some old boards to create walls and then plunked them down in the middle of the bush. Whatever works, right?

Our tour ended at the Administration Building. This building is used for a variety of things. The downstairs is half classroom and half chapel. The upstairs is home to the library, a staff room, the classroom where Michael and I would be teaching, a bathroom and our bedroom. The room we would be living in was a bit of a shocker when we first saw it. It had obviously been used as a storage room for years. There was random junk laying around that hadn't had a chance to be cleaned before our arrival. The busy staff apologized for the mess with all their hearts and spent the afternoon with some students helping us clean up. Many hands make light work and with in no time we had a livable home.