Hey everyone!
Sorry it has been so long, I've been a bit busy lately. I just have ne more week here in St. Lucia, and then I'm flying to Zambia. I'm still not really ready to leave, but I can't stay any longer.

This week has been going pretty well so far. Last weekend, we had an HIV awareness soccer match on Saturday at one of the local high schools, which was a lot of fun. Sunday, I finally got to go back to the beach, and even though it wasn't a perfect beach day, it was really great. The rest of the week has been pretty good. There was this guy Mpho and I saw on my first day here with Sarcoma on his leg who looked like he was doing OK, not great, but not too bad. We went back to see him sometime last week, and the cancer had gotten so much worse than it was, and was starting to spread to his arms as well. Then on Monday, Mpho told me he passed away over the weekend on the way to the hospital. I don't know why, I only saw him twice, but for some reason he was one of my favorites, so that was pretty hard.

Also, there's this 6 year old boy here who's mother left him to live with his abusive step father, but the boy ran away and found a really caring woman to take him in. We went to see him last week and found out his mother had showed up the day before to take him back to live with her. Then, I'm not sure why, today, we brought the mother and the boy back to the woman he had been staying with, because the mother figured out it would be better for the boy i he didn't live with her. But the boy didn't know his mom was leaving him there, and as soon as he figured it out, he was heartbroken, and it was so hard to watch.

Anyways, something else I've learned here is that Hippos are nocturnal animals, and that they like to walk through the pars in town at night to find grass. The first time I saw one at night was probably in my 4th week or so, and I was (thankfully) in a car. The second time was last friday, when Odilia (one of the photographers at the moment) and I were walking into town, and we didn't see it until we were about 25 feet away. They are HUGE out of the water, and apparently they can run at 40 kilometers an hour. Then, last night, Odilia and I saw another one in the middle of the park we were walking through. We didn't notice it until we were only 15 feet away and when it heard us (we weren't being that quiet), it just stopped walking and started staring at us. We hid behind a tree hoping it would go away, but it didn't so we started creeping out of the park, then ran back to the pub and got a lift home. It was very scary.

I'm having so much fun here, and I wish I could stay longer. I'm excited to see everyone when I get back, but I'm going to really miss it here.