Freedom is Good

Ali, the night shift guard










After a rough night of spending the night with a guard in my house (she was sick all night from a migraine, and maybe she ate a little too much of the candy I brought back for my class, too), the next guard came on at 7 a.m. Her name was Joycie. Joycie was a lot younger than Ali, and she could probably have caught me had I decided to run. Then right after Joycie got here, the 2 male guards showed up to help her guard me. I think they just all wanted to hang out..I really don't think I required 3 guards. Am I that DANGEROUS? haha So all these guards are busy guarding me, then the school administrator shows up at my house to go to immigrations, and Quincy shows up, which completed my entourage. We were all ready to go to the airport to immigrations, so they called into the head security person and the head security person said not to move me until he called them back. Three more hours went by. We finally got the call after one of the guards and the driver drank the 2 remaining Heinekens that were in my refrigerator. The guards happily posed to commemorate our day (that is Quincy back there in the Orange shirt seeing if there is any way we can bribe his friend at the immigrations office downtown to figure out a way to help me).















So the security people finally got the call to get me directly to immigrations. I went ahead and packed my laptop, my two favorite t-shirts, my pictures, my coat, and my winter shoes, anything that was sentimentally important to me, just in case I ended up in Baltimore today, because I didn't know what was going to happen. Immigrations had already scheduled me on today's flight that leaves for Miami at 3:30. I took them the photocopy from the Ministry of National Security of the extension of work permit, but they said it wasn't good enough. They had a meeting in Immigrations, then they decided to give the company 2 weeks to come up with the actual permit. No one knows where it is. The Ministry said they mailed it to the company here, but mail doesn't run in places that don't have a minimum of like 5 residents getting mail on any particular day, so who knows when they will get it. Ten days. hmm. So I am a free woman for at least 10 days anyway. My boss said if the co. here doesn't get their crap straight, they will fly me home for another week, then they will send me to Jamaica for a little while because they are getting a school going there. Right now, I am kinda wishing I was at home...but then my students would all quit class if another teacher took over. They have called me at least 20 times today, including twice as a group on speaker phone. God love 'em. At least someone in Trinidad loves me. haha