The Insiders' Guide to St. Barths: Guadeloupe as a student Part1

Just a quick report before I head down to the beach...

Last Friday night I and a friend/colleague arrived from Sweden after a very long journey. We are here to study French for two weeks, four hours a day.

Apparantly the "headmaster" of this school founded it together with his girlfriend, who have now gone off to form a new school, taking teachers and business with her. That is anyway the story I heard from other students, I don't know if the description is accurate. The facts are however that there is only five students at our school, and only one teacher. Three swiss girls have the am:s, and us swedes has the pm:s. It's super - like having a private tutor!

We live in a loft apartment on a villa, in a residential area with quite nice villas, a municipal creche (daycare center), school, football stadium. Ste Anne is a community with about 20 000 citizens, right by the southern shoreline of eastern wing of the Goudeloupan butterfly.

There is some small hotels/auberges down by the beach in the city, the rest is a bit furter outside of town. Not much of nightlife, so don't bother coming here weekdays if you are looking for action, the Americano bar is all there is then. But on Saturday night we spend the evening listning to a steel band at another bar, and there is more places open too at weekends. So far we have done our own cooking, so I can't offer any restaurant reviews.

This may sounds like I don't like this place, but that's wrong. I do love being here. It's just not a hotel people place. We love strolling through the streets, amazed by how people on one street live in what looks like shacks falling apart, and on other streets there is high fences and a bmw. I love shopping groceries in the super marché, trying to figure out the numbers in French as not many people talk English. I love the beach...

Plage St Anne is probably not like St Barts beaches, as it fringes the town of St Anne, with restaurants and car parks close by the sand. Still it's a quiet beach, and it's a lovely family beach, shallow waters, calmed by the reef and the piers. The best feature, in my opinion, is all the trees and palms that brings spots of shadow all over the beach! The sand is very fine, and as it so far has rained every night, it's quite firm, hard packed, and don't fly in the constant breeze. In the weekend you can see local familys bringing chairs sunbeds bbqs games and of course all members young and old.

The weather is very nice. Showers has so far restricted to late evening, night and early morning, except for one yesterday afternoon. Those we have seen are short but dumps a lot of water in that short time, thus bringing the island an abundence of green leaves :) I'ts humid but comfortable due to the constant tradewinds. Very few bugs, haven't seen any sceeters at all. Just butterflies and the occasional small lizzard and some humming birds :)

We are renting a car this weekend, will write more later

/K