So much...

...to do this week.
...goodness last week.
...to tell, enigmatically.

Just now, on the cusp of the last 1/4th of the academic year, I shall avoid discussing the first and postpone the last. Instead, I'll put up a few pretty pictures and tell you that, this week, I saw:

• flying fish, in abundance
• a baby heron
• a flower called a heliconia (pictured here in a photograph not by me)
  
• Dominica, an island nation of 70,000 people
  
• Iles des Saintes, a French village in the Caribbean
  
• distant volcanoes
• shipwrecks
  
• water that was so clear that, at 30+ feet, you could see the bottom.
  

And also in the past week, I

• jumped off a (sort of) high rock into a waterfall-fed pool
• hiked through a rainforest
• ate bananas, and guavas, and coconuts, and the goo around coffee and cocoa beans, and a tiny shred of cinnamon, right off their respective trees and bushes
• snorkled (in relatively uninteresting waters, alas)
• accrued several really good blisters (alas)
• spent a lot of lovely time with my dad, stepmother, and the Minister
• drank a hearty bit of rum
  
• spoke French for the first time in ages.
  

Dominica and Iles des Saintes are beautiful. Here are a few pictures for your enjoyment. I'll be thinking about them when I recommence the grading...oh, the grading...luckily I have everyone else's blogs--unread for so long--to keep me company whilst I toil!

A view of Dominica, from the top of a mountain ridge.

Bloodroot trees in the Indian River (Dominica).

Red lavender in front of a blue house (Portsmouth, Dominica).

Shipwreck in the harbor at Portsmouth.

Terre-de-Haut, Iles des Saintes.

Secluded beach on Terre-de-Haut (we were just about the only ones there).

And, because I like birds, a hummingbird in silhouette. I actually kind of like the fact that the leaves are in focus but the bird itself is not.