The Final Countdown!

Well, another term has come and gone. I finally finished my second week of finals today. It seems like an eternity has passed since I took my first final two weeks ago. This semester seems like it went really quickly and really slowly at the same time. I am exhausted, but still haven't come off the the rush from finals.  These tests are pretty "do-or-die" so I've never been as stressed taking tests as I am down here.  If you fail finals, there's a chance you're going home for good, and the problem is, now you're stuck in debt with nothing gained from it and if you fail out of school, you can't get federal loans anymore to go back to school. Luckily that isn't the road I will be taking. I study every day down here, some more than others, but finals is an intense time. I get headaches often from focusing so hard and my eyes get worse from looking closely at all my notes and computer screen. I find my jaw muscles become exhausted from clenching and my back kills me from sitting so much. My sleeping and eating schedule get thrown off and my life just gets put on hold until my tests are done. Today was my hardest test and my stomach still feels upset from all the stress I had this morning. All of that, plus I can't even think about my student loan debt. And to think, I'm doing all of this to myself voluntarily! But it will definitely be worth it in the end. I've learned a lot and have made some good friends who are in it with me, and it's nice to have peers working with you towards the same goal. Today while we sat waiting for our test to begin, Mike and I sang "Final Countdown" by Europe and it has been stuck in my head all day long, but it's really how I felt taking my test. It was just an epic battle to finish strong!

After our finals were done we came straight home, changed, and headed to the beach. That seemed to be every one's plan because the beach was packed, but it was really fun. We had a couple drinks and hung out on the sand and in the water. We people watched (of course!) and talked about what we're going to eat when we get home. On a side note, since the food down here really isn't very good, it has become a past time of ours to fantasize about American food. It sounds lame, but after living in the land of nutmeg everything and bland everything else, it makes anything sound delicious. Anyway, I've been wanting to wakeboard down here since last term and I knew that there had to be a place to do it, but had never seen anyone with a board.  There are several boats who harass the beach to tow you on the inflatable tubes and a couple times I've seen people water ski. But I've asked all of those boats and none of them have ever had a wakeboard. Today I was standing there and saw some little tourist boy putting on a wakeboard and I ran over to find the guy with the boat. We haggled prices (He originally wanted to charge me for five tries to get up. I told him I only needed one try and I would pay less!) and I finally got him to agree to also let my friend Crystal sit on the boat and take pictures. The boat is so old (possibly made of wood?) and is painted black on the outside and bright purple/pink on the inside. The wakeboard was new, but not a nice one, but I was thrilled to even be able to go down here.  I got to go around the bay and then my ride was over. It was so much fun, but I've never boarded on the ocean before and the water was pretty choppy! Definitely not ideal conditions, but so worth it and so much fun! I can cross "Wakeboard in the Caribbean Sea" off my bucket list now. When I got back the driver was like, "Baby, you are very good. Was that your first time?" Yep, you caught me.

We came back and ate and then we went to Owl's, the bar down the hill from us. We sat on the beach and enjoyed the night and the fact that we don't have to study anything for an entire month! It was down to 75 degrees tonight and for us, we felt a chill in the air. I'm really going to freeze when I get home! It was weird today sitting on the beach and being in the water knowing that Christmas is going to be here in about a week and I'm in my bikini.  It's nice, but I'm definitely ready to go home. I want to wear jeans and sweaters and boots and actually be cold and not sweat. I already have a busy break ahead of me and it's going to be a blast. I'm going to drive home from Texas with Nick because he's finally getting out of the army! We're going to rescue a dog, do some wedding stuff, go snowboarding, be with family. It's going to be a good month break. I have to do laundry tomorrow and begin to pack, Sunday I'm moving stuff out of my apartment, and then Monday I get to go home! If everything goes as planned I'm going to have about 15 hours of travel time with layovers in Barbados and Miami. I'm not looking forward to it, but at least it will be getting me one step close to home! I can't wait!

BBQ Dog

I am through my first week of finals (I have two weeks of finals this term) and still going strong! I just got back from the pool. I decided to lay out and get some sun while I studied my notes. I know, it sounds pretty rough, but I have gotten so sick of sitting in my apartment I had to be outside for a couple hours. I was in the anatomy lab earlier in the day studying after one of my finals and it has gotten rank! The smell is so horrible I don't think it's something I'll ever get used to. Our dog has become so moldy that we refuse to even study off of it any more and are borrowing other dogs. We tried our best to keep it in good condition, but our bag has a hole in it and when we told the guy who runs the lab, he didn't care, so all the formalin just runs out of the bag and doesn't preserve our dog. He is a class act all by himself. His sole job is to clean and maintain the lab, but he hardly does that. He (Rudy) always decides to spray down the floors at the most inconvenient times; typically when we're getting instruction. When we told him our dog was so moldy, he just pressure washed it and handed it back. That cleans off the very outside layer of the mold, but it's still horrendous! Every time we have to dissect I get into a sneezing fit, I'm sure from all of the mold spores. We through a lot of paper towels from cleaning our instruments, wiping down the tables, etc. Around the lab, there are paper towel holders that are typical in a kitchen that just hold either end of the roll. Instead of waiting for the roll to run out and changing it, he takes full rolls and puts the end on the low roll on the holder and rolls the new roll onto the old roll. Then he rips it off after a while and moves onto the next one. It is so inefficient and stupid I can't even comprehend why he would think that was a good idea. I have tried to video it on many occasions, but still have been unsuccessful.

There is a building next to the anatomy lab where they burn all of the carcasses when we're done with them. There is typically a large plume of black smoke coming from the chimney. Today it smelled like good BBQ... unfortunately it was BBQ donkey or dog. It was pretty disgusting.

We had to go to school on Thanksgiving because that's an American holiday and the school doesn't seem to care. Even though we are in Grenada, about 80% of the school is American, so it would make sense to give us the day off. But unfortunately we were stuck in class. So we celebrated Thanksgiving the following Saturday. My friends made the turkey and it was delicious. It was 13 pounds and was over $3/lb! My other friend made green bean casserole. I'd never had that because that's not something my mom makes, but I like it a lot. I made mashed potatoes and stuffing and all the Louisiana people thought it was so weird to have mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving! I thought that was a staple. Another girl made sweet potatoes and they were very yummy and we also had apple crisp. Another girl made a layered pea salad that she said was her mom's traditional Thanksgiving dish and that was also good. It was interesting to see everyone's traditions and it was fun trying everyone's food. It was nice having a big, home cooked meal. We had a good time with out makeshift Grenadian family, but we really missed home.

I have found out, thankfully indirectly, that the hospital is not the place you want to be in Grenada. Someone I know wound up having to go for kidney stones and my friend went to go pick her up when she was discharged. The general hospital in St. George's is very old and apparently hard to find. She said that there wasn't any air conditioning so it was hot and stuffy in there. I can only imagine how many germs grow in that environment. The beds are packed into rooms with just sheets separating them and you are expected to bring your own linens, plates, forks, cups, and toilet paper! If you don't bring those things with you, you just will not be using them. The private hospital is apparently nicer, but not up to US standards, obviously. My classmate's wife just had a baby down here and went to the private one. Thankfully everything went well and they said the doctor and nurses were very nice. Either way, if I can stay out of the hospital situation down here, I will be happy.

My friend Kim and I went to the town in St. George's the other day to go shopping for some last minutes Christmas gifts. We had never driven there before, but had taken a taxi, so we knew the area, but not where to park. We figured it couldn't be that hard to find, so we took off. We couldn't have been more wrong. Not only is parking a rare commodity in St. George's, but a cruise ship was in port and it was packed! All the passengers were walking around and all the local vendors were out as well. Our car isn't air conditioned so we had the windows down, but in stopped traffic and waiting for crowds to cross the street, there wasn't a breeze, so we were sweating to death! I drove up the narrowest streets with cars parked all along one side and a huge ditch on the other. We got so lost. I finally found a place on the side of the road to park and after painstakingly parallel parking, (our car still doesn't have any power steering fluid, so turning the wheel takes a lot of effort!) we got out of the car. The shop owner came out and said, "You cannot park here!" I told her there are a hundred other cars on the street, why can't I? She said I couldn't, however when I asked her where I COULD park, she simply replied, "Not here." Great. So I got back in the car and finally got it back on the road. And alas! We found a little parking lot behind a building that charges $2 EC an hour to park. Perfect. So we went in the cruise ship mall and power shopped. We heard the Caribbean Christmas song "Santa Looking for a Wife." (Yes, it is Santa, not Santa's. We are in de islands, ya know!) The song tells how Santa is getting old and needs a wife and loves Caribbean woman (singular) so he's going to search for a wife down here. It was kind of funny. We also heard Christmas carols played on the steel drum. I love the steel drum, but only in small doses. After a while, it was pretty bad. We walked to the spice market, which is an open air, covered market with probably 100 vendors packed under the cover, all selling the same, exact thing as their neighbor. I have no idea how you make any money and are competitive when you don't have anything different to offer. It was so crowded and the local guys especially are so aggressive. They kiss at you and say, "Hello. Hello, beautiful. Are you enjoying Grenada? What is your name? You have a nice smile." It's non-stop. And they grab your arm to get your attention. It's worse if you make eye contact, so I try my best not to. I accidentally made eye contact with one guy and he kissed at me and said, "Hello, beautiful, show me your <lady parts>." I just looked at him terrified and quickly went the other way. I told my friend, Mike, about our experience and he said if I have to go again before Nick comes down here with me he'd go with me. They are much less aggressive when you have a guy with you. Luckily Nick gets to come down here with me next term, so a lot of things will be easier. I'm very excited!

I spent two hours in the IT office and my computer finally works on the school's network. The school is very concerned about getting viruses in its network, so it has very stringent security standards. On the website, it requires you to download AVG virus protection. All of my software was up to date and so I didn't know why I couldn't connect to the school's Internet. I took it to IT and they informed me that they updated the school's network and it no longer accepts AVG, which they haven't put on the website. Great. TIG. So it took two hours to take that off of my computer and install a new protection program. I have been able to take all of my finals without a hitch, but I still have four more, so I'm waiting for my laptop to catch fire or for a meteor to come flying through the window and destroy nothing but my computer. There's no way that I'm going to get through two weeks of finals without a glitch. That would just be too easy.

The test proctors are getting more ridiculous by the day. We are not allowed to have watches, sunglasses on our heads, and we must have our hair pulled into a tight ponytail or braid to enter the exam room. You must show your ID to enter and the other day I got corrected for holding it up sideways; you must hold it up properly! After that you must sign in on the roster prior to taking the test. After testing, you must show them the screen on your laptop that shows the test was submitted and then sign out right next to where you signed in. For heaven's sake! At what point am I going to be able to switch people that I have to sign twice in the period of an hour? Today one of the proctors nearly had a heart attack. First of all, she was wearing a fake bird/flower ensemble in her hair that was dreadful. But she saw the roster getting passed around getting signed and as she was running towards it shouted, "Ladies and gentlemen! No passing notes! This is cheating!" We didn't even have the exam password yet, so there was no way we were cheating. When we tried to explain that it was the roster that the proctor had given us, she replied, "Well you can't pass it without being supervised!" One of my classmates let her have it for yelling at us for not doing her job. She was horrible. After all the hassle of signing everything and everyone finally got connected, my highly German professor tried reading off the complicated password that consisted of a jumble of letters and numbers. Of course no one got it the first time, so after the second time, one of my Asian classmates raised his hand and said he still didn't get it. My professor replied, "Well are you using a Chinese keyboard?" Luckily the student laughed. Only in Grenada.

Well, it's late and I have to study tomorrow and the torrential downpour going on right now is causing little power failures so it's time for me to go to bed. I will be home a week from today! I can't wait!

Dim Bulb

It has been a busy couple of weeks for me and I have been horrible about writing about it, but I'm getting the experience regardless, so I'd better document it before I forget anything! Two weeks ago was Grenadian Thanksgiving. It is an island-wide celebration about when the US came and helped them fight Cuba and take back their independence, so needless to say, it's not a very old holiday. However, the entire island shuts down for it, as it does for every holiday. We didn't have school that day (coincidentally also a Thursday) so we decided instead of having our Thanksgiving food in October, we would do a potluck with our favorite food from home. So I decided I'd make "Kousa," which is a Lebanese dish that involves coring out a zucchini and stuffing it with ground meat and rice. So I went to the grocery store and lo and behold, no zucchini! There wasn't ANY produce! It is definitely a stark contrast to our nicely filled shelves at home to see empty shelves all over the store here. So I decided that maybe I'd make potato skins, but again, no potatoes! Everything I could think of required produce that wasn't there! I went home and thought about it and finally decided. I made deviled eggs and pasta salad. At our potluck, we also had crock pot mac and cheese, chips and salsa, tamale pie, icebox cake, fruit, blueberry pie, among other snacks. A bunch of us got together and we ate and then hung out in the pool for the day. It was nice.

We have been wanting to go on the boat to fish Friday, but the boat has been broken since last term. Apparently they're "waiting for a part from the US," but at the rate they're moving, I'm thinking it's more of a Grenadian problem than anything else. So last week we decided to drive up to Guave, home of Kirani James, Olympic gold medalist, and don't forget it!! We'd never driven there, but Crystal knew kind of where it was, so she drove. Not only are there no street signs in Grenada, there also aren't many street lights, so it's hard to tell where you are. Now, if we were going somewhere at home and needed directions, we'd plug the address into our GPS or, if we're really being primitive, print out directions from MapQuest. However, in Grenada, none of those exist! So we had a map that we checked prior to driving up there. Talk about suffering! Not only did we have to figure out our route on a map and hope that we could make every turn, we had to figure out how to fold the map back up after we were done! What a piece of work that was. Thank goodness for GPS on our phones! ;)

We got to Guave without a hitch and parked in a gravel lot where we paid some random guy $5 to "watch" our car. Not that anyone would want to steal the poor thing. It rides like the Indiana Jones ride from Disneyland and rattles a whole lot more. We walked down an alley that most normal people wouldn't attempt at home and came out onto the street where fish Friday is held. We went to the bathroom, where we had to go through an abandoned building and through a courtyard with old mattresses and stuff that should've been in a dump, and found a relatively clean bathroom that actually had toilet paper AND paper towels! Unbelievable! We walked around and tried the different fish dishes and people watched. We tried to feed the super skinny dogs, but the locals chase them away because they aren't welcome there. Poor doggies.

We sat at a picnic bench and were listening to a drum band sing Bob Marley songs and there were a couple girls looking at us, but were too shy to approach. I smiled and they immediately came over. Their names were Tasha and Trish and they were 11 and 12 years old. They were extremely nice and very polite, always saying, "Yes miss, no miss." They thanked us for coming to Grenada and asked about our lives. We asked if we could take a picture with them and immediately a ton of kids came out of the woodwork to get in the picture. They thought it was awesome! They all wanted their picture taken and they all wanted to see it after. They asked if Crystal was my daughter (she is a little older than me) and asked if her husband was Chinese (he is about as white as they come). The girls told us they'd never left the island, but if they could they would go to New York City. Crystal and I talked to them for a little bit and found out that one of their birthdays had just passed and the other one was coming up soon. I asked if they got presents for their birthdays and they looked surprised and said they never have. Crystal and I felt so bad for them, we emptied our change purses and gave them all of our change to split. We had to only have given them about $5 EC ($2 US), but they were shocked that we had given so much money and tried to give some back for us to keep. We assured them it was fine and told them it was their birthday present. I asked one girl what she was going to buy and she said she wanted a pencil. I felt bad that I didn't have a pencil in my purse to give her! The other girl went and bought a fish cake and tried to share it with us because she felt bad. We told her it was her's. Mike bought them each a Coke and their eyes lit up. We know that this is a poor country and we see homeless people on the south side of the island where we live, but nothing like this. On the northern part it is so poor and these little girls were the nicest kids we've ever met. It broke our hearts to think about how they must live and made us so thankful for what we have. They asked us to meet their grandmother, who was sitting about twenty yards away. Crystal and I went with them and told her what a pleasure her granddaughters were. She grunted at us and then turned away. Immediately afterwards the girls came back to us and told us they had to go. It's really sad to think that these little girls aren't corrupted with the ways of the world and thought nothing of talking to us, but after talking to their grandmother who clearly didn't like American girls weren't allowed to talk to us. It's sad that eventually those girls will probably be like their grandma.

Down on our side of the island. we encounter bad drivers every day. But the absolute worst driver awards go to the "Learner" drivers. It is unbelievable how many learner drivers we see every day, whose cars are identifiable but the big red "L" on the back of the car. For the small population of Grenada and the little amount of kids we see, you'd think you would never see anyone learning to drive. But we see a ton, and a lot of them seem to be adults! Not only are these drivers slows, but they do 57 point turns in the middle of the street without warning. It must be some sort of curriculum that they follow, but without fail, when following a learner, they are going to slam on the brakes and start turning around. The worst part is, they will pull so that their front tires hit the opposite curb and they are completely perpendicular with the street. This clogs traffic going both ways and then they sit there for a long time, trying to figure out which way to turn the wheel to get themselves out of their ridiculous situation. They definitely are very frustrating. Another frustrating thing is the taxis/"Reggae buses." It is illegal here to get a bus anywhere besides a bus stop, but because there really aren't many cops and they don't enforce any rules, none of that is followed. So there are bus stops along the sides of the road that are little turn offs which, if used properly, would make it so that buses could load and unload without blocking the road. The buses are constantly driving by and there are always people waiting. So instaed of pulling all the way forward to the far end of the stop, the geniuses slam on their brakes before even getting to the bus stop and allow people to get in, blocking traffic completely. Then, since they are crazy drivers around here, other buses fly around you and swerve in front of that bus to pick up more people. So just as you're about to go around, the first bus pulls out and blocks you in again which it waits for more buses to load. If it sounds confusing, it's simply because I do not possess the words to possibly explain the lack of organization. The best bet is just not to be in a hurry to go anywhere and wait for all the people to figure out what the heck is going on.

I have one electrical outlet in my room and I have a table lamp plugged into it. On the other side of the room is a light fixture mounted on the wall with the dimmest light I've ever seen. It's also that horrible super white light that suggests I live in a hospital. I finally got aggrivated enough that I took off the cover and unscrewed the bulb to see what it was so that I could get a better one. It was a 9 watt! Talk about a dim bulb! Why even bother? So I went to the hardware store and got a 60W and thought about how amazing my room was going to look in light as bright as day. I got home, unscrewed my dim bulb, took the new one out of the box, and? It was for some sort of weird fixture that didn't have a screw. It was smooth all around with two little pegs sticking out on either side! I didn't even know there were different fixture options. So I put back the 9W and the next time I went to the grocery store, I got a new light bulb, again a 60W, made sure it had a screw bottom and was so excited to try it when I got home. Again, I unscrewed the old one, screwed in the new one, switched it on and NOTHING! It didn't turn on. I wiggled it and tried screwing it in tighter and making it looser. Nothing would work. It looks like I'm sentenced to another month of eye strain due to my dim light bulb.

My roommate's air conditioner broke late one night and the office was closed. So she kept her ceiling fan on and opened her window for the night and planned on telling them in the morning. At 3AM there was a pounding at our door. This wasn't a nice knock; it was as if our roof was on fire. It was the security guard telling her she had to close her window because she was wasting energy and that she should just use her A/C. She explained to him what was happening and he said that was fine, but the next night she wasn't allowed to have it open. Apparently that wasn't something that could wait until morning. A few nights later after 11PM, we got another pounding at the door. I answered it and it was the security guard delivering our Internet bill. I asked him if it was necessary to come to our apartment so late and he just shrugged and walked away. Apparently he has no concept that people sleep. I opened our Internet bill and we have a late fee (granted it's 0.37 cents) because we didn't pay on time. Keep in mind, our bill was delivered in November 5th, and our bill was due October 1st. The record keeping companies down here must be really efficient. TIG.

Well, I only have 38 days until I get to go home, which means I have a lot of exams ahead of me, so it's time to study again. I'll be sure to blog about whatever crazy thing happens down here on de island. Until next time!

Polydactyl Day

This term I'm living in an apartment at a place called Grand View Inn. Three of my close friends live in apartments in this complex and we really enjoy living by each other. We share a car and go to class every day together and hang out on the weekends. Although our apartments are fine, they're not luxury by any means. There are constantly dogs barking, they're very outdated, I honestly have six inches of counter space in my kitchen, and one of my friends has had a serious roach problem the whole term. There are these condos next to a place we go to eat that look amazing and we figured that we could all move in together and live in this awesome house. So we set up an appointment and went to check them out. They're four stories and have five bedrooms and seven bathrooms! An elevator will take you to every floor. The entire front of the house is glass, which faces the harbor along with its private beach and infinity pool. The second floor had a dining room with a glass floor so that you could see down into the living room. The bedrooms were all very nice, except the one on the fourth floor was essentially the room under the stairs that Harry Potter lived in. Not only was it really small, there's no way it would ever be cool because it was on the top of the house, which had central air. The master bedroom was bigger than my entire apartment I'm currently living in. The bathroom was perfection and the walk in closet was bigger than my current bedroom. There are biometric fingerprint scanners to get into the house and there was a walk in cooler for wine or meat. The house was amazing, but it was going to cost a fortune in utilities because of its size and there was no way to be fair to the person living in the hobbit closet, versus the person living in the king's chambers. Oh well. It was nice to look.

Last week we had midterms all week. It was nice because we didn't have to go to class, but that meant we were locked in our rooms or the library studying non-stop. The really unfortunate part is that we had to deal with the proctors every time we took an exam. The proctors are a special breed of people. Their only job is to make sure that our tests don't include any cheating and are administered fairly. They check our IDs when we go in and then take our tests when we go out. However, upon setting foot in an exam room, we are treated like we are convicted felons and are likely to strike again with whatever horrid crime we had originally committed. In the states, these special individuals would work in a DMV and try to make your life a living hell. Unfortunately, Grenada doesn't have a clue what a DMV is so these people get to torture us every time we test. They all wear these hideous burgundy vests that say "Proctor" on them, but I'm pretty sure they think that "God" is embroidered across their chests. And the best part is, even though they work at a professional school, their education levels are typically very basic, so even something as simple as asking to use the restroom is an ordeal.

However, the worst part about midterms week this time was that the school is trying to go high-tech and use computer based testing. This is coming from a school who can't seem to figure out how to get wifi to span the entire campus and even in places that it does work, it typically is down. So we had to download this program called SofTest on our laptops and then bring them to the test to take our exams. It sounds great, but every time you have to pray that your computer isn't going to decide to crash, or update, or just stop working for whatever reason. The first time I had to take a computer based test, I tried to get my test to start, and it just wouldn't. I called the "IT" person over (the IT people are very incompetent here, so I didn't have very much faith) and she simply told me to restart my computer. So after waiting for it to shut down, boot up, and then try to restart the test, it still didn't work! Half an hour after the test started, she finally admitted it wasn't going to work and gave me a good old fashioned scantron paper test. That's really all I wanted anyway! The second exam I took I was able to start the test, but then I wasn't able to connect to the wifi to actually turn it in. Another so called IT guy came to "help" me and wound up somehow making it so that my computer could no longer even recognize wifi. He told me, "Oh, sometimes that happens with HP laptops," and turned around and walked away. GREAT! My right click button already stopped working and now I can't connect to wifi. This is turning into a giant paperweight. I went home and called HP, who gave me another number to call for support. I called that number and was told I had the wrong number, so they gave me the first. After going in circles, I finally sat on the kitchen floor with a really short Ethernet cable and plugged into the wall to get on HP support online. I did a live chat with the HP agent and he had me download different things and check this and that. After an hour he told me I had to reset my wireless card, which involved me taking apart my laptop. That would've been great, except the only tool I own is a Swiss army knife! Try as I might, half an hour later I was screaming mad that I couldn't get it apart. So I laced up my shoes and went for a run to the hardware store. An hour later, I took apart my computer with my newly purchased 8-in-1 screwdriver and? It didn't work. I still had no wifi connection. I started playing around with the settings and found a little box that said "Wifi off." I unchecked it and what do you know, it worked! I was really happy that I finally had wifi, but so angry with HP for making me waste hours of my life when he didn't even ask me if my computer had the wifi turned on.

Being in a third world country, it is typical to see medical conditions that are not common at home. The whites of peoples' eyes are very commonly yellow, indicating the wide spread of hepatitis down here. There are crippled people who probably could've been helped as a child, had they had the right orthpedics. The teeth down here are atrocious. (Side note: The manners around here are also not what we would deem acceptable. The lady at the front desk where I pay my rent hawked seven loogies the other day while I was there!! I was trying not to laugh and gag at the same time! That is not uncommon.) However, most of my classmates are from the states, so most of them look relatively "normal." But the other day at school, we saw a girl with six toes! Her sixth toe was fused with her pinky so the nail was oddly shaped, but she had it painted and was wearing flip flops. It was like a bad car accident; we had to look! Then later that night, we were waiting for one of my friends to get food and the girl taking the money had six fingers! She had an extra pinky on each hand. Polydactyly (many digits) is common in cats, but two see two polydactyls in one day had to have been a record!

After midterms, we all got to relax. We went and enjoyed the beach for once, went out to dinner and socialized. On Friday night, the vet program had a sexy legs contest. Each term had a male contestant who went out and danced to their own song to show off their sexy legs. It was pretty hilarious. On Saturday night, a local restaurant, De Big Fish, had a lobster dinner special. For $55 EC, which is about $21 US, we got lobster and two sides. It was the best meal I've had down here and at such a great price! There was a one man band who actually wasn't bad. He played Caribbean styled versions of pop songs. We really enjoyed our weekend of not having to study. But unfortunately today is Monday, so it's back to the grind and back to studying.

Welcome to the Gym

Well, after a month of having two or three quizzes a week, I finally have a spare moment to blog. It's going to be a long one, so hold on tight for the ride! Since the last time I wrote, the weather has either been extremely hot with the sun just beating down, or very rainy. It is, afterall, rainy season in the Caribbean, so it isn't a surprise. It often rains at night and when it does it's so loud I can hardly hear myself think. If it rains during the day, it is worse because when it stops the humidity that follows is enough to make you melt. Hurricane season should be passing relatively soon and we should be getting cruise ships in port, which is always fun to see.

I have come to realize what a gossip filled, petty class I am a part of. Because I go to a rather small university that is on an extremely small island, everyone gets bored and is constantly looking for gossip. The "he said, she said," is out of control and while it's funny to hear all the rumors going around, it is rather annoying that my class is so uptight I may as well be going to school in a convent. We are constantly having to vote on ridiculous things in class. The other day, we had to vote on the punishment for a classmate who was having a little bit too much fun at the local bar and decided to flash. This girl had to make a public apology and then stand there while we decided what her fate was. Who cares?? I'm not going around lifiting up my shirt, but if she wants to, I could not care less. We have been informed we're not allowed to eat in class and the other day one of the girls ate an entire Indian meal in the middle of lecture. Regardless of the fact that it was an entire meal, it was full of curry that stunk up the entire lecture hall. So on our class Facebook page, I wrote, "Thanks for eating a smelly meal in class. It is seriously offending my nose hairs." I didn't mention her name, but simply wrote it to be funny. Well apparently that was the eighth deadly sin because the only people who laughed about it were my friends. The rest of the class wrote back to me telling me what a horrible person I am for writing that and how unprofessional I am for putting it on Facebook. Give me a break! The post was subsequently deleted. So now when I walk into class I know that it is a no fun zone and we are there to be as boring and straight faced as we can be. Oh joy.

Living with a bunch of strictly med students and vet students often makes for interesting scenery. I was at the school gym (which is a tiny, sweatbox of a room) and there were two guys in there who obviously thought they were the manliest of men on the campus. They were lifting a relatively small amount of weight, but then dropping it on the floor every single time. There are signs everywhere that say "DO NOT DROP THE WEIGHTS" but they obviously thought they were above the rules. The guys would make a grunting sound and then it would be followed by a huge crash on the floor. My friend and I jumped the first time they did it because we weren't expecting it. They continued to do this the entire time we were in there working out. As we grabbed out stuff to leave, we walked by them and I pointed to the signs and said, "Wow, for being in med school it really amazes me that you don't know how to read!" My friend said, "Yeah, clearly I wouldn't want you idiots to do a surgery on me," and right before we walked out the guys said, "Welcome to the gym, ladies." Well, we were so thrilled with that response that she wrote a letter to the athletics department and there's not a monitor in there to make sure the rules are being followed. A couple days ago I was in the gym and a girl in a dress and ballet flats came in and started attempting to lift weights using the machines. It was so pitiful I could hardly watch in order to keep from laughing. I guess it takes all kinds to become a doctor.

We have to sit through some pretty pointless and boring classes, such as professionalism and introduction to research, so the other day during one of those classes, I decided to write my one page essay that was due the following day. My friend wrote it on a piece of lined paper and he was going to take it home and copy it onto his computer. I decided to make use of technology and I typed it on my phone and emailed it to myself. It was a one step process and I was done! The next day we went into the library to print out our essays and none of the printers were working. First of all, how hard is it to fix a printer? Everyone knows you just have to bang it around a little bit, put in some new paper and you're good to go. So my friend got to gloat as he already had his original paper written with him and I had to copy it off my phone onto lined paper. For this reason, I'm not sure why our school is now really trying to become paperless. At Cal Poly, I could sit in my car on my laptop and surf the internet. At SGU, I'm lucky if the internet works in all of the classrooms, much less outside. Our school is making us take all of our midterm exams on our computers. The way it works is that we download our exam on our computer prior to getting there and then they give us a password in class to begin the test. It sounds great, but the problem is we get two hours for the exam and if the internet fails or our computer crashes they will give us paper versions. However, they have told us that if we have to start over on a paper version, they won't give us any extra time to redo all of the questions we already answered. Hopefully we don't have to do the paper version, but I'm not looking forward to this process.

My roommate brought her dog and cat down to the island. They don't get along so the cat stays in her room and the dog goes in the kitchen and my room. I had been leaving my door open so that the dog could go into my air conditioned room during the day when we were gone, but then I came home to a huge pee spot on my bed. I had to call the office and get new sheets, air out my mattress, Lysol it, and flip it. I started keeping my door closed while I was gone because I couldn't handle having her pee on my bed again. Then, a couple weeks later, although I'm not sure how, she peed on my blanket. Thank goodness it was only on my blanket and not on my bed, but I still wasn't happy. The other day I was sitting on my bed with my door open and the dog walked in and hopped onto my bed. I was petting her and talking to her and while I was, she squatted and started peeing! I couldn't believe it. I pushed her off the bed and drug her out and then immediately stripped my sheets. Luckily I caught her quickly so it didn't go through onto my mattress, but it was already about 11PM so I couldn't call the office to get new sheets. I went down to the laundry facility and started washing. Unfortunately the dryers here aren't great, so three hours later I was finally able to crawl into bed. Needless to say, the dog isn't even allowed to step foot in my room anymore. I can't believe her.

A couple nights ago we went to dinner for my classmate's birthday. I rarely eat anything on the island and think that it's pretty good. Most of the food here is highly mediocre and I've come to accept that eating out isn't worth it. However, we went to the Schnitzel Haus in St. George's and it was actually so good! It is run by an older German couple and they were so nice and the food and service was great. I will definitely go back.

Time to get back to studying for midterms. I'll write about it on the other side!

Candlelight Dinner: Party of One

Well, it's late at night, but I'm awake because when you live in a third world country, it is common to have to rush to the bathroom at a moment's notice, and unfortunately today is one of those days. So I figured I would catch up on the last week and a half.

Last term my biggest issue with the grocery store was milk. This term it's not that big of an issue. I have almost always been able to get milk AND it almost always has an expiration date of at least five days. That right there is luxury. However this term the issue is eggs. The eggs are local, so it's not an issue getting them here on the boat. But the other day my friends and I were grocery shopping and they were out of eggs. When we asked them about it, they said they had them in the back, but they weren't going to put them out until the next day. Why? So we went back the next day and low and behold the egg shelf was still empty! They said they just still hadn't gotten around to it. It is not hard to stock that! Just do it! But of course they didn't care because TIG.

Speaking of getting things here by boat, we were supposed to have a shipment of lab coats come in for our class before the start of the term. The boat caught fire and had to pull into Trinidad for repair and it still has not made it to Grenada. We were also supposed to get pins for our white coat ceremony, but there was a mix up at customs and they never got to us. It is so typical around here that no one every expects anything by post. My laptop is having problems right now and I contacted HP, who told me I had to ship it to them for repair and they'd ship it back. Not only would it cost me an arm and a leg to ship from here, but I'm not sure I'd ever see it again! It also turns out that HP doesn't ship to Grenada, as with a huge number of companies. So I will ship it to them over Christmas and cross my fingers it comes back within a month.

Our electricity has been going out almost every day and when it does, it usually goes out about 5 or 6 times. I'm not really sure why and when I talk to the front desk, they're aware of it, but not remotely concerned about it. It is the worst when I am cooking dinner and the power goes out. Last night I ate dinner by candle light by myself. It was romantic. The odd part is all the other buildings around me have power, but mine is the one that keeps going out. It usually goes out between 1 and 15 minutes. It wouldn't be so obnoxious, except every single time it goes out it messes up our internet and we have to reset the router. Very disruptive when it comes to studying!  I already put in for a different apartment in the same complex for next term. It will be in a different building and it will also be a one bedroom instead of a two.

Tropical storm Isaac narrowly missed us earlier in the week. Although it didn't hit us, we had a lot of rain accompanied with some thunder and lightening. The metal roof makes it deafening when I'm at home. But it was kind of cool. Now it's the same every single day; 85 as a high, 79 as a low, and it rains a majority of nights for a bit. I've gotten pretty used to the humidity and sweating, but our classroom is still so hot! There are six AC units in the lecture hall and only one works! We put in a request to get them fixed, but I will be shocked if they actually do. That's not at the top of the priority list obviously.

Our car suddenly was extremely hard to steer. It took so much strength to turn the wheel it was nearly impossible to drive. We called the guy who owned it and he came and took a look at it. He added power steering fluid, brake fluid, checked the oil, the coolant, and determined it was fine. There is also a light on the dash that keeps coming on and we asked him to look at it. He told us it was the light for the exhaust and that there was a switch in the exhaust pipe that alerted you when you were giving out exhaust. I said, "Oh, like a smog light?" He had no clue what I meant by smog. I said, "So it just means our car is not running on low emissions?" He still had no idea, but just said, "Yeah, yeah, exhaust. No big deal." Apparently Grenadians don't care if the ten cars on the island cause smog. We asked him if he had a CRV or something a little nicer to rent next term. He said, "Why? What is wrong with this car? It runs great!" We wanted to say, "Well, the radio and AC don't work, there is linoleum on the floor in place of floor mats, one back door doesn't open from the inside, the other back window doesn't roll down, it hardly makes it up the hill to our apartment, we haven't been able to turn the wheel and the other day we thought for sure our transmission gave out on us because we had to drive 10 miles an hour to school!" I mean, I guess after summing everything up, our car runs great for Grenada! But we would definitely like to be able to open all four of our doors. At the very least.

Next week I will be having four quizzes so I will be studying all weekend, but if anything interesting happens I'll make sure to document it. Until then, I am going to try to get some sleep!

Back to the rock

Well, here I am again on the little island of Grenada. I guess I'll start my blogging for this term with the finish of last term. After our finals, there were three of us who were all leaving on the same day. Since we had to be up at 4AM to go to the airport, we decided we'd stay out all night to celebrate being done and then just catch a taxi to the airport. Banana's, the local bar, stays open until 6AM so we figured we'd have a great time. That plan would have been great, except on that night Banana's closed at 11PM. We had already turned in our keys so we had no where to go back to sleep. So we went back to school and sat on the dock, looking at the ocean and the stars. Time was creeping by and then suddenly, it started POURING rain. We ran and took shelter under an overhang at school and sat there for the rest of the night. Finally, it was time and our taxi driver, who I'd called prior to make sure he'd come get us, came to pick us up. I had told him that there were three of us with two large pieces of luggage each. He came in a four door sedan. It wasn't even coming close to fitting! So he said, "Hang on, I'll go get my bus." We figured that meant his van, as that's what most taxi drivers around here have. Needless to say we were shocked when a full sized school bus pulled up to get us! We got dropped off at the airport and went to the desks to check in. Our flights were supposed to leave at 6AM and since it's an international flight we got there two hours early. Apparently Grenadian airline workers didn't get the memo about leaving early, so we sat in an airport that was closed for almost an hour. Finally, I got on my flight, connected in Miami, they said "Welcome to the US!" which were very welcomed words and I came home! It was great.

I had a great summer full of working at Raging Waters, going wakeboarding with my family, riding my horse and seeing friends and family. I went to Texas and visited Nick and then he surprised me and came to visit me for my birthday! Talk about a great birthday present. At last, the summer came to a close and I had to pack to come back to school. I wasn't too excited to leave everyone behind again, but the more I study, the faster I'm done. This time, my friend Kim from home was accompanying me for a week just to vacation.  It was nice having someone to travel with, since that is the worst part of this experience, and also nice to show her my life down here.

We left LAX and flew overnight to Miami. When we landed, we had an eight hour layover and since neither of us had ever been to Miami, we decided to leave the airport to see what it looked like. We got in a cab and told the driver we wanted to go to breakfast. So he took us to South Beach and we ate at a little diner called The News. It was good and also made for good people watching.  After we ate we walked onto the beach and put our feet in the water. Unfortunately we couldn't stay long because we had to get back to the airport and back through security. After a few more hours, we finally boarded our plane. Right before we were supposed to leave the pilot came on the intercom and informed us that the plane was too heavy so they were going to have to re-weigh it. They made us stay on the plane until they decided what to do. One big problem was that we had 30 bags from the previous flight that hadn't fit, so we were taking them. After a long time, they concluded that they were going to remove bags from ours. They pulled the trolley right outside my window and started unloading bags. All of the passengers were glued to the windows as we hoped not to see our bags. Throughout the plane people were saying, "Oh no! That one's mine!" They just kept coming and coming and then I saw both of mine get taken off. In total, they took off 57 of our bags. I called the flight attendant over and told her that both of my bags got taken off and asked would it be possible to just take one and take someone else's off? I didn't leave any clothes in Grenada last term and I only had one change of clothes in my carry on. She didn't care at all.  Finally, the flight attendant came on again and said, "Well, we had to take the bags off. I know a lot of you don't want to go without your bags, but if you get off the plane you probably will not get on another flight for a week because they're all full." So, being the smart mouth that I am, shouted, "How are we supposed to get dressed?!" Everyone around me looked at me and the attendant paused and said, "So hopefully you'll be getting your bags within a few days." I shouted, "How are we supposed to take showers?!" No response to that. They didn't give a damn. So two hours after we were supposed to take off, we finally left Miami and went to Grenada. We landed two hours late and had to wait over an hour to get through customs. Finally, we got to baggage claim and Kim was able to get her bag, then we caught a cab to my apartment.

I had emailed the housing office a week before and told them that I would be getting in late and they said that they'd leave the keys with the security guard for me. We got to my apartments and a man in regular clothes came up to us and I asked if he was security. He was, but he had no idea that I was coming. We took me to see the owner of the apartments, who is an older Grenadian man who had no idea what was going on. He had a little purse full of keys and they both kind of sifted through them looking for mine. They made a few calls and said they'd be right back. They left in a car and about 20 minutes later came back with a woman who sifted through the exact same keys and found mine. After receiving my keys I realized that they all had little tags on them denoting what room they were for; the men just didn't look! Finally, I got into my apartment and turned on the air conditioning. It was very hot and stuffy, but it cooled down quickly. We took showers and crawled into bed. The next morning we woke up and unpacked what little stuff we had. We walked out of the apartment to go get some breakfast and the lady from the night before stopped us and told me she'd put us in the wrong apartment. So we had to go back, pack everything up, and move rooms. Luckily I didn't have much so it wasn't that bad. My apartment has two bedrooms (I have a roommate named Maegan), a bathroom, and a small kitchen/eating area. It also has a balcony with the best view you could ask for. To see where I live, search on Google for Grand View Inn Grenada.  The shower has fluctuating water pressure, as well as temperature, which there's nothing we can do about because there's no temperature control; it's just on or off. That's it.  On a brighter note, my air conditioning works great and my room is freezing. On the downside, it leaks about three gallons (no exaggeration) a day and I'm constantly having to dumb the water out of the trash can. I have told maintenance and for two weeks they've been "getting to it" but I wouldn't be surprised if they will still be getting to it by Christmas. It is only annoying when I wake up due to the loud dripping noises and when the bucket gets slightly moved and it forms a small lake on my tile floor. I have only fallen down once so far, but I was not a happy camper. Another weird thing about our apartment is that we have rats that live on the roof and since the roof is made out of metal you can hear them running around and squeaking. It was a little disheartening at first, but now I can tune it out. The laundry situation here is a bit obnoxious as there are two washers and dryers for 70 apartments. It causes some gridlock of laundry baskets and sometimes some creative hours of doing laundry. But overall, I love where I live and I like my apartment. Compared to last term this one is great! But anyway, back to my first week.

Over the next several days my friends all started coming in. We thought that being delayed two hours was bad, but some of them got delayed nine hours and were made to stay on the plane the entire time! They said it was like a revolution on the plane. A few of my friends who are living in the same apartments came in and they had a bag that was left in Miami too. We had been told to go to the airport on Tuesday night to claim our bags, so we went and they acted like we were speaking another language. The people at the airport were so rude and told us to come back a different day. They wouldn't even go look to see if the bags were there! We went back the next morning, and sure enough, they were there. The employees in this country typically try to do minimal effort, no matter how sugary sweet or angrily yelling you are.  The just don't care. It's very frustrating.

Speaking of frustrating, now I will start talking about our endeavor to get a car. Our apartment has a bus that is supposed to come almost every hour, but of course it doesn't always come when it is supposed to. Not only is it unreliable to get to class, we also would then have to time it exactly right to go to the grocery store, or wherever else, or else take a cab. We started out the week without a car and were taking taxis everywhere. Three of my friends and I decided that the four of us should rent a car together for the term.  We all live up here, we have the same schedule, we all do everything together anyway, so it will be great. We started looking around and our only requirement was that it had four doors, since there are four of us. We also asked around and decided that $400/month was a reasonable price to pay. Rentals down here include inspection fees, insurance, maintenance and repairs and we've heard horror stories of people owning cars that are constantly costing a fortune in the shop. So we contacted Ms. Pat, the car rental lady for Grand View Inn. She told us she'd give us a four door for $400 and we were all happy. So then she showed up with a two door SUV. We told her that's not what we wanted, but she told us we could drive it for the day. The next day, so gave us another two door SUV and again, we told her that's not what we wanted, but again she let us keep it for the day. The next day, she gave the the first SUV again and by that point we were getting annoyed. "Ok, ok, your car will be coming," she told us. Well, I dunno if this car was on a ferry coming from a different island because the longest point of the island is only 22 miles long and it took the entire day for us to finally get our car. It was a Honda CRV and it was cool! We drove it around that night and everyone was jealous of our cool car. Most cars around here are really old and beat up but ours was super nice. The next day she found us and said she'd made a mistake; the CRV was going to cost us more. We told her no, so she gave us a four door 1994 Suzuki Escudo. It has 200,000 km on it and linoleum floor mats. One back door doesn't open from the inside and the other back window doesn't roll down. The paint job looks horrible and it's missing a side panel and some lug nut covers. In the states, I don't know a single person who would agree to drive this pile, but in Grenada, we think we've got a pretty good deal. So far, the windows stopped rolling down and the A/C stopped working, which made it really hot, but they started working again. And the other day we were driving and all of a sudden the transmission gave out and we didn't have any power above second gear. We were driving 25 km/hour down the highway and cars were honking and going around us the whole way. But then it kicked back in and we were able to get to school. We told Ms. Pat and she told us that if it does it again to tell her. I'm afraid that if it does it again it won't start up again! Now, Ms. Pat means well, I'm sure, but she must have amnesia because she acts every time we see her like she has no clue what's going on. She told us that the car was insured, but that she didn't have a copy of the insurance. She assured us it was fine to drive and that she'd get us a copy of it the next day. She next day'd us for a week and we finally got the copy today. It must be the horrendous snaggle tooth that she has hanging over her lip that distracts her and causes her to forget things.

In order to drive in Grenada, we had to get our Grenadian driver's licenses. We went to the police station and presented them with our license from home and paid $30 EC ($12 US) and they hand wrote our licenses. We didn't have to take a test or anything, they just told us that they expire in three months. It is weird driving on the left side of the road, but I've gotten used to it.  The roundabouts threw us off at first - which way do you go around them? But now I'm a pro! The trick is to swerve around the pot holes. The streets are technically all one lane, but if the person in front of you is going too slow, it is perfectly acceptable to honk at them and go around them. There is almost never traffic, except for when there was a Grenadian woman walking the wrong way around the traffic circle. I'm never ceased to be amazed by the chaos.

The first couple days of the term were used for team building activities. They made us run around the field and play games and dance to this stupid song that will forever be stuck in our heads. The games were outside so we were constantly sweating and they were extremely frustrating at times. After the two days, we went to our White Coat Ceremony. This is where we were presented with our lab coats and spoken to by the dean which marked our next step towards becoming doctors.  The classroom which was appointed to us this term seats 110 and our class is 105 so it's very crowded. The air conditioning can't keep up with our sweating bodies so it is typically very stuffy and warm, not to mention cramped. When we're not in the lab, we're in that classroom and every day we have four hours straight in the same seat. It is just less than torturous. But we will get used to it. No body said becoming a vet would be easy.

Home Stretch

I am entering finals week and am so excited to be going home soon! I had my first final on Friday in anatomy and was thrilled to get an A. I have finals all of this week and then I'm packing up and getting off the island. I have been studying a lot and have been suffering from headaches everyday. I'm not sure if it's from constantly reading small print or from stress or if it's from the always changing weather. The pressure system here changes hourly and that tends to mess with my head. So I've been religiously taking Excedrin and keeping my caffeine levels high. It's not the greatest, but what can you do?

Last weekend three of the girls from my class and I went horseback riding. We found a flyer on the wall of the gym at school and contacted him in advance. His "stable" was down a dirt road that looks like it gets washed out all the time.  The stable was concrete walls which were divided into stall-like spaces. He has twenty horses, but only rents out eight of them. We were all pleasantly surprised that they all seemed to be well taken care of and were at an appropriate weight. He said he got a couple of them from Trinidad and one from St. Kitt's, but the rest were born here. He has one Thoroughbred stallion and three or four mares who he said are continuously pregnant. The SGU students come every year to castrate his babies because he said he can only handle one stallion at a time, so it looks like I will be seeing those horses again in a couple years.

We rode on trails near his property which eventually dead ended into the ocean. The horses were a little green (meaning they weren't very well trained) but we all knew how to ride so we were alright with it. When we got to the ocean, Annita's horse started pawing at the water. Just as I was saying, "Be careful, it looks like your horse wants to lay down," mine laid down in the sand and luckily I was able to hop off quickly before he rolled.  I hauled him up and climbed back on.  As soon as we turned around to go back to the stables, all of our horses perked up because they knew they were going home. My horse started acting up so badly and was all over the trail and it was all I could do to hold him back. Suddenly he burst into a canter and I couldn't get him to stop. I haven't been on a runaway horse in probably seven years and so needless to say it was a little nerve wracking. But luckily I was able to regain control of his head and we were able to finish our ride without much problem. Just as we got back to the stables my horse bucked really hard and almost kicked April's horse. He was such a brat! But we had lots of fun and it was nice just to be around horses. I can't wait to go home to my horse and hug him and thank him for being so good!

When we first got on the island, some of the professors at orientation told us that we will know when it's time to go home when everything about the island is driving us crazy. It's gotten to that point. I have been studying all day and decided to walk across the street to the grocery store to get a few things. There has been loud music going on all day and even with my windows closed I can hear it. It wound up being a huge group exercise class on the cricket field across the street from my apartment. There were probably 200 people doing aerobics together with three men on a stage leading it. Just as I got outside it was at the end of their class and an announcement came over the speakers. "Walking is good for you. To determine how fast you should walk, try using the talk test. You should be able to easily hold a conversation while walking. If you find that you are getting breathless, you are walking too fast. Try walking 20 minutes, three times a week. If you find that this is tiring, decrease the amount that you walk." They don't think you should become breathless? No wonder everything happens so slowly on the island!! It would be horrible to elevate your heart rate and breath hard! Grenada promotes laziness.

Then I was at the grocery store and had seven things in my basket. As I set my basket on the check stand to unload my groceries onto the conveyor belt, a Grenadian girl ran up and said, "Do you mind if I go ahead of you?" All so had was a box of tampons, so how could I say no to that? I told her it wasn't a problem. She went through and I had all of my groceries unloaded. Before the checker could advance the conveyor so that my groceries were next to her to check, a Grenadian man swoops in front of me and puts five things on the belt. I looked at him disbelievingly and he didn't say anything. I looked at the checker and she just started checking his order! I can't believe how rude the people are here! I understand that we are Americans so they think we don't belong here, but there's not reason to be rude. We support Grenada's economy. They should at least be thankful for that. I could have said something, but I was alone and didn't want to cause any problems. I am just very sick of that kind of stuff happening to me all the time.

Ten more days and I will be on a plane back to the great land of California. I can't wait! But until then, time to get back to studying.

School

I recently received an email from my aunt telling me she enjoyed reading my blog, but never seems to hear much about school. I usually just blog about things that I think are funny and activities that I get to do outside of school. School down here is very similar to any other place. I go to class five days a week starting at 9AM. Some days I'm done by 3PM. Others I'm done by 7PM. During my breaks I study and go to the gym. The school gym is free for us to use. It's not very well air conditioned, but there are treadmills, elliptical machines, stationary bicycles and an array of weights, benches and weight machines. Nothing is really top of the line, but it allows for a good workout. And while exercising in a room that isn't very cool isn't the most pleasant, it really makes you sweat and work hard. I also run around the giant field in front of my apartment in the evenings sometimes. There is typically youth soccer or cricket being played. I haven't really gotten the basics of cricket yet, but it is very weird to watch because of the weird bat and the fact that there is only one base. But it's a huge game down here so I see it often.

We went on a field trip with my nutrition class last week. We went to Laura Goat Farm to see how they fed their goats. At Cal Poly we had goats and they ate hay like typical American goats. But in the Caribbean, it's not dry enough to grow hay, so they feed them what I would have called branches and weeds, but they were very excited about the mixture of feeds they feed to their goats. They had probably 40 goats and they were all in a barn in individual little stalls. The barn was weird because it was up on stilts so that waste product produced by the goats could fall under and be raked up by the workers. The thing that all of us were wondering was what if you're under the barn raking when a goat decided to bless you with a shower? No one seemed to care. The farm was created by the Grenadian Department of Agriculture to learn about more economical ways of keeping a goat farm and to teach other goat farmers better management techniques. They showed us their "food processing station" and we were all so... impressed... that we didn't even have anything to say about it. They had long branches that they needed chopping, so they had a wooden table which was made out of 2x4s hammered together. It was leaning severely to one side and looked as if it was about to fall at any minute. One side of the table was solid wood, the other side was a cut out so that any feed "processed" could fall through into collection bags. The blade they had to chop the food was a machete which was screwed onto the table on the tip side of the blade. The operator raised the handle and then chopped down to chop the feed. We were sure our professor was going to chop his hand off in this makeshift paper cutter type contraption. But thank goodness he didn't. After taking us to wade through muddy grass to show us different types of feeds (it had been raining all day, so the ground was very soft, which made the air particularly potent), he told us, "Before we go, I want to show you the feces." He literally was excited to show us a pile of poop! They sold the goat poop by the bag to farmers as fertilizer, which is smart, but not all that exciting to look at. Then we boarded the bus and tried not to throw up as the bus driver drove breakneck speed down the twisty, windy mountain road. I will be so thankful to drive myself at home!

Then on Saturday, our Veterinary Science class had a field trip to our other professor's house. It was also a BBQ, so we all brought different things to eat. My contribution was cookies. It's interesting trying to bake cookies on a foil pan in an oven that doesn't say how hot it gets and mix the dough without a mixer. But they turned out pretty good. I have, however, discovered that I have been spoiled by the fact that my mom's kitchen has two ovens so I can bake more than one batch at a time. In my eventual house I would like two ovens. Anyway, back to the field trip. We all got on the bus and went to her house. She is a nice lady and claims that she is an "animal behaviorist," but I think that's just a nice way of saying animal hoarder. She had 17 dogs, all of whom came bounding to the gate to greet us. Luckily most of them were small so we didn't get knocked over. She had six or seven tortoises, countless birds, countless guinea pigs, and two cats, one of which was blind. She also had guppy ponds all over her yard. Her property was beautiful and we enjoyed handling the birds and petting the dogs. We all miss our dogs! It was also nice to get to go to a BBQ at someone's house and feel like normal humans, instead of being holed up in apartments and dorms studying nonstop.

Another story about school involves my anatomy lab. On the first week of school we all got into groups of four and each group was given a dog. They are all preserved in formaldehyde, but we have skinned them to look at superficial and deep muscles, we have opened them up to study their heart, lungs, liver, digestive and reproductive systems. We spray them with formaldehyde when we put them away, but week after week of chopping away at our dogs have left them a little worse for wear. Luckily our dog is doing pretty well, but one group's started to grow mold so it's green! Another's smells so badly I'm not sure how they can stand it. One drawback to putting so much formaldehyde in our dog is that just standing there working on her makes my eyes burn and run. Sometimes my professor gets out buckets of hearts that are floating in formaldehyde and it's all I can do to keep my eyes open. All of that is pretty bad, but nothing is nearly as horrible as the donkeys. The students further along in vet school have to dissect donkeys, and while I'm sure it's interesting, when you walk into the cooler to get your dog, there are donkey parts hanging from the ceiling, which is a bit unpleasant. But the absolute WORST part about it is the fact that they have barrels of donkey legs. The barrels are filled with formaldehyde and the legs are in there so that the hooves stick out of the surface. Not only is it a bit morbid, but it smells sooooooo bad!! I might have to get a mask when it comes time to dissect them. But that's all the joys of becoming a vet.

I have one more week of lectures and then a week of finals. Then I get to come home! I'm really excited about it. We all talk about the first thing we are going to do, first thing we are going to eat, etc. 18 days until I'm home!

Easter weekend

I was fortunate enough that Nick was able to come down to Grenada for Easter. Since he's in the army it's not easy to get time off, but he was able to beg the right people and came down here.  He landed on Wednesday night after I got out of class. I hadn't been back to the airport since I landed and I wasn't exactly sure how I was going to get there. But luckily another girl in my class had her husband on the same flight and we were able to borrow a car to go pick them up. We drove down the road and found the airport. It's not hard to find and you can see it from the the school, but we never go down that road and it's not well marked, so fortunately we just ran into the parking lot. We waited impatiently and finally got the guys! The first night Nick and I went to Owl's, which is a restaurant/bar on the beach for dinner. The next day I had a couple of short classes, but Nick and I were still able to walk on the beach and run a few errands. That night we went to a bar called Old Skool Pub to watch one of our friends play the drums in a band the vet students have made. They played various rock songs and we had fun watching.

Friday morning we woke up early and met a few friends downstairs to catch  a taxi. Our plans were to go to Seven Sisters, which are water falls on the northern part of the island.  As I've explained before the taxis here are actually small vans which are typically packed as full as they can go and the drivers drive really fast and swerve through traffic. The students call them Reggae buses; you can imagine the music typically blasting.  The good news is they usually only cost between $2.50 - $6 EC so it's a really cheap form of transportation.  We took the Number 1 bus to St. George's to the bus depot so that we could catch the Number 4 bus to Seven Sisters. However, we didn't take into account that Grenada is a highly Catholic country and so on Good Friday the island practically shuts down. There weren't any 4 buses. Luckily there was a 1 bus who agreed to take us to the falls and pick us up for a higher price. We agreed. On the way there, the driver was flying around corners (Nick swears we were on three wheels at one point) and accelerating and braking hard. Getting easily car sick is not a good quality to have when riding in a Reggae bus. On the way there our driver stopped on a road to talk to a car who was passing going the other way. The driver of the other car gave our driver a cup of red wine. It isn't illegal to drink and drive in Grenada, you just have to wear your seat belt! Our driver said, "You see how it is in Grenada? Always a good time." We unfortunately already knew.

We finally got to the falls where he gave us walking sticks and told us he'd be back in a few hours. At first we all kind of laughed about the sticks because we didn't really think we'd need them. As the hike went on we were so glad to have them!! At points there were uneven steps carved into the dirt, but they were very old and often non-existent. Then after a while there weren't any more steps and often we had to climb over boulders and walk through muddy paths. That was the easy part as we were yet to find out. We came to a river and walked across boulders to the other side where we found several locals cooking something on a rock. They were all wearing just tattered shorts and had long dreadlocks. There were kids fishing for craw fish with strings tied to sticks. We weren't sure but it looked like they lived there. There was also a small gathering of tourists around this guy who apparently was called "Super Butterfly." He was wearing a bandanna on his head with the Grenadian colors (red, yellow and green) along with a matching jersey tucked into matching shorts and to top it off, he had red, yellow and green jelly sandals on. Remember those sandals from the 80s and 90s? He was wearing them. There were two waterfalls; one that he said was 35 feet high and one that was shorter. These were the bottom two of the falls. He asked if any of us wanted to jump off of them and told us he would demonstrate. He proceeded to climb a cliff, which I have no idea how he found places to put his feet, and got to the top of the waterfall. He stood with his back to us and did a back flip 35 feet into the water! Then he came up and dove off the smaller one, which wasn't really that small for a dive.  He told us that in order to "enjoy de moments" of the falls we had to jump from one to the next, but once we decided to jump from the top one, the only way down was to jump down every single one. We couldn't walk if we didn't want to jump one of them. We all decided that wasn't our cup of tea, especially since we couldn't see any of the other ones.

 Then he asked us if we wanted to see Honeymoon Falls, which is the first fall in Seven Sisters. We agreed and he lead some other students and us to a path, which after a little bit wasn't a really a path at all. We crossed the river constantly and the only way across was to go across on boulders. One of the girls with us is only 4'11" and she had a really hard time stepping to some of them. Every step was precarious and we had to rely on our walking sticks a lot. After probably 25 minutes of hiking we got to a point where there weren't any rocks and we just had to wade through the stream. Then, with his help, we climbed up a rock where water was running and through a little gully and finally saw Honeymoon falls. It was very pretty and we were able to swim in the pool below. We finally got back to where we had first found him and he informed us that we needed to pay him $40 EC for the tour. Very typical. But since he had a rusty machete and the other people had sharpened sticks, we paid him with a smile. He told us to "enjoy de moments" many more times. Keep in mind, the entire time we were with him he was chain-smoking joints. I am not sure I have ever seen anyone smoke so much weed ever, and I've been living here for a while!  We hiked back and while we were waiting for the bus, Super Butterfly showed up and went behind a shack. He reappeared and was changed into nice jeans, a Gucci shirt, and looked very nice. He said he was going to go spend time with his family. TIG. We took the Reggae bus back to Grand Anse and were thankful to make it alive after getting off the bus.

Friday night we went to campus and a group of us played kickball. I don't think I've played that since elementary school, and it definitely showed. Luckily I wasn't the only one who wasn't skilled in the game and we all had fun.

Saturday morning 17 of us went snorkeling. We found a place on the beach at a resort where, for $60 US, they took us to three dive spots, gave us as much water, juice, rum punch and beer as we wanted and also fed us sandwiches. The snorkel gear and fins were also included. The first spot we went to was the statue garden. It's an underwater museum of sorts where artists have placed statues of people and other various things. Then the sea life begins to grow on it and it creates a man made type reef for the fish to swim in. The fish were beautiful, but the statues were really creepy! I have a few pictures of them in my album that I'll put at the end of this post. Unfortunately I got stung by a jellyfish across the throat and it hurt so badly! The marks from its tentacles are still really clear and it's been four days.  We went to two other reefs and saw some beautiful fish and urchins. That night we went to Banana's and played some pool.

On Easter Sunday, Nick made me breakfast (Biscuits and gravy, yummy!) and then we went to the beach for a little bit. It was a very relaxing day. After talking to the locals, we found out that the kids on the island look forward to flying kites on Easter. They have these beautiful handmade kites and they wake up really early and stay out late just to fly kites. We asked them about Easter egg hunts and they thought it was really funny and had never heard of it. I guess it is kind of a weird concept to hunt for eggs.

Yesterday Nick and I went into town and bought a few souvenirs for people in the army and then we went to a nice dinner at Dodgy Docks, which is on the bay and very pretty. This morning we woke up and walked out and found a taxi. I saw him off at the airport and came back to my apartment. I really miss him and had so much fun with him, but I have a lot of studying to do. I have finals coming up because I get to go home in 29 days! It's very exciting.

Check out all of the pictures I took from this weekend!
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A Day in the Life: Going to School

I don't really have any updates, but today I made a video when I went to school just to show what it looks like out the bus window. Just copy and paste the link into your browser. Enjoy!

http://youtu.be/cdySaMVU8bo

Sandblast

It has been a couple weeks since I've posted a blog. I had midterms week and not only was I studying, but nothing worth telling was going on. I didn't figure anyone wanted to hear about my endless hours of studying the cardiovascular system or memorizing different levels of feed requirements. I am happy to report that I had a successful first round of midterms, although I can't believe I'm hardly passed halfway! I'm used to a 10 week quarter; 17 week terms are endless!! All of the exams here are multiple choice on Scantrons and the tests are monitored by proctors. I understand that the school wants everything to be fair and doesn't want any excuse for cheating, but the proctors take their jobs EXTREMELY seriously and are a little snippy about it. I got nearly scolded because I dared to walk into the exam with my sunglasses on me head. How dare I?! I could've written the answers on them! I'm so glad they caught me; I was in possession of magic glasses which showed me where to bubble. Again, I understand that there are rules, but the way they were about it was just a little bit ridiculous. Another girl got reprimanded for not wearing her hair in a ponytail on the day of the test, so she could have been using her hair to hide her eyes.  We all survived and were so excited to take the weekend off and relax.

Friday night one of my friends called and told me he had rented a car and wanted to drive around the area where the buses don't go and invited me along. We drove down twisty, narrow roads to where the locals live. I knew that the areas where the students live are kept up nicely and are designed to entice us to live there, but the area we drove through made me so thankful to live in Grand Anse. There were countless stray dogs; one of which I thought was going to jump through my window. There were children running all over the streets. (Side note: Grenadians get offended if you call the youth "kids." Those are baby goats. The youth of Grenada are "children.") We passed a "mall" which was essentially a hut on the side of the road selling various odds and ends and there were many people randomly barbecuing. We passed a "nail salon" which was a wooden shack which was about 5 feet by 5 feet.  It was an eye-opener to drive through this area and although I was glad I got to see it, I was also glad I wasn't driving. Wesley, my friend driving the car, and I picked up another friend and we went out to a local restaurant, "Dodgy Docks." It's a beautiful place connected to a hotel that overlooks one of the marinas. I had already eaten dinner, so I opted to get ice cream, since I don't eat it down here. Unfortunately the only flavor they had was nutmeg. I declined, but Wesley got some. It tasted like toilet cleaner. Nutmeg is not good in everything!  I don't know what it was, but that night I wound up suffering from food poisoning. Let me tell you, when your air conditioner doesn't work that well and your toilet doesn't flush very well to begin with due to poor water pressure, food poisoning isn't exactly the condition you want to be dealing with. That is all I will say on the matter. Luckily, since I was sick for the rest of the weekend, it rained and I didn't miss nice beach days.

Last Saturday was St. Patrick's day and it was also the first weekend that everyone in the entire school was done with midterms. So every term the school throws a big beach party called "Sandblast" to celebrate and give us one day of a break, since we don't get spring break. For $35 EC, which is $13US, we got entry to the party, which was on Grand Anse, and a cup to fill with all you can drink beer and soft drinks. I don't particularly enjoy beer very much. but in honor of St. Patrick's day I had a couple. There was green Carib and green Stag (our two local beers), Guiness, Monster, various sodas and water, and coconut water. I waited in a long line for the guy to cut a hole in a coconut with a machete and when I finally drank it, it was not good. It basically tasted like warm, dirty water. But now I know. It was such a fun day with music (reggae of course!), a giant slip and slide, bubbles, and the beach. I had a lot of fun along with everyone else.  I'll post a link at the bottom of the blog to look at pictures from the party.

Yesterday we had a guest lecturer come to my animal behavior class and demonstrate how to restrain animals using rope and taught us to tie various knots. He is the man in charge of the teaching farm down here. He was wearing overalls, a plaid flannel shirt and old boots. I figured he was an old cowboy, but he turned out to be an old British man. He taught us to tie the reef knot, reefer's knot, bowline, surgeon's, Tom's fool, among others. I enjoyed the lesson, but he moved around the room to help us and his body odor was so strong that it singed my nose hairs. I couldn't believe it! It was probably the worst BO I've ever encountered.  But at the end of the day I am a good boy scout and can now tie a bunch of different knots.

At home, a couple of my friends tell me that I am a fanatic about shaving my legs. While that may be true, I have never understood how girls can go without shaving them, especially when wearing shorts! So being the leg shaving queen, I made sure to bring enough razors down here to suffice my need for smooth legs. I have used a couple and went to get another the other day before getting in the shower. Since they were in my bathroom, which grows mildew in a day in the tub and has extremely poor air circulation, all of my razors were rusted! Oh well, I'll just get a new one when I go to the store. I have looked all over and the only razor I have found was a Schick two-bladed razor which cost me $2 EC, which is less than a dollar. You can imagine the quality of this thing. I have never seen a razor head so skinny in my entire life. Even the free razors that usually come in goody bags are luxury compared to this thing. It would probably be safer and more effective to use my kitchen pairing knife that this sharp piece of death. I'm going to continue to look around to find a better one, but I now understand why the majority of women in Grenada seem to have the hairiest of armpits. If I can't find one, Nick is coming down here to visit me in a couple weeks and I'll have him bring me one.

Nothing else new is going on as far as classes. The bus system seems to have gotten worse as often the bus just doesn't come when it was scheduled, but it has been like that to a degree the entire time. I'm going to try to make a video of the scenery I see everyday on the way to school. There are some pretty cool things to see including a dry dock marina, project type housing, roundabouts everywhere and crazy driving in general.  I won't take nearly as long to update my blog this time, but for now it's bedtime. Goodnight for now.

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On a boat...

Living down here and having a birthday can be a lonely time, especially when you don't know everyone. My friend Maegan's birthday was on Friday and so I decided to bake her a cake. I couldn't find a cake pan, so I got two pie tins. I got the funfetti mix, food coloring and frosting and got ready to bake. The first problem presented was that my oven doesn't actually say how hot it is. Instead of numbers, it has more of a wedge that I assume means cooler on the skinny side and hotter on the fat side. Well how are you supposed to know how wide on the wedge to go for 350? I guessed.  I don't have a bowl bigger than a cereal bowl, so I had to mix in two bowls and then mix them together. Another problem was that I don't have a mixer! So I used a spoon and stirred the old fashioned way. I poured the batter into the pie tins and put them in the oven. They baked and came out beautifully. They were really cute because I made them tie-dye. When I tried to get ready to stack them so I could frost, I realized another problem was that pie tin sides aren't at right angles to their bottoms so when I stacked them they weren't exactly even. Oh well. They were still tasty. I wanted to pipe her name on it but didn't have any cake supplies, so I used a zip lock with the end cut off. Nothing fancy, but it got the job done. The cake wound up being very yummy.

For her birthday we went to the fish fry on the northern part of the island. We got on a catamaran and it took us an hour ride to get there. After a long, hard, sweaty week of studying, being in the ocean breeze under billions of stars made everything seem so nice. The catamaran was nice, but it's still shocking to see the difference in safety standards outside of the US. There was a little hand rail around the sides of the bow, but none in the front or around the back of the boat. It would have been very easy to fall off if you weren't careful. We docked and had to walk through the "projects" of Grenada, so to speak. Houses the size of what we would think of as a living room were up on cinder blocks and people just sat on the side of the road drinking. There are a few stray dogs around where I live, but there were a ton of dogs in this area! All of them had mange and all of the females were pregnant. It's sad to see all of them in such poor conditions. We got to the fish fry and it was basically a hundred yards of alley with EZ ups and each of them had something different. There were fried fish balls, seafood lo mein, fish kabobs, fish pies, fish cakes, fish salad. We all got different things and tried each others. Everything was very good, that is, until Wes showed up with one of his purchases; fish ice cream! We all tried it. It was kind of like vanilla ice cream infused with fish. One of the other guys put it the best, "It's not bad, but it's not good. It just IS." And it really was.  All in all, the catamaran ride was better than the actual fish fry itself, but it was a really good experience.

Being a Lebanese girl I have been influenced to find the best bang for my buck. I rarely pay retail price if I can help it. When I'm at the grocery store, I really don't mind buying the generic salsa instead of name brand, or whatever the product is. Especially in Grenada, all of the name brand items are expensive because they have to be shipped from the mainland, so buying store brand can save a lot of money. However, I have discovered that there are a few things I can't tolerate and I must buy the name brand. Milk; if I'm lucky enough to find milk AND it has an expiration date that's not today, it can't be local. I get the milk from Florida. Cream cheese; local cream cheese just isn't quite right. Aluminum foil; cheap aluminum foil is exactly that. Cheap. It's like quarter ply aluminum.

Speaking of Lebanese, I just found out that my landlords are Lebanese. The whole building I live in is owned by an older man who is quiet, but from what I understand is the "hammer" around here and is not to be messed with. His children are the ones whom I have dealt with for my apartment and they have been nothing but nice. They both said they were born and raised in Grenada, but they don't have the Grenadian accent. Also, there are two types of people in the Caribbean; black-looking and Indian-looking. They are neither. I figured they had to be middle eastern of some sort. The other day I was paying rent and finally asked the son what ethnicity his family is. He replied, "My family is from a little country called Lebanon." I told him me too! He laughed and gave me a high five. I wanted to say YAHADADEEN! But I didn't want to be subsequently evicted. For those of you who are not Leb, that is not what you should be telling another Leb who doesn't know how white you really are and that you actually have no idea how to speak Arabic.

I just took my first exam and got an A! It was my anatomy lab practical. Now I have a long weekend and week of studying because I have midterms all next week. Probably nothing eventful will happen between now and so I will write again on the other side.

Tubing

One of the girls in my program has a birthday coming up, so she decided to celebrate it yesterday. Twelve of us decided to go tubing down a river north from where I live. So we loaded up one of the reggae buses and headed to St. George. First off, a reggae bus is what the students call the taxis around here. They are actually more the size of a Volkswagon bus, although they probably aren't as reliable. They're reggae buses because they are driven by locals and typically drive by with loud reggae music playing trying to get you to let them give you a ride. The upside to them is they are a really cheap form of transportation. The drive between where I live and downtown St. George is between 15 and 20 minutes. The fare is $2.50. That's a dollar US. Not too bad. So we went downtown, which is where the port is for the cruise ships. It looked very much like a tropical version of Ensanada. It was very dirty and crowded and all the little huts sold the same thing and promised to give you the best deal. From there we caught another reggae bus that took us 45 minutes north. That ride cost us $6. The worst part about the buses is that the drivers drive like maniacs. At home, these buses might safely hold 9 or 10 people. But in Grenada they hold 5 rows of people and as many as they can shove across. So now we're crammed into a bus that was way too small for how many people we had and there's no air conditioning! The windows were open, but it was still miserably hot. The people on the sides tried to stick their arms out the windows to make more room for everyone's shoulders, but the driver told us we weren't allowed to do that because he might pass too close to another car and our arms would get ripped off! The road to the river was very narrow and very twisty. There are no guard rails, so if the van goes off the side, all the passengers die. And this guy was flying around the corners!

We finally got to the tubing place and they gave us all life jackets. We got into our tubes and started on. It was so much fun! The river had rocks in it that created rapids so there was alternating smooth parts and rough parts. We had a blast. The water felt good and it felt great to do something that wasn't school-related. 

When we were finally done, we hiked up a little embankment and there was a bus waiting for us to take us back to the top of the river. THIS bus made the reggae buses look like high class sports cars. It had a wooden bottom with no seats. They put a couple tubes on the floor and we sat on those and they took off. Unbelievable.

We got back and called for a taxi. They came and picked us up, but the bus already had a few people in it. Remember how I said at home this bus might hold 10 people max? We had 18. We were jammed! So we started hauling around corners back to St. George. There was a woman on the side of the road looking for a taxi, so the driver pulled over and said, "Plenty of room!" and made one of our guys scoot over. This woman had to half-sit on his lap. So the bus chugged along with 19 people and as we went, the transmission smelled worse and worse. Every time we slowed I thought for sure we wouldn't get power again. But we made it to St. George. We got on another bus and came back to Grand Anse, which is where I live.

We went to dinner at a place called Dodgy Docks. It is at a resort in the True Blue Bay and they had the best food I've had since I got here. I had grilled fish with some rice pilaf and grilled veggies and a salad. It was delicious. There was a live band to entertain us and people danced. It was such a nice evening.

Today I studied all day and the next couple weekends I will do the same because midterms are coming in a couple weeks. I have never been to school with terms this long. At Cal Poly we had 10 week long quarters. Here we have 17 week long terms and they are so long! I can't wait to be done and get home. I miss everyone and I miss good food and convenient lodging. But overall I am having fun and getting good experiences.

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Sea crabs crawl. Crawl crabs crawl!

It's that time again. My air conditioning isn't particularly cold tonight, so I'm very hot and can't sleep. It's time to blog. Not too much has happened over the last week. Last Tuesday was Grenadian Independence Day so we had that day off. They've only been independent for 38 years, so the patriotism in this country is amazing. Since we didn't have school on Tuesday, we decided to go to a big event around here that goes on on Monday nights; crab races. They take place at one of the bars on the beach called Owls and we had heard about them but didn't know what to expect. What happens is they put the chairs in a big circle with probably a 30 foot diameter. Then they have a bowl a crabs which have numbers in chalk written on their backs. Bets are taken beforehand on the crabs and then the bowl is turned over in the sand. After the bowl is lifted the crabs begin to crawl. Don't turn your head or you might miss the movement! They are extremely slow. There are different races. The first race was between five crabs and the first one to make it out of the circle won. Then everyone who bet on that crab won. I saw people win up to 15 dollars depending on the odds. Not too shabby. The second race the winning crab was the last one in the circle. The third race was the one I bet on. There were 43 crabs and everyone got their own. The first crab out of the circle won. You can imagine that when the bowl was turned over it was a huge pile of crabs just heaped on top of each other. They slowly sorted themselves out while a huge group of crazy people stood on the sidelines yelling at the top of their lungs, "Number twenty-four!!! Crawl faster!!! I bet five dollars on you! C'mon! No, number seventeen you need to crawl the other way! Twenty-four!" Since these crabs are not the speediest, this yelling goes on for quite a while. It was very entertaining, I don't know how often I'll go back. I could just stand and watch the paint dry at school and probably more will be accomplished in a shorter amount of time. Side note: There is always something being painted at school because the weather conditions here are not conducive to keeping paint on the side of a building.

Since we didn't have class on Tuesday I headed to the beach for a little bit of tanning and swimming. There was a horrible rip tide which is very strange for my side of the island, which is very protected and usually calm. In the town it was like a ghost town. Absolutely everything was closed and as I walked across the street I didn't feel like I was going to get run over because there were hardly any cars out. On the beach people lounged all over the place. However, that also brought all of the beach sales people. People walk up and down the beach all day long trying to sell things to the tourists. There is one lady who I see every time I go who offers to braid hair. There is another guy who is constantly trying to sell these beaded necklaces. But on independence day, there were men walking the beach selling sacks of potatoes, bunches of carrots, Grenadian flags, you name it, they were selling it.

Most rental places in Grenada have a cleaning service that comes once or twice a week and does a general cleaning of your place. It's nice because then students don't have to buy cleaning supplies and brooms and mops. My room gets cleaned on Fridays. Since there are so many rooms in my building the lady is here every day and she also maintains the hallways and staircase. I leave my apartment at 8:30AM to get on the bus and every single Friday she's knocking on my door at 8:00. I always inform her, while still in my pajamas, that I will still not be leaving until 8:30, as I did last Friday. Then, without fail, she knocks on my door at 8:25. I answer the door and tell her that I'm packing my bag and I will be out in a few minutes.  Whenever I leave she's standing there with her broom right outside my door and walks in as soon as I leave. She's really nice, but you can't tell me that there aren't other rooms in the entire building that need cleaning at that time. There are plenty of people who have class at 8:00 and leave at 7:30 or earlier. It's rather annoying to say the least. I enjoy coming home to a clean place, but I dread Fridays because I know she's going to be in my hair in the morning!

While I have enjoyed having an apartment of my own without a roommate, it does sometimes get a little lonely. There are good things about it, such as I never have to wait for the bathroom, but there are down sides like if no one reminds you to get toilet paper, you're not going to have any! That is the day you will be thankful you live across the street from the grocery store. I have also come to appreciate the dishwasher at home. Washing dishes by hand is very tedious and boring, but if you only have four plates and you don't keep up with the dish washing, pretty soon you either don't have a plate to eat on your you're forced to do the dishes. But it's sometimes a good thing not to have a roommate so that they don't see your embarrassing rookie mistakes, such as hard boiling eggs, only to crack them open and find the density to be a medium hardness. I can't think of a much less appetizing substance as a half-hard boiled egg. I guess I will try again tomorrow.

PS. Here are more pictures. They include the crab races. :) http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150690344978275.501272.781648274&type=3&l=4ceb579a9e