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.

For new pictures click or copy into your browser:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150690344978275.501272.781648274&type=3&l=4ceb579a9e

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

Man overboard!

Although I'm a vet student, I must say that this first term of school has really made me miss animals! I get to work with my preserved dog, but she's not very cuddly. Most of the dogs running the island have some sort of disease or are so unsocial that they are afraid of humans, so I can't pet them. The cats here are all very feral and have diseases so I won't be petting them either. I really miss hugging my dog and my horse. Who would've thought that becoming a vet would deprive me of animals?

On Friday night a group of us went to a pizza place called Prickly Bay for one of the guys' birthdays. My friend, Maegan, and I got on the bus from campus. There are a couple different kinds of buses. The ones I usually take are just like a normal bus route that stop at designated stops to get off and on. But once it gets dark, there is the "night bus." Now, for any Harry Potter fans out there, let me say that the night bus here is exactly like the one in the book, except the guy with dreadlocks is the one actually driving the bus. The bus flies around corners, squeezes in between cars and swerves to avoid near collisions the entire time. This bus will drop you off at your doorstep if you live off of the bus route. So we told the driver we wanted to go to Prickly Bay. We were going into Lance Aux Epines, which is a neighborhood that neither of us were familiar with and in the dark it all looks the same. After driving down numerous gravel roads, up into the hills, and dropping every other student off who was in the bus, we were suddenly back at the Texaco station (the only gas station I've seen here), which is near school. We told the driver that he had missed our stop and he said, "I know, I'll get you on the next round." So we had to ride all the way back to school, pick up another round, drop EVERYONE else off again, and then he finally dropped us off. We were on the bus for over an hour, but TIG.

When we finally got there, the pizza was delicious. I have yet to have much delicious food on this island and was beginning to lose hope, but this is very good if you're willing to wait nearly an hour for pizza. The place was completely outside and there was a live band playing songs like "Footloose" and "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go." The customers there were a mix of students and white people in their 60s and 70s. We couldn't believe that coincidentally this senior crowd was vacationing and all happened to end up in the same spot. After talking to a few people, we discovered that these were all retired people who live on boats in the bay and come to the island to party at night! Several of the people I spoke with live on their boat for 6 months and then live in England for 6 months. What fun loving people! And what a cool way to retire. That was a really fun night.

Yesterday a couple of us decided to go to the beach for a little bit in the morning to catch some sun. The wind was blowing really hard so the sand kept blowing on us, but it was actually good it was windy because there was a sail boat race going on in the bay. We stood in the water and watched for a little bit until the clouds rolled in and it began to pour on us. The sail boats were pretty small; a row boat by our standards with moderately large sails. The funny part was there were five large men in each boat so they hardly fit! The boats went pretty fast, but as we were watching, one boat started to lean really badly to the side. Pretty soon everyone except two men had jumped into the water and the two remaining were bailing water from their boat! We watched in concern that their boat was going to sink and before long, the wind caught their sail and the entire boat flipped over into the water! We were all shocked and worried about these men, but no one went to their rescue! None of them were wearing life jackets and they all clung to the edge of the boat. But before long, they righted the boat, bailed the rest of the water out, climbed back in and continued the race! We couldn't believe it! The longer we watched, the more boats tipped over, and every time it was the same. You would think they would make the sail more proportionate to the ship so that they didn't tip, but maybe that's part of the sport. Either way it was very entertaining to watch.

I finally found red tomatoes at the local fruit stand down the street from me. He has the best tomatoes, mangoes, papayas, among other fruits I've never heard of. Everything I've gotten from him is delicious.

I have been looking for a good map to show exactly where I live on the island and after a long search I have finally found one. If you click on the link and then scroll all the way down, I live in Grand Anse, which is on the south west part of the island. The school is in True Blue and many people I know live in Frequente and Lance Aux Epines. You can see how close the airport is to the school. The island is only 22 miles long, so everything is relatively close. If I can't walk I take the bus.

http://www.travelgrenada.com/maps.htm#