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!
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Thursday, September 6, 2012
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!
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!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)