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 There are constantly dogs barking, they're very outdated, I honestly have six inches of counter space in my kitchen, and one of my friends has had a serious roach problem the whole term.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.