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.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Sunday, April 29, 2012
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.
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.
Friday, April 20, 2012
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!
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!
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
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!
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150690344978275.501272.781648274&type=3&l=4ceb579a9e
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!
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150690344978275.501272.781648274&type=3&l=4ceb579a9e
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
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
http://youtu.be/cdySaMVU8bo
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
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.
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150690344978275.501272.781648274&type=3&l=4ceb579a9e
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.
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150690344978275.501272.781648274&type=3&l=4ceb579a9e
Friday, March 2, 2012
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.
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.
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