An average day...

Yesterday was my Dad's birthday, and though we have tried to call him several times, we have been unable to connect with him. Something about not being able to verbally wish him "Happy Birthday!" has made me recognize some pretty intense feelings of homesickness. Thank goodness my sister happened to IM me for the first time in a couple of months tonight right when I needed it most. Isn't it funny how God knows how best to take care of us?

In other news, we have decided to purchase the car mentioned at the very end of my last entry. We went down to the Portsmouth Police Station yesterday to get Dominican driving permits with the seller. We smiled, and handed our New Mexico licenses to the young, but kind officer who points out that my husband's license has expired. He was not able to get a permit, so, for the time being, it will be MY car. Yay!?

We hope that he can renew his license from here, since I've heard stories about how lengthy a process it is to actually apply for a Dominican Driver's License. Tomorrow we should be able to finalize the transaction, and then my life here will change significantly! Since we also want to stay for fifth semester, both sets of parents seem to think they will be able to come and visit us! I am so excited about this that I can't seem to settle down, despite the fact that it is well past bedtime. It has been SO long since we have seen our families, and our prospects for getting clinical rotations near home are slim to none.

I also spent some time tonight reading my friends blogs, and it made me realize how little I have actually been able to blog about during our trip. I am, of course, concious of this fact on a regular basis, but I struggle with wanting to write about the day-to-day doldrums of the temporary lifestlye in which I find myself. I have spent a significant amount of time trying to make information about living here more prolific, and have met with a high degree of success in doing so, only I have really felt a lack of personal contact with those who are helped by my efforts. Whine, whine, whine. My point is, to the few people who have expressed gratitude for all of the information on the RSO site and this blog - THANK YOU!

So, for a change I will chronicle my average day on the island instead of a grand adventure. Prepare to be bored.

I woke up this morning to the sound of my husband sneezing. This is my alarm clock almost every morning. He only developed allergies over the last couple of years, and moving to Dominica from southern New Mexico has done nothing to alleviate his symptoms. In fact, I think they are worse! The matresses in most of the apartments here, including mine, are about 4 inches thick and do almost nothing to support you while sleeping. We cannot wait to return to the States and buy a good mattress! My youngest who is now 4 has not slept through the night since she turned two. I'm not complaining, she slept through the night as a baby so I suppose this is fair. Since every night is interrupted by sneezing and a child joining me in bed (unless I wake up enough to send her back to her bed multiple times) compounded by the poor support of the mattress; I rarely get a good night's sleep. This, of course, means that I struggle to get up and get the kids out the door in time for school in the morning, though we come pretty close most days. We eat breakfast, get dressed, double check that homework, snacks, and water bottles are accounted for in backpacks, fight over which shoes to wear, and then leave the house. Most mornings we are able to catch one of the University buses after they drop of a load of students at the annex, but, if we don't get out the door early enough then we miss the bus and wind up being truly late, like this morning.

After successfully dropping the kids off at school with kisses, full water bottles, and a quick "Hello" to whomever is sitting outside of the school (there are always a few of us around every morning) I head off to the gym. I was in good shape before coming here, but between the heat and the long walk to campus (we lived in Glanvillia in first semester) I got out of the habit of working out. Add to that my picky eaters and the lack of variety I am used to for cooking so I eat a lot less healthy than I used to - and that explains several pounds that appeared. :) All it takes is a good trip off the island for some really great eating and several more pounds materialize. I love working out, and am so grateful for the new gym. The old gym was pretty miserable. Anyhow, I have extended my workouts to fat burn instead of for cardiovascular benefits. After a wonderful 2 hour trip to the gym, my tank top was completely soaked. Gross! I had to run an errand at the bank in my disgusting state so that the car purchase will go off without a hitch, which of course doesn't occur today anyway. After living here for a year I can't help but run into people I know all over campus, so I get a little side-tracked on my way home, and don't actually walk in the house until close to 11, leaving me just enough time to get showered, make lunch, and head back to school.

An hour can seem like a long time to spend with the kids for lunch when it is very hot and there is no shade over the playground, but at least the kids truly enjoy that time. I spend several minutes discussing my current volunteer project (I always have a couple of projects going at all times). I hope to organize the children's school library by topic this semester, and am excited that one of the new spouses to the island is interested in helping me!

One of my big projects here on the island was creating and compiling a guide about island life, suitable for students, spouses, and faculty members. This required countless hours of work and meetings, which allowed me to meet some really fantastic people who I would not have otherwise known. Throughout the course of the last two semesters we met one to three times a week, until April. Needless to say, after all that time together, we miss each other! So, a few of us went to The Tomato Cafe for a wonderful lunch. Eating at any restaurant on the island takes significantly longer than it does in the States, and though the Tomato is faster than most, between the good food and company we only just finished in time to get back to the school and pick up the kids.

Most of our afternoons are spent on the playground until about 4, followed by a walk home up the hill which takes us a good half hour. Today, however, we were blessed with catching a ride home and the opportunity to help out a mother in need of a solution for her baby by sharing some Benefiber. I was excited to be home early as I have some articles to write for The Physical Examiner, the monthly student newsletter, but shortly after reading the days e-mails I found myself nodding off at the computer. I took a nap. :) This is another reason why I'm up late tonight.

I woke up just in time to start putting the house together and prepare for dinner before my husband arrives home. He brings a friend, which allows him some additional study time, and is just a fun change of pace. We've lost our electricity code and are running low, and I decide we need different pasta than what we've currently got, so I send the boys off to the store, prepare and eat dinner while helping my oldest with her homework, I put the kids to bed, put them to bed again, fix them some milkshakes, put them to bed again, put the little one to bed 4 more times, and rather than write my articles I get distracted by my poor, neglected blog.

I forgot to mention a large variety of small and generally insignificant portions of the day. A favor returned here, a favor begged there, several items of RSO business, etc. and there you have it. An average day.

My sweetheart and his friend, on the other hand, had their first day at the hospital today. They were able to observe an echo-cardiogram and a leg amputation. Before coming home they spent time being photographed and interviewed by people from New Jersey who are updating one of their packets or something. Hello! I totally should have blogged about their adventures today! That would have been a lot less boring. :)

The Barracuda and other firsts...

What a day! What a week! What a month! I hardly know where to start.
We went to Almond Smuggler's Cove all inclusive resort on St. Lucia during the break. It was awesome. I didn't want to come home. The only real negative was that if we could of stayed just two more days (like we had wanted to) we would have had 3 rounds of golf inculded in our stay. So why didn't we just stretch the trip a little longer? Because we took the ferry and had to buy tickets on specific days, not just any day we wanted. Riding the ferry may be a lot less expensive, but it is a lot more hassle. Especially coming back through customs. They gave us a terrible time, and all the rest of the Ross students who were travelling with us (like 12 of us!). The lady even asked us "How do I know you are who you say you are? How am I supposed to know that you are still studying at Ross? I'm just supposed to take your word that you have tickets to leave the island?" After we had presented her with the entire family's passports and offered to show her our school ID cards, and, I'm sorry, but this is not where I would choose to move to illegally reside in a country and raise my children (not that I would ever do that anywhere). You would think with Ross providing more than half of the country's GDP that they wouldn't give students a bad time because they took the ferry to visit another island during their break. FYI, the guys at the airport have NEVER given me a bad time like this, and many people have reported having the same problem at the ferry terminal. My recommendation? Fly. If you insist on taking the ferry, pack your passports, your IDs, get a signed letter from the immigration officer at the school, bring your airline tickets that aren't good for another 8 months, and a whole lot of dramamine and snacks for the kids since the vending machines only take Euros.

When we returned home we went on two different church group outings, one to Batibou, our favorite beach on Dominica, and the other to Purple Turtle Beach, our favorite beach within walking distance. Here's a picture of my girls as we're hiking to Batibou.

Then Monday, the first day of my husband's fourth semester on the island, was a day of ... well... I guess I'd call it PMS. I don't consider PMS to be much of an issue in my life, and neither has my husband, but Monday I'd really like to blame my attitude on something like a hormonal imbalance. Nothing was wrong with anything during the day, yet I found myself to be irrationally moody - specifically angry, depressed, and generally cranky. So, when I presented a new and beautiful dinner and my husband didn't like it, I ripped into him. I did so apologizing the entire time because I knew it was irrational, but continued venting steam and ranting about the tiniest things that were irritating me about living here. The principal at the dayschool described this syndrome pretty adequately when she said "Things that wouldn't normally bug you at home because they are small and petty can really irritate you here. It's like getting sand in your shoes and not being able to get it out." (Which does also happen here). So, in my ranting and raving I mentioned hating how I sleep against the wall and have to crawl over my husband to get in and out of bed. I mentioned a whole lot of other things too (for like 25 minutes) and then went to read the girls a story and put them to bed. While we were reading, my wonderful husband rearranged the entire bedroom, AND he did a great job doing it. He even cleaned as he went! I told him this is one of the most romantic things he's ever done for me, and he quickly replied "I'll tell you I don't like your dinner more often then." Yeah. It's a good thing his sense of humor was one of the things that really helped me fall in love with him. ;)

Thursday morning (I wrote the beginning of this entry Thursday night) I saw my first on-campus-cow. They're all over the island and all throughout the housing areas, but I hadn't seen one actually on campus until Thursday. We were waiting at the school to go snorkelling with some great friends when the cow just walks past all our children playing in PE.

Two of the girls were having their first experience snorkelling, and I thought "Wow, this is so great that their first time can be with a group of experienced friends!" My first time was all by myself and I experienced only a small amount of intrepidation. Most of the people I've introduced to snorkelling are a lot more worried about it than I was my first time, so I try to be sensitive to their concerns (though now I go all over the place and it's no big deal, and I take my 6 year old and she LOVES it). Anyway, we enter the water and get the newbies feeling a little comfortable. After awhile, we spot some squid, which are especially cool to see because we're in pretty shallow water. I've seen a whole school of them at Champagne Bay, but they were swimming like 20 ft below me, where as this time they were only 5 feet away! They look so cool in the water, like a football shaped UFO only they are so obviously marine life. Anyway, I got close enough to look right in it's eye (located on the last third of the body). After following two of them for a bit we managed to spook them and they took off. They were amazingly fast!

We all go back to our exploring, and I head off to an area I hadn't been to before (we've been snorkelling at this particular site many times, but I just happened to explore a little further away from the shore than I ever have before). I went back to the group to show my girlfriend who is my chief partner in crime (a.k.a. snorkelling and playing while the kids are at school) the new area when one of the other girls puts her head above the water, removes her snorkel, and shouts "Hey! Hey you guys! There's this great big fish over here, come see it, quick!" You don't need to tell us twice. We head maybe 6 feet toward her when it materializes through the blue, slightly hazy water. I think to myself "It's HUGE! Is it...? No..., it can't be... Holy cow, I think it's a ---!" When my girlfriend protectively grabs me and pulls me back away from the BARRACUDA. I got this pic from photobucket, but it's almost exactly what we saw. It was at least 4 feet long, and my guess is that it was more like 4 feet 8 inches. HUGE! If it weren't so ugly it would have been beautiful. (I find that the more fun I have in life, the less the adrenaline rushes at a new experience, so the rush of adrenaline I got at the realization of how big this beast was - and the fact that it was so close to the smallest of us and swimming straight at her - might have something to do with my description of it's beauty.) It's irridescent, stream-lined body looked like pure muscle. I bet it could move like my Uncle's Super Bee which has a 4.3 Hemi engine in it. You think "that's a nice body" and then it's gone. Fortunately for us, this guy recognized that we weren't what he thought we were, and he swam off at a leisurely rate, allowing me to follow him long enough to know that he was heading in the opposite direction of our expedition. My friends joke that if he had been more aggressive I would have jumped in and saved the day since I'm the fearless-leader who is slightly crazy type. I did some wiki research and according to the encyclopedia barracudas can be attracted to yellow, and jewelry. My petite friend had neon yellow flippers and a necklace on. They rarely bite humans, and it's even more rare for them to bite more than once. We don't taste that good to them. Most attacks occur in water with poor visibility. They can grow up to 6 feet long. The human lure and I got close enough to see his powerful jaws and his ferocious looking teeth.

We turned around after that, and explored the "safer" waters featuring a sandy - and almost entirely empty - sea floor. That part of the bay isn't 'entirely empty' for a good reason - it's my favorite sand-dollar diving spot - and on Thursday it was totally loaded with sand-dollars! We all took home several, including the new ladies who we taught how to hunt and dive for them. We finished our little water adventure in just enough time to hurry home and get some lunch to our kids.
At lunch there was a dog fight right next to the deck where we all eat. That was a first as well. We all cheered when one of the male students jumped in between the dogs and broke it up, but the smaller one was all ready bleeding in three places by that point. It crawled right up onto the deck and sat in the middle of all the students: I think it knew they would protect him.
Yep. I definitely think it's been interesting around here lately.
Oh! And we're car shopping. We've decided we like it enough here to kick around for the optional fifth semester. Mostly in the hopes that our parents will get to come and visit, and even more importantly, because my kids love it here - they are learning so well at the school, and it would eliminate an entire move in their young lives. Staying for fifth semester requires at least 3 days a week for the student in Roseau, just over an hour away. Public transportation has worked all right for many students in the past, many move to Roseau, and then a few rent or buy vehicles. We'll test drive a... ahem... clunker(?) tomorrow. Cars are so expensive here, I really hope that we'll be able to figure out if we're paying the right amount, or if we're being over-charged. The cheapest I've ever seen a car here is $1,500 USD. These are the cars that you would pay $600- $800 for at home, IF they are even being sold because they are more often scrapped. This makes it a little difficult to figure out when they are an appropriate price or not. The one we're currently looking at is being sold for $4,000. It is S*** brown. It's a Honda, the interior is nice, it runs well, has new shocks, and rust spots on the body. Hmmm... Yeah. The thing is, I would guess it is worth closer to $3,500. We'll probably offer that, but I just get the feeling that he'll take nothing less than the full 4K. If we end up with it I will definitely take some pix!