Getting On

Writing about Grenada and our experiences isn't particularly difficult. Often it's a matter of filtering. I'm not sure that you care that we spent countless hours over multiple trips choosing curtains. They have a decent selection here. They just don’t have the one item that you would prefer to select (something sheer, but not too sheer, and in teal). I would expect more from the apparently only remaining "Linen 'n Things".  I also don't know that you'd care that we have to hang all our laundry and for some reason I am always hanging at least one sock. Considering no one in the house is wearing socks, I have no idea who keeps dirtying them or what they are being used for. Maybe this is what my other uses to transport her marbles to the school yard.

We haven't been playing many games; although, she mentioned that her classes would all be easier if they were video games. I just keep imagining Tetris with animal limbs and at the end you've built a dog or Frankenstein's version at least. Educational videogames never seem to pan out, but maybe it’s because they don’t fully utilize the social aspect of them. Maybe there should be more quests in World of Warcraft that teach you how to spell. For those that don't know, World Of Warcraft is a massively popular online game that actually has nothing to do with Grenada or our experiences here.

There have been a few get-togethers with people (mostly ladies) from her program. It reminds me a lot of living in a small town. You begin to recognize people all the time. Soon you aren't sure if you recognize them from meeting them or from eavesdropping on the bus. The students here are nice, for the most part, from what I have overheard. All her fellow classmates seem fairly excited about school and I get pretty lost as soon as they start talking about the thoracic limb. I’m glad she has some folks that understand what the heck she is talking about.

The locals seem pretty friendly. They don't have the same politeness we are used to in Canada though. When trying to get service their initial response will often seem frosty. If you simply ask how they are and make the slightest chitchat, they'll change their stance 180 degrees in an instant. Something about it feels much more genuine. Don’t be fooled into thinking everyone has woken up on the wrong side of the bed (a piece of foam on wooden slats). Some individuals go over the top though (for friendliness, not grumpiness). Our landlady is currently out of town and we have yet to meet her. We have talked on the phone and e-mailed a handful of times. She now signs off her e-mails with “Love”. I am hoping that this will go some distance in getting a rent reduction.

We have been eating out now and again. One very Caribbean dish we recently had was Rotis (the vegetarian version—they are typically made with meat). It is a bit like a Samosa or a curried Shepard's Pie, but in wrap form. It's very delicious. I actually had one a couple weeks back not knowing that this particular one would have chicken in it. Apparently removing the bones before wrapping is optional at this restaurant. In the interest of saving money, we are trying to cook more often now. I mentioned our trip to IGA. We have since gone again. They have a handy recipe book at the till for traditional Grenadian recipes you can cook at home. One of the recipes called for 1 1/2 lbs. of Dolphin. I think it was called Flipper flambé. (Okay, maybe they mean Mahi Mahi / Dolphin Fish)

I went around and took a few, less than amazing, photos of our surroundings. Earlier I mentioned we have coconuts/water nuts:

Look, see, I wasn't lying.

We've also got some of these:

Oranges...green ones - it's what's on the inside that counts.

And of course this:

Bananas maybe? This thing looks like a dinosaur.

It is pretty neat to have fresh fruits, and whatever you classify the Banana tree with a neck. Every so often I'll pluck something from a tree and bring it in to eat. The one kind of tree I really wanted was a Mango tree. This might be in the qualifications for the next place. Fresh Mangos would be delightful.

To get some perspective of where we are, I hopped the landlord's staircase and snuck up to what appears to be some sort of watchtower. It's a pretty amazing spot from which you get a great view.

See!

I also found that I could spy on my other at the bus stop if I wanted. Her stop is pretty idyllic. You can stare wistfully at the beach before being whisked away by the bus to campus. It actually sounds like a bit of torture if taken out of context, but it really is pretty nice.

Her stop is precisely at that fire hydrant, give or take 10-15 meters in any direction.

All in all, it's quite a fine spot to be. I think I'll go grab a bite and take a dip.

Getting Settled

I mentioned we had visitors and a landlord in my last post. I forgot to say we found a place to live. Some(one) call it a monster mansion. It is a pretty large place and as of yet we are the only tenants. It does feel a bit like you have stepped into a time warp. Being fair, I think this is likely the case with a great many apartments for rent in the student budget. The chesterfield and chairs, which we have since swapped, are gold floral and are quite worn. The curtains were probably a similar shade, but time, use, and the sun have since transmuted them. I'm not too hung up on them. We'll do a little TLC and the place will be right up to date with the '80s. What I am most concerned about is the propane oven. These are in a few apartments I took a look at, but none had tanks that seemed so volatile as ours.

Propane tanks for the oven

* I really want to stress here, we are in no danger and our place thus far has been great. I took a few literary liberties. Those tanks do look a little grungy though.

One of the hurdles of living in Grenada is the currency exchange. The Eastern Caribbean Dollar (XCD) is directly related the US dollar by a rate of 2.67 XCD per 1 USD (the rate depends on whether you are buying or selling). In Grenada many places accept both currencies—this I find to be really great if you are American. It is fortunate for us that the Canadian dollar is very close to the American dollar as of yet; regardless, making the conversion from EC $100 to USD and then to CAD get's a little tricky at the supermarket. My whole sense of value is out of whack.

We went to IGA last Thursday. Thursday is stock day. Apparently every student on campus knows this. It's the day when you actually have a chance of getting things like fresh milk. If you miss the fresh milk, apparently there is a lot of canned and boxed milk sitting unrefrigerated on the shelf. I also want to mention that they store their eggs in a similar fashion. It's pretty warm and humid in Grenada, I wonder if some of those eggs end up hatching. Things at the IGA are generally more expensive than in North America. Despite being pretty far and between glasses of water, we couldn't bring ourselves to buy the EC $200-300 Brita filters (without the pitcher). Our tongues have been fairly desert like until recently. Spices on the other hand are dirt-cheap—we have a lot of spices now. We just need a few things to spice up.

All we have to add flavour to in our fridge is some fish. The fish has been there a couple days now; we went out for dinner at Charcoals and didn't have any leftovers so the (one) ordered some. There are a lot of stray dogs in Grenada and we spotted a practically skeletal one on our street last week. She's been looking for him every time we leave the house to give him some food, bless her heart (and the rest of her). This is also the reason she carries kibble in her purse in a Ziploc bag. She's a true veterinary student if I ever knew one.

She takes the SGU bus every morning to school. Their schedule can get dicey, especially on a weekend. Sometimes they show up eleven minutes early when you think you are in good time being ten minutes ahead. Weekdays seem to be better, or the opposite and they show up a bit late. We have a gate that can get a little wedged. Things get a little frantic when the bus is coming and I am fiddling as fast as I can fiddle to get the gate open. It mostly works out, except when they are eleven minutes early. Leaving the school they are more or less right on time. I mentioned these busses aren't as fun as the Reggae busses; this isn't so when it comes to the off-road, off-route, night busses. Their mandate is to get you directly in front of your home safe and sound. Often this means going on pothole-ridden roads or hills that must be 50% grade. I am glad the busses have ceilings to hold us in. It's a pretty fun ride. The somewhat awkward part is when they drop you at your house. The security guard (he only rides on the night busses) and the driver both stare at you while you get into your house. That's great, and feels secure, but then you realize that everyone on the bus is watching just the same. I almost want to see what happens when an altercation does occur. Does everyone jump out and doggy pile the perp?

There are a lot of other SO's on the island. They actually have a club that I have joined. On Sunday we went to the SO Social. I would have called it a SOcial but I am not on the board and I don't know yet if they are the type to appreciate puns. We met quite a few people; but I am going to be honest, I feel a little outnumbered by the gal to guy ratio. A lot of them are mothers. I have to admit, it does seem like a perfect time to raise children. You can't work anyway and you save on day care. I think the oldest kid I saw was possibly 3. We don't have any kids to raise, so I am looking forward to taking our dogs to play dates. I did meet some guys; I haven't met any that aren't in Graphic or Web Design though. I guess we are all a similar breed.

Finally I have taken a few photos. It is just too bad that they are of rusty tanks; most of you were probably expecting some gorgeous beach shots and some photos of my famously tanned bod. In the biz, that's what we call the teaser. I will have some nice ones soon; after all, I have to prove that we didn't decide to fly into Toronto to campout for the last two weeks. The duvet might have made sense in that case.

Getting Acclimatized

By now I haven't mentioned one of the biggest parts about living on the island. What contributes to roughly 90% of my efforts and energy is sweat. I either am sweating, or I am dabbing my forehead to remove sweat (by the way, this is a lost cause). My dryer half doesn't seem to sweat nearly as much. I suspect she uses antiperspirant a great many places she shouldn't. I just checked the forecast on the weather network. Apparently it will be 29°C every day and it will feel like 41°C. At night it is hard to sleep. Often we wake up stuck to one another so we turn on the AC. We set it to a cool 25°C. Less than that and we already feel it's too chilly.

I have heard a lot of, what I think are conflicting, opinions on the seasons. Apparently this is the hottest time of year and it cools down to something reasonable by January or so. But also, it is apparently the wet season where it might rain for 3 days straight. It has only rained for a maximum of 5 minutes at a time so far. Some people say this is the worst of it, others say the worst is yet to come. If either the wetness or the hotness increases I may stay stationary until things dry out.

Now, I do not have pictures yet, so I cannot really prove this, but I do in fact have a tan. This is mostly incredible because I packed and have been using 60SPF sunblock every day. My tan is farmer by nature. I have considered going out naked, but then there are just so many more parts to put sunscreen on and so many parts I would much rather not burn. And the real issue is that some parts are already more tanned than others—I would need to wear complimentary clothing to the pattern I currently have. I can only assume this is how the invention of butt-less chaps came to be.

The sun sets at about 6:30 / 7 pm every day. It feels a bit strange coming from Vancouver when dusk is about 9:30pm. Here, your evenings seem to slip away into darkness much quicker than you’d expect. The benefit to this is even during winter this will be the case. The sun likes to get up at 5:30 / 6am and demand to pour into our windows. I tend to wake about 3 hours before our alarm because my eyelids are being seared.

I may not have mentioned it, but we have been to a couple different beaches so far. There is one not 5 minutes away from us. This is our quick dip beach. If you are hot, you can just bolt down, jump in, jump out, and be back for tea (right now I can't imagine having a cup of tea, mind you). The other beach, the beach you have likely seen photos of, the beach that is in the top ten list of the Caribbean, is Grand Anse. My sweat-less beauty and myself went with her classmates just the other day. The water is surreal and the surf stretches on and on. We managed to time it right for the 6:30 time slot. For this, I wish I had had my camera. It was probably one of the most beautiful sunsets I have seen. I think the best part is that the sunsets here are likely to be equally as amazing every single evening. The only thing that could make it better was a milkshake. We went back to try it out last night. It was sublime.

Dealing with the sun and the heat has been fairly straightforward. Just the other day we moved into our new apartment. By the way, I have never had so much trouble scrounging together all the money necessary for our deposit and rent. I had to do it installments. This seems like it must be a common thing because they were completely okay with it. I guess RBC, Scotia Bank, and CIBC all own or are affiliated with the banks down here. But, I quickly discovered they really have very little to do with their affiliates when it comes to getting your money. I was pretty stressed out when I could not access my funds, but I was forgetting that Grenada runs on much slower time than we are used to. It does not seem uncommon for a person or business to tell you that they will be somewhere at a very specific time and then show up an hour later, or perhaps not at all.

Sometimes you get unexpected visitors though. Today we had someone come and look at all our trees. I think they wanted to buy the water nuts (something like or related to coconuts). They taste a bit like water and an itty-bitty amount of coconut. The dry one told me that I should stop thinking of it as coconut; she's right, once I did I was able to realize just how watery the water nuts tasted. But, back on the topic of guests, we had a few others. I guess they are common. They are still pretty gross, and they do fly, and possibly land on you. We have only seen the two so far but we have asked that the landlord kindly have the place sprayed. She had it all organized for today; the only hitch was Grenada time. No one showed up except the guy who wanted our water nuts. He seemed pretty confused when I asked if he was going to spray.

Getting Oriented

I was unsure of the origin of the phrase "Hit the ground running". A quick Googleification on the term brought me here. You don't have to read it; I most liked the example from the early 20th century about "...hobos jumping from freight trains..." However, in our case, we were hopping from a Dash-8 onto the tarmac. It was not long before dropping our luggage at Casa Bella before we were on the road into St. George's.

The day we landed was the last day of Carnival in Grenada. It is a national holiday and moreover, a pretty big deal. We caught the bus into St. George's to see the festivities. Sorry, that is an under-statement. We rode, to the fullest extent of the meaning that word can have, the bus to St. George's. The local bus system is this. You see a bus, you wave, you get on. The bus blasts Caribbean music while it navigates the winding roads at top speed, honking at other drivers and pedestrians to say "hello" or ask if they need a ride. In our case, costume and glitter clad woman got on now and again. I found that like California Screamin', the music's rapid beat really adds to the intensity of the ride. There's no height restriction and it costs 2.50EC (less than $1 CAD) on a non-holiday. No fast-pass required.

The locals are very helpful. We were off the bus no more than 10 seconds before we were told where and when to get the best pictures of the parade. In Grenada the population is roughly 100,000. If I had to guess, I would say it seemed like 70% of the island was in the parade—and of course, the remaining 30% watching. It was a fantastic parade that filled the entire street from start to end. We were pretty burnt out from travel and the cumulative lack of sleep, and headed back by about 5. Had we stayed we would have seen what they call the Jab Jab: men covered in automotive oil adorned with horns (non-automotive horns).

It's fortunate we got home when we did, because by that time we were ready to hit the sack pretty hard. We were literally holding each other's eyelids open until an appropriate hour. Oh, just before that we made a quick stop at the beach just down the road—it was fantastically refreshing. This will probably be the first of many interludes that I will eventually stop mentioning. That's more for your sake and not mine; I don't want any jealous or resentful readers.

We caught the boring bus (the SGU, non-reggae, non-roller coaster, non-fun, bus). It gets you where you are going and is free for students, faculty and SOs (significant others). For the price it’s pretty great, but lacks the thrills. Day one of SGU orientation seemed rather hectic. We got the impression that everyone else already knew what was going on and where, when clearly we had no idea. We glommed on to random students and tour groups until we got up to speed. This gave us a great opportunity to scout out the amazing campus. Many of the buildings look out over the water and the entire place is very well taken care of. You can’t help but feel like you are one of the “Others” or part of the Dharma initiative.

The first lecture for orientation was about the history of Grenada. I thought this was a great way to start the program in a country other than your own. I wish this section could have been longer. The other lectures I honestly don't remember a thing about. You'll have to ask my other half. The next day we went on a group tour up Grand Etang. There is a supposed bottomless lake up there—I'm not sure how sound their reasoning for this deduction is. Basically no one has found the bottom; therefore there must be no bottom. You are also not allowed to swim in it and I find this may have an underlying motive. We also hiked a muddy hill to get a good view of the island and to visit the weather tree (this tree has the ability to more accurately predict rain than any meteorologist). Finally, we went to "Monkey Point". I think it may lack an official name, but anyway you should see monkeys here. Apparently they are quite mischievous and have stolen things such as digital cameras. I can only imagine the paparazzi shots these guys get of Oprah and other celebrities that own property on the island. We'll go up there again with some bananas and see if we can coax 'Scar' out. He has a scar on his eye and is the king of the monkey pride; no one can eat until he has finished.

The next few days were full of team building orientations. Orientations I chose not to attend. Perhaps this contributes to my feeling of being disoriented and my apparent lack of working with others. I searched for apartments instead. This was mainly a boring, uneventful venture ranging from apartments that turned out to be in the middle of nowhere, and others still in mid-construction.

Hopefully my next post will be littered with photos. I haven't taken any yet because we have been constantly on the go. If you can imagine a lush Caribbean island with beautiful beaches and an apparently large university on it, you are about 80% there. Wow, I just saved myself a cool 800 words.

Up, Up, and Away

One should typically plan an international move to a Caribbean island over the first 40-60 year course of their lives depending on their financial achievements. With no such achievements, we managed to land our, soon to be, burnt hides on Grenada in exactly 13 days (two weeks seemed to be a bit of a stretch).

Moving house was our first huge hurdle. We accumulated so much 'memorabilia' i.e. junk. Clearing it all out was actually very relieving. We had quite a dump. Our family and friends really pulled together to make this happen for us; our deepest thanks goes to them for touching every dust-ridden item in our place.

Packing was a whole other story. By the way, should you come to Grenada for an extended stay there are some really great lists of things to bring; what wasn't on the list was a duvet—and perhaps rightfully so, but it's really a tough call. We packed all night. We had two large suitcases each; each of which weighing precisely 50lbs give or take a sock. We then went on to pack our personal items (laptop bags) and our carry-ons about as full as one should and perhaps a bit beyond that. And then we figured out how we would wear all our heaviest items that didn't fit in any other bag. The trick here is layers. I question my reasoning for a sweater and jacket in the mix though.

Without going into the particulars of our entire trip, we flew from Vancouver to Newark, Newark to Trinidad, and Trinidad to Grenada. *Book your trip in advance and you can probably find a great deal to Grenada directly from Toronto. I think the only thing to note here along the trip was the varying American accents we weren't accustomed to, as well as the strange looks we got through each airport security as we put a duvet through the x-ray. It was a very cozy duvet on the plane; the thought of using it now is suffocating, however.

Grenada immigration customs was pretty simple for the most part. I'll be sure to have a return ticket in hand the next time through. They held us up for a short while to prove their point, and then let us through with a slightly earlier departure date then I had requested. This can simply be extended. Lesson learned.

Again, we owe some more great thanks. We had booked a night at a Bed and Breakfast in Lance Aux Epines. The owner's came and picked us up right at the airport, despite our final flight being over an hour late plus our extra hold up with customs and finally our luggage delay. This is really just the tip of the iceberg of their generosity. I urge anyone to stop in at Casa Bella and visit Ray and Odessa. Their home feels like your own except you are in the Caribbean and they serve you unbelievable fresh fruits, juices, and kindness.

Their place has basically been our temporary home while we search for apartments. You may notice the background of this blog is actually the view from where they serve you breakfast.

Stay tuned, betwixt our apartment search, or thereafter, I hope to post our first island experiences—including the non-existent monkeys at monkey point.