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.