Steel Drums, Bat Moth, and the Mystery Machine

Another week has gone by and it was a pretty darn good week. I was finally able to the beach a couple of times – Grand Anse beach to be specific. It is known as one of the most beautiful beaches in the world – a 2 mile stretch of soft white sand and clear, calm, turquoise water. Both days were incredibly relaxing. I don’t think I’m having too much trouble getting into the hang of this relaxing thing…perhaps I’m enjoying it a little too much. There is this little bar on the beach called Garfield’s that I bought a really good smoothie at – guava, strawberry, pineapple, I think. Other than that we just hung out on the sand, swam around in the water, and played a little bit of paddle ball. I’m really glad I brought the paddle ball set down – I really see myself getting some good use out of it. In addition to a few trips to the beach, Ryan’s group of girlfriends was nice enough to include me in their girls’ movie night on Saturday night. We watched a double feature of chick flicks, ate popcorn, and had a few laughs while Ryan was on campus studying. I think Ryan is happy that I’ve been having some fun and staying occupied while he keeps up with his school work.

He was, however, able to take a few breaks so that we could go out to eat a couple of times last week (we were getting pretty low on food at the house). The first place was called Choo Light which is a Chinese restaurant within reasonable walking distance from our house. We ordered honey garlic chicken, pork chow mein, and egg fried rice – all of which were pretty tasty. On Friday evening we went to Prickly Bay Pizza which is also fairly close to where we live and ordered – you guessed it – pizza. While we were eating our pizza we were able to enjoy the sunset and the steel drum band that plays there on Friday nights. I wish I had taken a video of it because the band is really good. I love the sound of the steel drums! I even joked around with Ryan that I was going to start taking steel drum lessons to pass the time.

Food on the home front has been good after we were able to borrow Braden’s car to go to the grocery store. Ryan and I have taken to making Grenadian hot cocoa from hot cocoa balls. This first step is to boil a few cocoa balls, after they have dissolved add milk and sugar to taste, and viola! Delicious Grenadian hot cocoa! You’re supposed to strain the cocoa before serving it but we don’t have a strainer that would work so we just let the cocoa grinds sink to the bottom. I have also been making a decent amount of smoothies. Ryan picked up passion fruits at this little stand by one of the bus stops. So I blend up two passion fruits, one banana, some ice, guava juice, and a little bit of milk and it makes a pretty delicious smoothie. Today I spent an hour making a huge batch of pasta salad. I figured it would be a good thing for Ryan and I to eat whenever we were hungry but didn’t want to take time to prepare a huge meal, considering that we don’t have too many snack type foods. I made the salad with fusillini pasta, cucumbers, corn, black beans, red bell peppers, broccoli, and Italian dressing. Simple and quite good, if I do say so myself. Next week I might try some sort of red skin potato salad just to mix things up a bit.

The big news this week is that Ryan bought a car yesterday! Well, a mini-minivan to be more precise - apparently the locals call it a 'chubby.' As Ryan puts it, “It has a lot of character” which essentially means it is the perfect island vehicle. It is big enough to fit his surfboards and seats five including the driver. It is a manual which means that I will need to learn how to drive one. Plus, the driver seat is on the right side of the car which means that I will be learning to drive the manual with my left hand and unfortunately, my coordination skills are much less developed with my left hand. Ryan feels pretty confident that I can learn it quickly and I hope his optimism is not misguided. But we are super happy to have our own car down here because that means we won’t have to spend time waiting for buses. Ryan is doing a visit to a mental hospital today that he had to dress up for it so I took a picture of him with the van – or as Braden likes to call it, the Mystery Machine. There is also a video of him driving off…

In other news, Steve is flying in on Friday to visit for a week, which is perfect timing since Ryan takes his midterm on Friday and will thus be able to relax a little while he is here. We’re making Steve bring down a suitcase of stuff for us (sorry Steve!). I am particularly looking forward to getting my delivery of jars of Ovaltine. My coffee hasn’t been the same without Ovaltine (yes, I put Ovaltine in my coffee and it is delicious!). Other than that, he is also bringing down a few books, two large bottles of olive oil (it is extremely expensive down here), and some other random stuff. Although we’re glad that he will be delivering some much needed items, more importantly we’re really excited to see Steve and show him a good time on the island.

I’ve decided to add a section to my blog called “Creatures of Grenada” due to the interesting bugs and other critters that reside down here. So for this Creatures of Grenada I present the bat moth. I don’t know if that is what they’re called but I dubbed it ‘bat moth’ because it looks like a cross between a bat and a moth. I noticed this bat moth (about the size of my hand - it’s body was at least a quarter size in diameter) hanging out on the curtains in the living room while I was eating a sandwich. Let me put it this way - if I saw it flying around I would have thought it was a bird. Luckily, Marcus was here to capture it and let it go outside. Lizards are quite prevalent on the island, especially where we live. I haven’t taken too many pictures of them yet but they come in various colors – blue, green, brownish, gray. Now I’m not sure if this little guy is a lizard or a gecko but he was so small and cute that I had to take a picture of him – I put my finger next to him in the picture so everyone could see just how tiny he was. That is all for Creatures of Grenada this week. Maybe next week I’ll have some more critters to display/discuss. Although I would like to add a P.S. here and that is that I’m getting much better at killing mosquitoes!

I did my second circuit training class last night and it was exhausting! Marcus added some sprints in the middle that really kicked it up a notch. Ryan picked me up from campus and when we got back home, we had no water. One of the joys of living here is that the water sometimes turns off randomly for a few hours and then turns back on. We’re not sure why but it happens every so often. I was hoping it would turn back on before we went to bed so I could take a shower and wash off the enormous amounts of sweat I was drenched in after circuits, but the water was back on this morning so all is well again.

That’s all for now and I hope all is well with everyone back home!

First Week

This is my first blog ever and I must say, I'm feeling a little intimidated by this whole blog thing. In grad school I could write 15-25 page research analyzing rhetorical theories or any number of communication concepts and yet, I'm feeling nervous about writing a blog. Funny, isn't it? I decided to start this blog to keep everyone back home up-to-date with mine and Ryan's adventures in Grenada. Although, his 'adventures' will mostly consist of inordinate amounts of studying. But I guess blogging is what people do when they are living on an island in the Caribbean and are out of school and unemployed. I suppose I'll get the hang of it.

Yesterday marked the end of my first full week living in Grenada. So far, so good. We didn't have too many problems getting down here, although we did end up having to stay overnight in Miami because our plane was having maintenance issues. They put us up in a Hilton hotel in Miami which was fine by me – I can wait one night if it means the plane won’t fall apart mid-air. Ryan’s roommates, Braden and Marcus, were also on our flight (along with many other SGU students) and stayed overnight in our same hotel. So Monday morning Ryan, I and our overstuffed bags made it to Grenada. Ryan ended up missing his first day of class but from what I understand, it was not a big deal. It is kind of a ghost town on campus because only 3^rd term students (Ryan’s class) are here. Everyone else won’t be here until August.

Our first week was spent settling in and getting set up. Ryan has spent a lot of time trying to find a car to buy. The school bus system is not always the most reliable and Ryan wastes a lot of time (could be spent studying) waiting around for buses. I have used the buses by myself a couple of times and it is not bad. Plus, Braden has a car and we have been able to hitch a ride with him sometimes. But once we have our own car, we’ll have more freedom and a more convenient way to get around the island – I don’t think it hurts Ryan’s motivation that he will be able to explore the island for surf spots. He can get a useable car for $2,000-$3,000 US and sell it for almost the same amount to another student when he leaves. He’s test driven a couple of cars but has not made an offer yet.

Ryan has class from 8am-noon everyday and sometimes has videos to watch or lab groups. I’ve met him at school a couple of times. I think I’ll probably end up going to campus a few mo

rnings a week to go the gym while Ryan is in class. Ryan’s other roommate, Marcus, is leading a circuit training class and the first one is tomorrow evening so I am going to try it out. I am going to miss the body sculpting classes I took at my gym back home and I’m hoping this will be a good substitute. Tomorrow I am going to help Marcus put together a playlist of good workout songs for the class.

The weather has been interesting. We had a lot of rain last week with some thunder and lightning storms. But the past couple days have been fairly sunny. The warmth and humidity are inescapable constants. I think it is back to wet season now which, as you can imagine, means lots of rain. As a result, I am starting a nice collection of mosquito bites on my legs too, although I don’t have as many as I acquired the week I was here in March. So I suppose that is a good sign. Ryan has been like a madman killing mosquitoes in our room. The kill count is probably something like Ryan = 20, Nicole = 1. I’ll have to work on that.

Ryan and I have been to the grocery store – it’s called IGA – twice now. Luckily,

we were able to get just about everything we wanted. Milk, eggs, lunch meat, bread, fresh broccoli, carrots, bell peppers, frozen chicken breasts, cereal, yogurt, etc. We usually have cereal for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, and our dinners have thus far consisted of some combination of pasta or rice with chicken (cooked on the Foreman grill) and sautéed vegetables. One night, I made a frittata with chicken and vegetables and, surprisingly it wasn’t too bad. Another night we made stuffed baked potatoes which were pretty good as well, but that is about as fancy as we have gotten so far.

We had a pretty unique 4^th of July. A couple of Ryan’s guy friends moved into a yellow house up the hill from us. They have a really nice view and a little pool overlooking the bay in front of our neighborhood. We spent the majority of the day wading around in the pool, drinking Caribs (th

e local beer), and even ate a few hotdogs. There are a couple of pictures below - I think you can see the full size of the picture if you click on it. Overall, a pretty good 4^th but we definitely missed the fireworks.

A few of the more interesting activities we have done in the last week…

Last night I went to the crab races at this bar called the Owl while Ryan stayed home and studied (surprise, surprise). I didn’t bet on any of the crabs but it was kind of fun to watch the races (see picture below). At around 5:30 today, Ryan, I, Braden, and their friend Casey, went down to Prickly Bay here in L’ance Aux Epines (pronounced lance-ah-peens) to do some snorkeling and spear fishing. Ryan goes surfing at Prickly sometimes when the waves are big enough. I ended up swallowing a lot of seawater because my snorkeler is terrible, but it was worth it to swim around in the water and see some cool little fish. Braden caught a fish and Ryan stabbed one with his spear pole but it wriggled away – he was pretty disappointed. He got close to a few others but the sun was going down so we were not able to stay out in the water too long for the boys to continue their hunting.

In all, I am having a good time. Most of my days are uneventful. I’ve been cleaning house a little bit, doing laundry, getting some reading in, and so forth, besides running random errands with Ryan. I am also working on updating my resume and getting the job searching started. I was hoping to talk to a few fellow SOs (significant others) to get more ideas about where to start the job hunt but because only 3^rd term students are here right now the SO group will not really be active until August when everyone else gets here. But I will get the ball rolling on the job thing in the next couple of days.

So, I think that is pretty much it for now. Wow, I’m exhausted. Who knew that writing aimlessly could be so much work? I’m sure my future posts will not be as long. Hopefully…