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…