Thankful

Sometimes I get so caught up in what I don't have here that I forget to be thankful for what I do.  I still love it here in Grenada, but on a daily basis I catch myself sighing wistfully and thinking, "If only there was [a Target, a Wal-Mart, well-paved roads, garbage cans with lids to keep out the cats,  etc.]!" So here's my post of all the things I'm grateful for here.  Some of them are more sarcastic than others, but it's all meant from a place of love.

• An apartment with 12 foot ceilings and lots of windows (it's always so bright in here!)
• A great landlord
• Getting to smile every time a local says anything with a "th" in it

This menu was obviously printed by a Grenadian who decided that since no one in Grenada pronounces the "th" correctly, they might as well get rid of that silly "h"

• Warm weather every day
• Fruits that always keep you guessing

Which ones are the lemons and which ones are the limes?  Yes, those yellow ones are the limes.  Well done.

• Books
• Internet

So much online TV watching...

• A government that is willing to lend us hundreds of thousands of dollars so that Bryant can pursue his dream while I hang out in the sun
• The beach

• The pool

One day a palm tree branch fell on the pool.  Luckily, Mallory was there to heave it out and pose for me.  So, I'm also thankful that no one has been injured in the pool (seriously, that thing was HEAVY)

• SOs who are always around to have a good time with

• Friends (this includes most of those SOs)
• Fences that keep the big scary dogs in their yards
• The critters that get in my house are cute (sometimes)

 Yes, that is a tiny little lizard on my wall!  We chilled together while I did dishes the other day.

• Even when they're not, I have a husband or a can of Baygon to deal with them

 

This is the slat that our mattress rests on.  Forgive the blurry picture, I was freaking out about the COCKROACH ON MY BED!  Don't worry, Bryant got it.  Hence, the thanks.

• Our families
• Airplanes to go visit our families
• Buses

I am so thankful for the buses, but there is a mystery I am trying to solve.  This is an illustration that is pasted to the inside of every one of the school bus doors.  The first one I saw was more beat up and I assumed some words were just scratched out.  But no.  Can anyone figure out what this is saying?

• Curly hair (at least on this island)
• The fact that I didn't have to eat this (story soon to come)

• A marriage that, as of today, has been exactly 3 1/2 years of happy

Day Tripping with the SOs

Almost a month ago now (oops) I went on a day trip with a bunch of other SOs.  We loaded up on two buses, headed off at 8 in the morning, and didn't get back until 4.  There were two big jugs of rum punch on my bus and despite the fact that Mallory and I didn't drink, the other 10 people polished them off easily.  Needless to say, our bus was a bit rowdier than the other one!  We had a blast and it was a nice change of pace to actually have something that took up my whole day.

We started off by going to the nutmeg factory.  Factory is used in the loosest sense here.  There were only about 10-15 workers in the whole place and none of them were working very quickly.  The tour was fairly boring, but the place itself was interesting--albeit rather old and outdated-looking.

This sign was one of my favorite parts.  Apparently their workers aren't supposed to talk to each other while they work?

 

This was the part of the factory where they just let the nutmeg dry.  It was basically an entire floor of these wooden bunk-bed looking things full of nutmeg:

They label the end of the trough with the date the nutmeg was placed and they take it back down to the main floor for processing after three months.  And unfortunately I got distracted having a quiet conversation at the back of the group (boring tour, remember?), so I didn't get any more pictures.  I still think those nutmeg beds were the most interesting part.

After the nutmeg factory, we headed up to the Seven Sisters waterfalls.  Yes, the same waterfalls I jumped off (and failed to jump off) only a few weeks earlier.  I didn't get any pictures here, but the waterfall was thick and brown with mud, as was the pond, thanks to the copious amounts of rain we had.  No one hiked up to jump and we only stayed at the pool long enough to eat our lunches before we hiked back out.  I swam in the pond with some other SOs and thanks to the wind and the spray from the waterfall, we actually got cold!  There were goosebumps and everything!

Here are some of the girls after we hiked back out from the waterfalls.  They are the real housewives of Grenada (more on that later)

When we got back on the bus, someone asked me to fishtail braid their hair.  I then proceeded to braid the hair of pretty much every girl on the bus.  Luckily I didn't get seasick, but I did (apparently) make a weird braiding face.

Here's some of my handiwork:

After the waterfalls we stopped t the rum factory and were treated to yet another tour.  This one was more interesting, but I still don't really remember any specifics.

We all got to wear hard hats, though, and that was fun!

Here are some of the giant tools they used to use as well as some of the old machinery.  Who knew rum distilling used such big equipment?

 

I've got to say that visiting the rum distillery definitely did NOT make me want to drink any rum. 

 

 

Doesn't that look appetizing?  The smell was pretty gross, too, but most of the SOs did sample a lot of the rums afterward and said they were good.  I'm ok with not finding out, though.  After the distillery we all loaded back up on the buses and returned to campus.  On our ride back a group of us decided we should start a TV show called The Real Housewives of Grenada.  There is a definite lack of drama in our group, but we brainstormed quite a few ways we could ignite the drama.  I'll let you know if we ever get our idea picked up by a TV studio, because I know you would all be dying to watch!

Snorkeling and lots of standing on waterfalls

This is very belated because I've somehow become very busy here with SO responsibilities, grocery shopping, cleaning, volunteering, and hanging out with friends!  This post encompasses the last of the Family Weekend fun we had with Bryant's parents.

First up: snorkeling.  Believe it or not, I have all of 2 pictures of our snorkeling trip due to the fact that my camera does not take underwater pictures.  It was beautiful, though!  We went to an underwater sculpture park that is pretty famous around here and had some incredible sculptures, like a bicyclist, a sculpture of the Savior, and a whole field of some dead women....ok, the last was creepy instead of awesome, but it was still very fun!  I saw more variety in fish, plants, coral, etc. than I have ever seen in my life.

I only got pictures of the coastline and Bryant and his mom on the boat, but it was a great morning!

 

The day after the snorkeling trip, Al, Alison, 2 of my friends (Mallory and Krysta), and I went up to Grand Etang Rainforest to see some waterfalls.  We stopped at Annandale Falls first--you may recognize it from the island tour Bryant and I did back in August.

 





Afterward, we went to the Seven Sisters Waterfalls.  This was the highlight of the day due to our awesome tour guide.  His name was Clifton, but he said, and I quote, "Everybody calls me Super Butterfly." (Imagine that in a Caribbean accent and you'll find more humor, I promise!)  He showed us nutmeg, which is the pride of Grenada.

It actually grows that way!  When it's ripe, it splits open like that.  I never knew how cool nutmeg looked on the tree.

See that red part?  It's mace!  And yes, that is the stuff they put in pepper spray.  It is slightly rubbery and grows like that around the dark seed (which is the actual nutmeg) and Super Butterfly informed us that if we had no pepper spray we could just crush the mace up and use that instead.

Here's Super Butterfly, with my friend Krysta in the background.  He had jelly shoes on.  You know, the old school jellies?  His were dyed red, green, and yellow for Grenada and looked distinctly girly.  Super Butterfly also told us great things like, "When you slip and fall in the mud, you need to just embrace and love the moment!" and "This here is your free pedicure" as we hiked down a trail that was nothing but mud.  He also pointed out the local wildlife, like the millipedes (another picture for my favorite little sister here!):

And yes, that millipede was over 6 inches long.  I didn't get close enough to really measure him, but he was a big fella.  Super Butterfly also found a giant termite nest (think about 3 feet tall) and started whacking it with his machete to see if there were termites in it.  Luckily for us, there were not.  I had a very dignified moment when a completely red cricket jumped from the bush behind me, grazed my leg and landed right by my foot.  It was big and there was some squealing.  Then, not a second later, a gigantic lizard ran over my foot, grabbed the cricket in its mouth, and darted off.  Cue more squealing.  Of course, no one else saw the red cricket so they thought I was freaking out about a lizard.  The cricket was real.  I promise.

Then we made it to the bottom two falls.  Beautiful.

Here I am with Krysta, Super Butterfly, and Mallory.  It's hard to get a handle on the size of that waterfall, but it was about 30 feet.  The one below it in the bottom left there was about 6 feet tall.  Krysta and I decided to go jump the falls with a group of other hikers and Super Butterfly.  We couldn't take our cameras so there are no pictures, but it was awesome!  The falls above this gigantic one were between 6 and about 15 feet high and I had a blast jumping them.  Unfortunately, there were also swarms and swarms of mosquitos up there.  So many that I would kill 3 or 4 with one slap on my leg or arm.  I ended up with so many mosquito bites that, at a later date, I counted them.  Between my two legs (knees down only, apparently my thighs don't taste good) I had 78 bites.  I was embarrassed whenever I went out in public because it looked like I was suffering from the plague.

Anyway, we finally got to THE waterfall, the huge one (you can see the size better in this photo) and guess what?  I couldn't jump.  I tried for about half an hour (while other people jumped and I occasionally stepped up and tried to make myself do it) but could not convince myself that it was a good idea.  So here's a video of Krysta making the jump:

 

And here's a much longer video of me standing on top of a waterfall (I have no pictures of it):

You don't have to watch the whole video, because it's a minute and 50 seconds of me standing on a waterfall looking scared.  If you watch the first 5 seconds, you've seen the whole thing.  The best part is I have 6 videos (between 1:50 long and 4:02 long) of me standing on the waterfall.  A lifelong reminder of how wimpy I am, but seriously, I don't regret not jumping.  I'm still convinced I would have died. 

Family Weekend Wrap-Up

After the fun we had with our island tour and tetanus shot adventure (refer to the last post if you missed it!) we did a few more Family Weekend activities.  First was Fish Friday.  Fish Friday is held in a town called Gouyave, which is the French word for Guava and pronounced like Guava without the last "a."  Despite the fact that by water Gouyave is only about 15 minutes away, it took over an hour to get there by bus.  There are no highways here, so the road goes through every little town, weaving back and forth and with lots of speed bumps.

Fish Friday is an activity that happens every week (on Friday...in case you missed that) where locals sell fish to visitors and other locals.  Basically it was a bunch of alleyways full of these little booths where locals were preparing and selling fish.  There were some floodlights and speakers blasting really loud music, basically it was just a big party.

Here we are in front of one of the smaller booths.  There were so many types of fish for sale here, whole fried fish (eyes and all), fish and chips, fish balls, fish spring rolls, crab, lobster, lambie (conch), and lots of other things I didn't recognize.



 

I got some fish and chips and Bryant tried half a grilled lobster.

 



 It was swimming in garlic butter, and he obviously liked it!  And it was only about 7:30 in these pictures, but the sun sets at about 6:20 here so that's why it looks like it's the middle of the night.

The next morning, we went to a brunch that served lots of local food as well as traditional brunch foods, but my favorite part was the inappropriate mints.

 It says, "I want you in my arms," and they all had similar messages on them.  It was almost like those little conversation hearts people eat on Valentine's Day.

They also had this top chef guy who showed us how to make some desserts.  He spent most of the time complaining about how the humidity ruined his desserts (he was from the less-humid Great Britain).

After brunch, Bryant studied the rest of the day until the evening's Sunset Barbecue.  It was held at the University Club, which is where I go swimming twice a week at SO Pool Day.

This is the view from a little wooden pier looking back at the Club.  Pretty, right?

And there's cute Bryant in front of the remnants of our sunset.



 

Last but not least, the set-up on the beach where we ate.  We got a great meal, saw some great dancing and drumming and Bryant and I even limbo-ed.  It was a great night and I'm sorry I didn't take more pictures!

Family Weekend Tour

Two weeks ago, Bryant's parents came to visit us here on our little island.  The second day they were here, I accompanied them on a tour of some of the island's attractions.  Our first stop was the de la Grenada spice plantation.  They had a small building where they bottled some syrups, jams, etc. and an arboretum which contained one of every plant they had on their plantation.

Here are the stairs we walked up to get to the arboretum.  Those stairs (and the rest of the paths) are paved with nutmeg shells!

Nutmeg shells!  They made incredibly loud sounds which, since we were at the back of the group, meant we didn't hear very much of what our tour guide said.  For example, we missed the explanation of this plant:

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that does say "Fat Pork."  Apparently it is a fruit?  There were two locals at the back with us who said it was like Thyme, but someone else said it was a fruit.  Had to take a picture of it, though.  Speaking of pictures I had to take, this one is just for you, Nikki:

You're welcome, dear. :)

This plant had these long fuzzy pink things on it.  There was no sign in front of it, so I couldn't tell you what it is, but I wanted to get a picture with it!

This is a ginger plant, and so is the next one.  I didn't know that ginger grew red like that, but they were some of the prettiest plants there.

This is a cocoa pod!  We later learned that they aren't ripe when they're green like that, they have to turn a purplish color first.

 



Al pretended to be picking it and the University photographer got a picture of him making a great face and posted it on their Facebook page.  He's famous!

 

Here is the "factory."  It was a huge room and there were just these three ladies.  Very slowly putting labels on jars.  Gotta love the Grenada work ethic!

After the factory and arboretum, we went to the Spice Basket for lunch and also walked through this little museum of Grenadian history.  Most of the museum looked something like this:

Yep, those are posters on the wall describing animals and some of the history.  There were also about 6 artifacts (most of them replicas) and a few maps.  And then we walked into the Cricket section.

Biggest room in the museum in addition to another smaller room all full of cricket (the game) memorabilia.  Glass cases full of things, shelves and shelves of trophies and artifacts, and on that far wall you can see a bunch of frames--those are individual portraits of their best cricket players.

Also an entire wall-length bookshelf where every single book was about cricket.  You can see what Grenada is really all about based on how they organized their museum!  Also, by looking at their stadium...

Yep, in a country where most people live in cement block buildings with little-to-no water flow and sometimes no doors, they built a HUGE stadium in which to play cricket.  To be fair, our tour guides say they "sometimes play football there" (football=soccer in case you forgot).

Our next stop was at Fort George.  Al and Alison were expecting it to be like most historic forts (i.e. restored with some museum-type rooms in it), but I knew better.  This is Grenada, people.

 

 

Here is the view looking up at the fort.  We climbed a long staircase to get up to the fort and the first thing you see at the top of the stairs is this:

 



 

 

This is the interior of a bathroom (the mirror and sinks are behind me in this photo) which contained three stalls, two labeled "Male" (there was another one to the left that didn't fit in the picture) and one labeled "Female."  At this point, does it really matter which stall I use?  My favorite part is that someone wrote "Out of Order" in marker on the door of the female stall and that there are two male stalls and only one female.  I'm betting whoever made this has never seen the lines for bathrooms at movie theaters or playhouses.  Always have twice as many female bathrooms if you can manage it!

 

Here is the top of the fort, complete with some old-school cannons.  That peninsula you can see in the background (the small one way back there) is where the school is located.

I'm surprised Alison joined me here!  This is on top of the wall of the fort (scroll back up to the first photo of the fort if you need to remember how tall these walls are) and she usually refuses to go near any drop-offs.  The view was great from the top of the wall, though, as this next picture shows:

The flag pole in the fort.  My hair is pulled up because it was so incredibly muggy that I was dripping and my hair was getting wet.

This is the basketball court that takes up the entire open section of the fort.  You read that correctly, the interior of the fort is a basketball court.  This is also where Maurice Bishop was assassinated.  He was pushed up against that wall to the right and shot along with some of his supporters.  The murder is what caused the people of Grenada to ask the Americans to come help, which led to the "invasion" of US troops in 1983.  I put invasion in quotations because the people here don't see it that way.  There are monuments all over saying things like "Thank God for US troops!" and "Thank you, USA."  Most Grenadians see the intervention as a good thing, while most of the rest of the world thought it was an invasion.  Interesting switch of perspective there.

After leaving the fort, we started to walk down the road (it spirals down the hill) to where the buses were when suddenly one of tour guides told us all to stop and wait because the buses were coming down for us from the top.  We stood there in that unbearably muggy heat until we were covered with sweat (about 10 minutes), then the tour guide came back up with a cop car (first one I had seen on the island!) to say that they were going to start shuttling us down to the bus, which was, in fact, at the bottom not the top.  Alison and I had gotten separated from Al but we told the tour guide we could definitely walk.  How far away was the bus?  Less than a 2 minute walk downhill sitting in a parking lot.  So we stood in the heat for 10 minutes while our air-conditioned bus was waiting for us no more than a minute and a half away and our tour guide wanted us to wait longer so we could go three at a time in a cop car to the bus.

But that's not the best part!  The best, and worst, part is that Al went to lean on a fence while waiting (he was further up the hill than we were when we were asked to wait) and cut his arm on a rusty piece of wire.  I didn't get a picture, but it was pretty bad!  Al and Alison spent the ride back to campus trying to decide when he had lost received a tetanus shot.  We decided it would be safer to just get him another one, so we went to the University clinic and he got a tetanus shot that cost all of (drumroll, please) $15 EC.  That's about $5.60 US, which is less than a gallon of milk here, people!  Moral of the story: next time you need a vaccination, come to Grenada where it's cheaper.