Rachel and I then walked across the street, (by the way, they have the safest crosswalks here--people never stop so politely in the states), to wait for the SGU bus to take us back to campus. This is normally an every-10-minute bus, but they've been quite unreliable lately and that was no exception. We waited over half an hour in direct sunlight. But we chatted with a Grenadian woman who works as a security guard on campus. And discovered a new SO who is running a graphic design business. Waiting for buses isn't all bad! The woman seems to love talking to students (and complaining about the buses...) and is very proud of her home country. We talked about the recent 400m world champion who won two days ago and how she loves that the world is talking about Grenada. Well, those who follow Olympic-qualifying races anyway. The Grenadians love it when you say you like their country, but then again, why wouldn't you! People are so friendly (minus the bus/taxi hounds) and the scenery is wonderful! Anyway, the bus comes and this is an awful long blog already. And because of the delay and volume of traffic, the few of us took the last seats available and got lucky we didn't have to wait for another bus!
Then, Rachel had to meet and Indian girl and her mother who were selling lots of spices before moving back to the UK to restart her med school. For this, we needed to get off back at campus and then get on the L'ans Aux-Epines (Lance-a-peen) bus and get off at hummingbird dr. And even though the driver didn't know where that was, and there was no street sign, another student on the bus helped us to find it! Her apartment was soOo big! But it was also probably 85 degrees. And they were charging way too much for half used bags of spices and buckets of rice. But we got a few things. Some towels, I got some clothes and hangers, Rachel got some sunscreen and bug spray, etc. Then we walked across the street to catch the bus back. This is an every-15-20-minute bus. But at least we had a beautiful shady tree to wait under. Anyway, a student was driving by and offered to give us a ride. Normally, you would say no, but in Grenada things are just different (I think Mark will kill me if I ever accept again). And so we got a little bit different lift back to campus. This was my third or fourth time being in a car in Grenada, and let's just say windows and interior are luxuries And I'm still not used to the driver being on the right side!
Then Rachel and I walked up the hill to the bus stop where locals will sell food. On Mondays and Wednesdays, the veggie guy comes, and we both bought fruit, Guavas, from him (he had mostly fruits that day but everyone refers to him as the veggie man?). And he let us sample a very tart passion fruit. Then we decided not to buy them! This is about a 3" diameter sphere, chopped in half. Apparently it's ok to eat the seeds, though it was all pretty bad. :-/We then took a break, cooled off, etc.
And then to finish off my very tiring, errand-running day, we headed to Food Fair, the cheapest grocery store around. On the third bus for the day (the Mont Toute, pronounced montoo), we ran into 2 other SOs who were headed home for the day! One of which was Emily who had offered to show me her apartment a few days earlier. So after shopping at food fair, we walked the short walk to Bougainvillea Apartments (still trying to figure out the pronunciation of this...). They are not as nice as what's in the L'anse Aux-Epines area, but they are cheaper, too. So it's a possibility if we have to move off campus...
Then we caught the "bus" home, and even though this is an SGU bus, it's not the big one like you normally take. It's a van like the taxis and buses! haha, but it's SGU and no charge.
My night ended with Mark calling TCS, Ltd. (turns out they thought I thought their workers were incompetent--honestly don't know how they got that at all!) and my dad to reason through laptop issues while I cooked pizza in a frying pan (yes, you read that right; it's what you resort to without an oven!) using pita bread, left over spaghetti sauce, shredded mozzarella cheese (rare find!), and pepperoni. We were happy with it! Also, the internet worked like unusually well that night, which was awesome and not frustrating! Yay for a night when things go just right!
