We arrived back to Grenada on Wednesday and have already had more "fun" than we would have liked. But we are here and safe and there's good enough sometimes!
When we left the house just after our decided 4:30am time, we knew it was going to be a long day and we'd eventually end up closer to the equator with twice as many degrees! There's nothing to wake you up like the 30 degree windchill and motivation like ending your day in the high 70s! We did leave our coats with my parents when they dropped us off knowing we wouldn't need them again until next December after term 4 (that's puts me in awe to think about).
Check in and security were excitingly deserted (a big perk of flying red-eye) and we made it to our gate without much hassle. Mark always gets pulled to the side for something and this time was no exception. He had some sort of light in his bag that we brought back for a friend's doctor kit. They pulled it out, inspected it, ruled us out as terrorists, and we went about wondering DFW.
We sat at our gate for awhile and then I decided we needed McDonald's so we went and spent $12 on some breakfast... We wandered a few gates further and found a place that I said looked comfortable, aptly named the Comfort Lounge (Mark gets a kick out of how clairvoyant I can be sometimes...like how I ask how much time is left on the timer seconds before it goes off).
We ate our breakfast and watched the results of the Iowa Caucus on tv. We headed back to our gate with just a few cautious minutes before boarding time. We watched the all too eager people waiting around the boarding area knowing that they almost all had a better shot at overhead luggage space than our group 4 boarding passes...but still antsy to sit in their assigned seats anyway. When it was finally our turn to load, they did not take up our bags (darn! check them! we just didn't want to pay for the extra bags!) which we said was due to the large number of business travelers all with very little baggage. Sigh. I want to see them pack for five months at a time.
But actually the amount of space available was because it was a huge plane! The largest Mark had been on! It was 2x3x2 and we were worried we'd have to switch seats with someone because we were E and G, but as it turns out, American Airlines just doesn't believe the letter F should be on the plane... We were in the middle and isle of the middle section. Our plane had the really cool GPS view where it shows your destination and your flight path.
Mark and I snoozed most of the trip. When it was time to get off, we pulled our luggage out of the overhead bin to find that it had a crack in it and around the wheel. Oh joy. Mark immediately got grumpy because we picked out nice ones on our registry so they would last us. This one happened to be my purple one I got from the Wedding Shower at Joy James Elementary. It was in it's own bin, not squished or shoved in between any other luggage.
We came out about 5 gates from where we departing from with 5 hours to spare. Mark had said something along the lines of "I hope we have to board somewhere on the other side of the airport to help kill time." When we realized that wasn't the case, we decided to walk anywhere else because it was cold there. Miami was oddly around 50 degrees when we landed, and I think they were still used to running the A/C at their brisk upper 60s. We killed time by playing some settlers on the iPad (a board game, converted electronic that is like a mix of monopoly and risk, but shorter than both). Well, we walked probably a mile or so to get back and forth before we finally ended up at the TGIF that I ate at with my parents after family weekend. Luckily, service was slow. Sadly, she brought the check "for convenience" right after our food came out. Then, luckily-ish, our card sat on our bill for 15 minutes or so after we finally decided we were done.
We headed to our gate about an hour before the flight and immediately started seeing people we knew. First, our RAs, then Mark's professors, other SOs, one of the Montessori students (who happens to be the son of one of Mark's professors). Our flight was probably 75% associated with SGU. It was a 3x3, you know, a normal plane! We boarded pretty much on time, it just took awhile as it was a full flight. Our newly damaged carry on luggage got checked. We were in the second to last row for this flight. When we checked in that morning, our attendant had noticed and changed it so we had seats together! We didn't even know they weren't together since we were locked out of the online check in process due to too many attempts because we didn't know which passport number of mine to use!
Anyway, so we sat in our second to last row seats, one of the last ones to board, not having to worry about our bags and the lack of overhead luggage space when I look out the window to see them loading the bag onto the plane. We were right above! Perfect seats for a show...a show of how rough they could be with luggage, and a show that lasted nearly an hour. At least we had something to watch?! Apparently we weren't assigned a baggage crew, and so the guys we had started 7 minutes before boarding time for a full flight where a majority of people would be gone for 5 months. And trailer after trailer of luggage, we spotted one that had our two carry on bags and watched in mild-relief that transferring them the two feet from the trailer to the conveyor didn't look detrimental. Of course, we couldn't see what happened once they got to the end of the conveyor--we hoped there was someone inside catching them and nicely organizing all the luggage.
About 45 minutes into the intense thriller, we saw a guy come over with what I thought was a walmart price-scanner and they all took a look at it and continued--that should have been a sign. 15 minutes and four trailers later, one of the flight crew came overhead and said that they either needed to take off 60 bags or 6 people. The 6 volunteers would get rebooked for the same flight the next day, an $800 travel voucher, a meal voucher, and accommodations for the night. People all over the plane threw their hands in the air, pushed the attendant call buttons, and stood up ready to get off from the first hour off this already too long flight. They managed to find several in the front of the plane. We had no chance. And Mark had no interest. And we wouldn't have had luggage anyway. But offer a student anything "free," and watch the chaos ensue. Sadly for those people, I'm sure the next several days will equate to the same over-booked, overweight flights, and they may have made it the next day, but 6 people would have been kicked off in their place. And I'd like to point out that 60 bags at 50 lbs a piece is 3,000 lbs. 6 people (one of which is in the lower elementary class at the Montessori, meaning between the age of 2-5) do not equate to 3,000 lbs; if they average 200lbs, it still wouldn't be half of the baggage load. But at least they don't have 60 unhappy people without luggage upon arrival? Anyway, once they were off, we were taxiing and took off pretty quickly. The flight was mostly not dramatic.
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| Mark playing settlers on the iPad. |
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| Finally in the sky, and very pretty! |
Relatively quiet compared to the airport where everyone knew someone and the conversations had to be loud. Mark and I played some games together for awhile and then the guy sitting next to him started to talk with us. He was a handyman/Mennonite preacher.
Upon landing in Grenada, and since we had such superb seats, we were very excited to see that they pulled the staircases up to the front and back, meaning we were one of the first 10 people off the back of the plane, and one of the first 20 people in the passport line that got quite long after us! Because we were near the front of that line, baggage claim didn't take long at all. Until we pulled off our carry-on and checked bags to see that we had an additional casualty: the large purple suitcase had lost a leg since saying our goodbyes in Dallas. Welp, luckily, we were well versed on warranty information enough to know that we had to file a claim with AA in order to get anything fixed. So Mark went to wait in the red customs line (we had to pay for his new computer which only cost us "$490.70" from best buy, so we had to pay $25usd on customs. Not bad... I got the information I needed to come back to complete filing my claim with the airline for my second piece of broken luggage of the day. :-/
When we left the airport, we instantly felt the warm weather! And then we were greeted by a digicel phone service salesperson. Welcome home to Grenada. But we spotted Becky, a friend of mine who we paid in fruit snacks to come pick us up! We crammed all our luggage into the back seat, since her back door isn't opening right now and trying to put the luggage in the back by lifting it over the seats didn't seem that easy, and then I sat in Mark's lap as we rode the 7ish minute ride to campus. She dropped us off, and helped us carry our luggage upstairs (too wonderful). We knew that our RAs were on our flight and behind us in the whole line situation and could be at least an hour behind us. So we called security (I wish we would have known to do that last term), ran into a guy very confused about how to get into his room, another person waiting for security, and then a few minutes later, there was a security guy there to let us in to our dorm! It looked like we had left it! We carried all four suitcases and two backpacks inside. We checked that the fridge was working (looked like it hadn't even shut off, yay!), our plates were still in the cabinet, and we unlocked our closets to get to the rest of our stuff. We pulled out the sheets and made the bed. But we were pumped with adrenaline (strangely awake for 10pm and such a long day...). We actually stayed up another 3 hours and continued getting stuff out of our closets and finding their places. We made some broccoli and cheese rice in the microwave and ate it out of the pyrex dish we made it in. When we decided we needed to crash, our house was a mess but we were home!
The next day, Thursday, we slept in a long time...until noon. We got up and continued unpacking, etc, with plans to go to the pool, the grocery store, and Kat and Brian's house. As we were making a list for grocery shopping, we noticed that our cabinets where we left some food didn't seem like they had as much as we remembered. I pulled up the picture we took of the cabinet's contents before we left and sure enough, someone took our food. They could have taken our dishes, but that would have been noticeable. Instead, they took just enough for us to question it, but not enough to where anybody could get caught. Some of the stuff we noticed was missing after referencing the picture: can of corn, jar of peanut butter, our vegetable oil, Mark's stash of gum, jello boxes, cleaning sponge, a 6pack of ramen (that's what triggered it--I was pretty sure I left some food that would be easy to eat when we got back), more canned goods including peas and carrots, tuna, and pineapple. Then we checked the photo of the fridge. We were missing stuff out of there, too! We had an empty box of cream soda. We were missing a 2 litter bottle of red soda, my cocoa powder, mustard, a box of sticks of butter, etc. We know we left stuff in there at our own risk, but come on, don't try to be so sneaky and don't leave the empty can box in the fridge! Jeeze. Mark had even said, "guess who has some cream soda in the fridge?!" when we first checked it knowing that would be the one soda that I would get excited about... hmph.
We just sort of had an angry and empty feeling inside, like who can we trust? Who thinks they tricked us into thinking they didn't steal anything, but getting away with so much of our food? I tried to be the strong one since things make Mark instantly grumpy, and me, the thoughts stir around in my head to where I can ignore them at first but then grow until I'm infuriated. So I tried to calm him knowing that once I had to purchase more overpriced peanut butter and vegetable oil at the store, it would hit me. We parked, pulled out 400ec, got everything on our list plus a few things more. Ran into Abbey, a pre-vet student from Trinidad who had just gotten back from her holiday at home and was stocking up. I know her because she lives in the same apartment complex as Kat, coincidentally where we were headed next to pick up our frozen items they kindly let us store in their freezer. So we said we could take her back!
We finished our shopping, at the slower than remembered pace of those around us, and headed to the checkout. We spent $373ec of our $400 (I guess that's a normal amount when stocking up on stuff, sadly, most of the items were replacements for stuff we should have already had). We then unloaded our groceries into the car that we rented at the end of last term (...on our way to returning it, I guess you could say...). We were surprised when it started after sitting idle for 2.5 weeks when leaving campus. We were even more surprised when it didn't start in the grocery store parking lot. Again, welcome home.
We knew it wasn't a dead battery because when we tried to start the car, the dash lights and radio came on, the horn worked, etc. The key didn't sound like it was even trying to turnover, so I thought it'd be a problem with the starter, which I don't even know what that is or looks like--it just sounded good! It took us several minutes to find the hood release, which was in the glove compartment... Abbey looked up what an Escudo starter looks like thinking maybe I could find it in the engine and hit it--that's how we have to turn on the dash lights 90% of the time. But while Mark and I looked very puzzled by what was under the hood, and Abbey couldn't seem to match any parts to her phone, Mark decided it was time for me to call Becky since we had cold items. I called her phone and her husband answered. I told Jake the situation and he said he was on the way.
About the time he pulled in, a police officer noticed we were having car troubles and came over to help us out. We moved our groceries into Jake's car, and Abbey managed to fit in the backseat with all the bags since the back door still isn't working. I figured I could just ride in Mark's lap again in the front seat. But to entertain the police officer's want to help us, we reopened our hood and he prodded around with his nightstick. Jake messed with the battery a little. Then the police officer went and was stopping every car on their way in looking for someone with jumper cables (at that point, we were just ready to ditch the car that we should have just returned first thing today anyway). All of a sudden, this American girl comes up to me and asks in a very fast and peppy voice, "Are you SGU?" I was a bit worried that she was crazy, but I deciphered it to mean, "are you affiliated with SGU?" and responded with "yes?" She then introduced herself as "hi, I'm first term vet." The first term part was obvious! She had walked up with a guy who is her SO! He took a mechanics class in school and appeared to know more about cars than the rest of us there, so we let him take a look. After several incorrect diagnosis, and the police officer going to see how much jumper cables cost with the SO's idea of just returning them after, he used the nightstick, poked a wire that connected to the starter, and it worked. Haha, what the heck. But we were super thankful, and reloaded our groceries back into our rented car, making sure that Abbey was still ok with the ordeal that was much worse than just taking the bus would have been! We thanked Jake, the security guard, the new vet student, Alex as I later asked, and her SO, whose name I do not know, and we were on our way before the car changed it's mind. We decided not to turn it off when stopping at Kat and Brian's and they brought our food out to us. Then we headed back to our dorm where I unloaded the groceries so that we didn't have to chance it not starting again, grabbed the iPad with the directions pulled up on where to drop it off, and headed out again.
We drove the 15 minutes to LAE where Michelle's house is, the person who is watching the car for the person we rented it from. We parked and turned the car off, and then just out of curiosity, tried to start it again to discover it did work! But at least it motivated us to get it taken care of! We then hoped we were on the bus route (it was dark and a little hard to recognize), and started to walk across the street when Michelle's husband came out of the house to take something to the trash and noticed the extra car. We talked to him for a few minutes before we heard a vehicle coming, ran across the street, and sure enough, there was the LAE bus. I thought after renting the car, I would be annoyed by the buses, but after that day, man was I grateful to be sitting on a hassle-free bus! The LAE bus goes to the University Club, where the pool that SOs can use on Mondays and Thursdays is located, and waits until it is the scheduled time to leave. I made a joke to Mark when we were sitting on the bus waiting the 6 minutes until it was time to leave again, that we had finally made it to the pool!
Thank goodness yesterday was less eventful! Becky picked me up around 10am and the two of us went to Magazine Beach while Mark and Jake enjoyed the last few days they'll have to sleep in. I enjoyed being back on the beach! And I'm not a beach person...but the sun and breeze felt so good. The waves were huge, larger than I've ever seen in Grenada on the Caribbean sea side.
It was fun to watch how people got knocked over or played in the waves while I sat just chatting with Becky and other SOs that came while we were there. We left around noon and I came home to see Mark out of bed! He had JUST gotten out of bed, though! We spent more time putting things away, putting up the hammock, register Mark for classes (cough, replacing the sticker on his ID--their registration process is so silly), helping a neighbor figure out the electricity in his room (Mark tested his transformer with a meter reader--his fuse was blown; we googled the industrial blender he was using. It's 1300 watts. His transformer is a 750 and he plugged it into his surge protector with everything else still plugged in; yikes! We let him make his smoothie in our room on our 2,000w transformer. Poor, newbies...well, he's actually a term ahead of Mark, but he lived in a place on campus with 110v before), making steak for dinner, and then watching 5 episodes of Warehouse 13... haha, a pretty great evening (and mostly drama-free!) to both of us!
Today has been great, so far! I worked on my curriculum for the iPad computer class I will be teaching and finally finished this blog post which I've been working on since Thursday night, and Mark is watching pregame shows. We are going on our first hash today! And since I didn't know what a hash was, I'll tell you! It's a hike through whatever trail was set the few days before by the trailmaster. We shall see how that goes!
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| Starting to look like a closet! |
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| Looks like a bathroom to me! |
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| Ok, the kitchen isn't quite there yet. Mark and I made taco stew after going to the grocery store. We wanted to make cornbread to go with it, but the store was already out of milk for the week. :( |
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| We found a place for the toaster! |
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| It looks like a closet! But it's supposed to be a desk... |
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| No where close to a dinning room table. |
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| More like a desk than Mark's! |
