Some Assembly Required...Wednesday 8/31

Wednesday should have been more relaxing!  But...it's one of those days you end up standing around in the heat a lot and you're just exhausted from the sun being so close to the earth here!  I started my day by looking on the post (where students can advertise things they want to sell), and I was happy to have found a laptop posted that morning!  I emailed the guy from Mark's log-in so that he would get the response and see it (he takes his iPhone to class and can check email in the breaks).  I started the day by headed back to TCS, Ltd. (The Computer Store).  They had called the day before and said some stuff in heavy Grenadian accent along the lines of Mark's computer has a fried motherboard and they won't pay to get a new one shipped here, though if I get one shipped here, they will install it.  But I figured I'd pick it up anyway.  However, Mark left me with a series of questions to get answered.  Rachel came with me (she ran my errand with me and I was going to run hers with her).  We walked in and I began asking my questions, but I was getting a lot of attitude in response.  I thought they thought I was a clueless, pesky female who doesn't know anything about computers.  It took awhile before we were speaking on the same level.  And finally I had them check Mark's hard drive (which doesn't appear to be corrupted), but learned that even if we put in a new motherboard, it's not guaranteed to work.  And somehow the AC adapter is shot, too.  I explain that while I understand what they are saying, I still have to get through my questions my husband gave me or I will have to come back to bother them some more.  Anyway, it turned into a pleasant conversation where the guy who owns the store and is communicating from his workers to me (though they are right there and I could easily, and in some cases was, talk straight to them...).  He was born in Grenada but lived most of his life in Southern California.  He is retiring here but still flies back to the states quite frequently.  He has a daughter doing her masters in graphic design at a school in Georgia.  Yadah, yadah, yadah.  I ended up leaving Mark's computer there because there was a possibility of us buying the laptop from the post that I had seen that morning and I could have them transfer the data from the hard drive over.  (I already paid a $25 diagnostic fee [$10us], and they would credit it towards the service).  And then the guy gave me his number so that Mark could call him in the afternoon to ask any remaining questions.

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!

Some Assembly Required...Tuesday 8/30

Tuesday
Yay for a less adventurous Tuesday!  Today we went to town (downtown St. George's).  To do that, you have to take an SGU bus to the Texaco on the highway, and catch a "reggae bus" or city bus, depending on who you ask, to the city.  Jesse, Rachel and I hopped off at the Texaco where the buses seem to linger in hopes of picking up SGU students.  But we were meeting Kat there who wasn't there yet, so we didn't commit to any bus.  But two different buses committed to us.  Here, there are what we back in the states call vans.  These vans either have a sticker that say what bus route they follow or say taxi (or sometimes don't have either and try to pretend they are a bus, but they're actually going to charge you more than either).  The van has a driver and a conductor.  The conductor's job is to man the non-automatic sliding door, collect the passenger's money, and make sure that the driver knows where to stop for the passengers (he's the middle man and the second set of eyes).  A lot of conductors will also open the door and try to flag you down, jump out of the vehicle and usher you in, etc.  Anyway, Kat wasn't down yet, and we were tired of getting hassled and trying to figure out if these were buses/taxis.  So I called Kat and asked her if we could come see her apartment.  We wanted to kill time so both of them would disappear.  Kat showed us her off campus apartment (which I really like), her dog, Gunther, and all his insane tricks...like closing doors and playing dead.  Then we finally decided to head to town, sure enough the annoying buses had left and another bus passing before we had even exited the fenced in driveway had stopped, exited, and held up traffic so that we could get in his van.  We didn't flag him down or anything.  Great service, I guess?

In town, we went to a few shops in search for some cheaper kitchen items than what you find close to SGU. I got a larger pot and a drying rack.  We also stopped for some lunch in what Kat referred to as a "Food Court;" I would call it a cafeteria.  I also bought a bootleg DVD (that might be all they sell here) for $5ec ($2usd) of the newest Harry Potter.  Mark and I want to see it and figured this way we don't have to rely on the streaming internet to watch it!  It's no longer playing at the 3 screen movie theater here.  :(

The mall that empties into the cruise terminal.  I hear to stay away from jan-march because that's cruise season and they up the prices.  It's already really overpriced!

Those are your DVD selections!  Taped up to the outside of the supermarket... And what you buy is a DVD with a sleeve and someone who hand wrote the title of the movie on.  

Lunch: pineapple-orange chicken, rice pilaf, and macaroni pie

Dish drying rack bought from this trip to the market.  

Bathroom shelves or "vegitable cart" bought from the first trip to the market.  If you look closely, you can see how well things don't fit together... 

Drying rack getting some use!

I took Mark's computer to The Computer Store (literally the name).  I spent the rest of the afternoon reviewing stuff in preparation for classes.  I bought all my books off amazon for about $13 a piece, and downloaded the free computer kindle so I can read it.  Mark spent his night time tearing apart his computer and researching what to do to fix it (instead of studying).  I was frustrated because he was in a bad mood about his computer and using my computer so I had nothing else to do!  So, I fell asleep at 8:30pm.  I normally blame this on the time zone difference, but that's actually 7:30pm back at home, so I really can't!  It was just a long day (walking around in the heat of the morning really takes a lot out of you).  That and it gets dark before 6:30!

Some Assembly Required...Monday 8/29

Sorry it has been so long since my last post!  Mark and I are still alive!

Things are picking up here.  Preparations for school starting (today), errands for Mark, planning events for the Significant Other board, venturing off campus at night, etc.

Here was my week so far:

Monday
SO Board Meeting at the university club, followed by use of the pool :)

Then Volunteering at the Queen Elizabeth Home (we do this every Monday, last week was really hectic because they were so excited to see us.  This week, they had just woken up from nap time!!!)  We played duck, duck, goose, read to the students, play football (cough, cough, soccer), monkeyed around on the jungle gym, and just gave them the attention that a child living with 15 siblings and two mothers would desire.  I even got my hair braided by one of the girls!

Monday is not over yet...we had our first small social event put on by the SOs. We went to the Owl (which is a restaurant by day, bar and race track by night).  On Monday nights, they normally have crab racing.  This week, however, their crabs escaped and they brought in the turtles!  They have bets ranging from $3-$1000ec ($1-$400usd) and four different races.  Here is the special drink I got; I'm still not sure what was in it (our waiter had a really thick accent) other than bailey's and a banana liquor.  That is nutmeg (Grenada's famous spice) on top.  

 This is the first race...which turtle leaves the circle first.  This is probably 30 seconds into the "race" (they haven't moved).

This was the last race, where they put all 6 turtles out, and you were to bet on the last one out of the circle.  Some left immediately, while others took their time.  #3 (male) was distracted by #1 (female) and ended up winning by chasing #1 out of the circle, on her back, and being the last one out.  They were given names at the beginning of each race, while I don't remember them all, #1 was SGU and #3 was Oxford.  Make your own jokes as you please....  

All in all, it was a busy Monday.  I place a $3 bet on the first race and lost, again on the second race, but won, and so I ended up breaking even.  We (Rachel, Kat, and I) took a new bus route to get to the Owl, but that bus stopped running at 9pm, so when the races were over at 10, we had to walk to catch another bus back to campus.  The walk was along the beach which is so calming and beautiful at night.  You can see the stars and the city on the next peninsula over, listen to the water, and hear sounds of the live band playing at the next resort over.  Except, we had 14 minutes to make our bus and didn't want to miss it.  We didn't know how long of a walk it would be, but knew we didn't want to miss this bus.  It ended up being like a 5 minute walk and a 8-10 minute jog.  Once we got to the Grand Anse campus, we saw that the fence was locked, and our bus was there waiting for who any moment in time when it decided it wanted to leave.  Kat jumped the fence first, like a pro..., told us where to stick our feet, grabbed her bag and headed for the bus to make sure it waited.  I hopped over, and then Rachel (not a pro!) followed.  She had just barely swung her second foot over when we heard Kat say "hurry up".  I wanted to take a picture of the fence, but I also wanted to make sure I caught this bus...  Anyway, Rachel and I sprinted to the bus (after jogging/running for the past 10 mins) and got on to a not very receptive bus drive.  He can get over it.  It was just the 3 of us anyway.

Monday is when Mark's laptop also decided to die.  He said that it was working fine when he took it to class, working fine when he brought it home and powered it up, but when he started to study, it clicked and powered off.  It would no longer turn on or act like it had power at all.  This continues to be a problem throughout the week.