Thanksgiving in grenada

There is not much new going on in my Grenadian life.  I left the complex today for the first time in awhile, so that was exciting! 
Sean has two weeks until finals!  Which means we will be home in 27 days!  We already are debating what to do on our christmas holiday, and both of us have a list of things we want to do.  The first thing I will be ordering is indian food.  I miss it so much!  In Philly we had indian weekly, so I need my fix.  I also plan to go hang out with all of my long lost riding buddies, and see how sore I can make myself after not riding for 6 months. 

This year was a new experience for thanksgiving.  Sean had classes all day until 530, and I had to work all day.  We decided to eat out, and went right down the street to the red crab.  Our friend jessica and Michael joined us, so we had a nice double date.

I can't wait to get home and have a real thanksgiving meal! 

How not to buy a car in grenada

It has been a very long time since I have posted, but i wanted to give everyone an update on our life here in grenada.  After my mother left, my life went back to its normal boring self.  I wake up, help the maid get started, call the plumber/lester/air conditioner people/electricians/handymen/carpenters for the day, then collect rent, look at the sky and curse how damn hot it is, and work until sean comes home at 5 and begs for dinner becasue he did not eat lunch.  How is it my fault he did not eat lunch? Anyways, this is what i do all day, everyday.
I have recently begun teaching another dog training class for the GSPCA on Tuesday and Thursday.   It is a great group of people who come, and i love getting out and meeting a large variety of people from the island.  Most of the people that come to classes are older women, who own local restaurants, shops, and tour services. 
So, onto my experiences with my car.  My boss told he his friend was selling a car, and it was a great deal.  I knew i could trust my boss, and we went and test drove the car.  I looked it over, it looked shiny, the mechanic told me it was ok, and so I decided to buy it.  $4000 later, I was the proud owner of a 1998 rav 4, in a foreign country, where all car owning laws I thought i knew are thrown out the window.  My first mistake was paying for the car before I got the title transferred over to me.  There is no title per say, nor is there a pink slip or anything like that.  There is just a piece of paper down at the government where both parties sign and the car transfers.  I just assumed when i bought the car this would all be in the glove box, but I should have known better, this is another TIG(This is grenada) moment.
LESSON number #1  make sure you transfer your title the day of purchase, or else you could get screwed.  You and the owner need to go down to the ministries and transfer the title at the ministries.  If you cannot get the owner to come down but have his signature on the transfer slip, tears will have to work ;).  I have heard horror stories of people buying a car without the title transfer, and the owner coming back and calling the car stolen.  I got lucky and finalized my transfer this morning, a month and a half after taking ownership of the car. Each transfer costs $10 ec. 
LESSON # 2  Make sure the inspection is in date.  Each car has a small sticker which says the year and month the car will expire.  I had no idea they even had inspections in grenada, so this is an important thing to look at before purchasing.  If the car is out of date, you might even want to put in a clause in contract that the car must pass inspection before fully purchased. 
LESSON # 3, Actually look at the car you are purchasing.  Are the tires bald?  If so, tires in grenada cost about $150 us each.  If you get pulled over with bald tires, the police will give you a $150 fine, so my first purchase was to buy tires.  The next little surprise I found out about was that my windshield washer fluid line does not lead anywhere.  Luckily my plumbers are amazing and are helping me fix this.  My doors also do not open with the key, and the trunk needs to be beat up a bit for it to open.  Did I mention that I need to keep my windows up becasue they get stuck down if i move them.
Anyways, I got really lucky comparatively, the car drives wonderfully, its adorable, and I have AC!, but hopefully someone in the future will look at these things before making the decision to purchase.  My plumbers have offered me way over my purchase price for it already, so hopefully i did not make a horrible buy. 
Alright, rant over, I will be impressed if anyone actually reads this.  After spending the last 2 months praying and hoping that my car would finally become mine, I have learned some very valuable lessons, and hopefully someone may learn from them!

My moms visit: Second Week

 So mom has officially been here 10 days.  She says she is loving her trip, and  enjoying the island.  She is constantly trying to decide which house she would like to move in to in the future, so I would say she likes it. 
She has let me cook exactly one meal, and will never let me cook again.  I made pasta with vodka sauce, chicken, and some veggies.  She ate the smallest portion i would allow, and has forced us out to dinner since, I think she was trying to tell me something :).  Sean and I thought it was amazing, but oh well, I would love to see her try to cook something better.  Anyways, the bread next to the meal was made by our wonderful plumbers so my mom could try the local bread.  It was amazing!  And I thought my meal was a nice balanced creation.

 I took her on a tour of the school last week, and after the tour we went out to the cliffs.  Here she is! 

 The next day, my mom treated us to a spa day at Laluna hotel.  She thought she could google maps us to the hotel, so I took her word on how to get there and just drove.  It turns out the road google maps sent us down did not actually take us to the hotel, but dead ended, so we ended up having to walk along the beach.  It was a pretty walk at least! Here is the beach we walked along.

 And the pretty cliffs which surrounded the beach.

 Here is the beautiful shower at the spa.  A bit of luxury is very exciting for me here!  Look at that shower head! And they had real hot water!

 And here is the light fixtures.  The lizard seems to fit in doesn't he!

 Isn't he cute!?

 Here is a view of the spa.  You can see my mom drinking her new favorite tea.  It is water boiled with ginger root, and then honey added at the end.  Sean and mom are addicted! 

And a view of the landscape.  Very pretty. 

Mom's First Week: Part 2

On Sunday morning we went to a wonderful brunch at Le Papillion Cafe.  The owned came over and talked to us about being born and raised in Grenada.   She explained that during the unrest of the 80's she and her family moved to Canada and could not wait to return to the island.  The food was superb and we all left feeling like we gained a few pounds!!

This was Caitlin's french toast with cinnamon and nutmeg-- it was delicious.

For dessert we ordered apple fritters --just what we needed was dessert after our very appetizing brunch!!!

Today Caitlin and I went to St. George's,
 which is the capital of Grenada.  We started our tour at the spice market and met many very friendly Grendians. They all wanted to sell us many wonderful spices --which we decided not to purchase because there where just too many choices!!
After the market we walked through a one way tunnel with cars zooming past us and people walking the other direction so we are all trying to squeeze through this not very wide opening with nothing between us and the zooming cars!!  I couldn't wait to get to the other side of the tunnel and I'm happy to announce --- we made it safely!!!

This is the view from the water looking onto St. George--the colors of the houses are so spectacular!!  Ninety percent of the roofs were destroyed during hurricane Ivan in 1994 and rebuilding has been difficult because of financial restrains.

This is the restaurant where we had lunch.  It was located on the water and had wonderful breezes and the water was so clear you could look down and see all the fish swimming around.

A guest blog: Moms first trip in grenada

Well I arrived in Grenada last evening and most of the people on the flight from Miami where connected to St. George's University.  The guy next to me was coming to visit his wife, another guy was a professor in the vet school, some where families coming to visit their kids, others where girlfriends coming to visit their significant other.  We spent our time in the customs line talking about who we were going to visit and where did our trip originate.  We had people flying in for just the weekend or a teacher from California drove 4 hours to the  LA airport then took the red eye to Miami Once Caitlin met me at the airport, we decided to grab a quick dinner.  There is no such thing as a quick meal in Grenadian, which was my first lesson in island life.  We went to a little Italian restaurant, and ordered around 9.  At 10, we received our food, and it was actually pretty good!

This morning we went on a tour of the island and I was able to take this beautiful picture of the east side of the island.  Caitlin and Sean said they had never seen the surf so rough --- so we went to the west side to Grand Anse Beach, which was pristine and gorgeous.  We swam and snorkeled for most of the afternoon then had lunch at Umbrellas, which is on the beach.  From there we went to the grocery store and headed home. 

We just got a letter! (Or a Package)

So this has been an exciting few days.  My mother comes in two days, so I have packed everything for work in the last few days. Sean has finished 2 out of 3 exams, so he is feeling a bit stressed.  When he get stressed, he becomes OCD about cleaning and organizing anything around him.  Last week he attacked the kitchen, and this week the casualty was our bedroom.  Hopefully my closet is next.  Anyways, we got a large package (38 lbs) from my mother today, and it was filled will all types of fun stuff.  I got new business cloths, organizational items, old bay, zip block bags, and a blender!  Here is a pile of clothing before I threw it into my closet.

I decided to organize our birthday cards from last month, and it took up a good bit of space.  It also brought a bit of color to our white walls!

Here is our new organized room, our 156 square foot apartment almost looks good!

Here is our bathroom, with our new towels, and snorkel set next to the shower.  I cannot wait to use it and take pictures under water!

And here is our new towel rack that my mom sent us.  We really did not have a good place to dry towels, so this is great!
Anyways, I have a ton to do to get ready for my mom.  I am sure there will be a ton of posts once she gets here!

Sheep, mexican food, and midterms

 Last night, my new friend Emily and I decided to get Mexican for dinner.  There is a great little shack called mr. chipoltle right in front of campus, so we decided to stop there.  Before dinner, we came along this heard of sheep.  This herd causes all types of problems for the school, becasue they like to wander onto campus and eat the manicured lawns and flowers.  Nothing more entertaining than a maintenance man chasing sheep to get them to vacate the soccer field. 
Anyways, today they were hanging out right on the main road in front of the campus.  There were maybe 40 of them, and they were very very cute!

 They even knew to walk down the sidewalks! 

 This little one got left behind, and then made a running leap across the road.

 This could be an interesting driving hazard, but people here are used to this type of thing

 The motorcycle driver just weaved in between them like it was an every day thing (which it is.)

And then tonight our other neighbor Lenny made Sean and I some arroz con leche, which is very similar to rice pudding.  It was amazing, and I have been munching all day!

Count down to my moms arrival is down to 5 days!  Sean has his first midterm tomorrow, so this will be a very boring stressful week until mom gets here!

Maps and things

 Now that I have a car, I am expected to drive!  Driving down here is completely different than in Maryland or Philadelphia.  First, everything is backwards.  The steering wheel is on the wrong side, as is she shift, turn signal, and speedometer(not that there are speed limits here).  There are also no road signs, no stop signs, no painted lines in the road, and no warnings for things such as large cow crossings.  People also really enjoy slamming on their breaks after a blind turn to talk to their friend/neighbor/family member, and they might repeat this stopping for every person they pass for a 2 mile drive.  Parking lots seem to be the hardest thing for me, becasue I am not used to pulling in spots from the wrong direction!  The other trouble I am having is actually getting the car on.  The poor car is doing nothing wrong, but I cannot seem to figure out which direction to turn the key.  Everything here is backwards, so the normal right tighty lefty loosy is opposite, and I just have not been able to get a handle on it yet.  Oh well, people will see me driving down the street with my window wipers on because I am turning...at least they will know it is me!

Anyways, the top map is the drive from my apartment complex to the grocery store.  I thought you all might like some maps of where I am driving.  Up where B is located is where IGA is, our grocery store.  That is also the location of the Spiceland mall, the most pitiful mall I have ever seen.  They have a smoothy store, and a mini linens and things, so that is all I need!
Below is a map of the first route I took with my car, driving it back from the dealership.  The dealership was up in the mountains, so it was a bit of a scarier drive.  As you can see there is not very many roads around, so at least you cannot get lost!

And lastly, here is a map of how I would go about getting to the school.  It is a quick route, but there are a ton of bumps that make it a slow drive.  Above my purple route you can see the main road of Grenada, and the only straight highway on the whole island.  It has 4 lanes and is a big deal! 

My new car!

 So I figured while I have a free second I would empty my camera of pictures.  We are now offically in the rainy season, and boy does it love to rain.  We had about a week where it seemed to downpour non stop!  With downpours comes floods, and here is a picture of one of these floods.

 This is the road we see out our back window, which resembles more of a river.

 On Tuesday, Lester (My Boss)  took me to go pick up a package from my mother.  I don't know what I was expecting from my package, but it was definitely not what I found.  We got two large pillows, tons of candy, ice packs, and a bunch of towels.

 Here is one of our cute lizard friends.  They look like the ones you see in Florida, but twice the size.  This guy was around 8 inches.

 And here is my new car!  Lester owned this little miniature car long ago, and it is in great condition!  It just had a ton of work done to it, and it is ready to be my partner in crime.  It is smaller than my coup back home, and just so cute!

 I definitly need seat covers, but other than that it is in great condition.  I also need to remove the ugly tint job, but those are small things.  I have two working door handles, which open from both the inside and outside, it drives, and my mirrors even move when I press buttons.  These are big accomplishments in Grenada!

 My teeny tiny back seat.

And now, to end my day I bought myself a 2 liter jug of ice cream.  Last week I brought cake batter to the factory, and they made me cake batter with sprinkles ice cream! How cool is that that they will make anything I ask.  Any ways, it is delicious. 

Painting with a twist

So I am a horrible blogger, but thought I would post a quick update on life.
Work at the apartment complex has been tiring, with my boss being out of town, major disasters occuring daily, and a very needy fiance to play housewife for.
I got the chance to go out last night to a significant other event, and I jumped on the opportunity.  It was painting with a twist, which basicly included wine and painting.  I don't drink wine, nor do I paint,  but it sounded like a good excuse for me to escape the complex/compound/jail. 
I got to meet a ton of new people, and had a great time!  I loaded myself up on hummus and brownies while watching everyone's creation come to life.  In the end, I decided to paint something so I could join in the group painting photo, but it was a disaster.  OH well, sean liked my creativity!
In other news, my mother comes to Grenada in a week!  She will be staying in my apartment complex, upstairs, so she will be near by.  I will let her do the blog posts for the 17 days she is here, since I will be working and playing entertainer at the same time. 
Also, today my car comes!  I bought my first grenadian car all by myself, and am going to pick it up today.  I will post another blog tomorrow with pictures!

In the mean time, here is a picture from wine night last night.  This picture was taken by Nichole Woody.  It was a great group of girls and I had a great time meeting everyone!

A day in the life of me!

 So this week work has been brutal.  I have been doing 12 hour days almost every day, which means my blogging got put to the side.  Here is an example of something I do for work.  I had to choose which shirt color I liked the best!  Then put the logo on it,

 I was all alone on the bus this morning, so I thought I would take some pretty pictures of my drive.  I love this house!

 And this view

 And this color.

 After my very long bus ride, I finally arrived at my destination.  Dog training class!  This is my second week running this class, and all proceeds are donated to The Goat Dairy.  A ton of dogs show up, so its a bit hard to run a targeted class, but we make it work.  Most of the dogs are puppies or rescues, so we focus a lot of our time on socializing the dogs.  We were lucky enough to get an enclosed space this week, so we were able to let the dogs run a bit after we worked on some basics.  They had a great time!

 So many dogs getting along so well together!  It was great.  All of the owners got to sit back and relax as their puppies socialized. 

 And played in the water

 And some over achieving class members even worked on their newly learned skills during play time. 

 On another note, Sean brought me home a special treat after his quizzes and final on Monday.  He did wonderfully and got 3 A's and a B+.  On your left you see two of the four honey buns with raisins.  They were amazing!  And only about $.75 each!
Sean also brought home a 2 foot long garlic and cheese loaf, which was amazing, along with two small round sourdough type breads.   All for 20 ec, or about 7 US YUM!