Happy Birthday Andee!

Diana again,

In regards to Andee's last post, UMHS has wicked AC and so it is essential to dress warmer.  For the rest of the island, bathing suits, shorts, tank tops, and dresses are certainly weather appropriate!

For Andee, most of this week has consisted of studying, studying, and more studying, with little breaks to hang out with me!  Anatomy, cell bio, and histology allows for very limited beach time!  Andee and the rest of the first semester students have their written and lab components of their block exam for Anatomy on Monday, which makes Andee's birthday quite mild and somewhat uneventful (unless anatomy of the thorax excites you...)
I got Andee a snorkel set, a necklace, and a baseball key chain for his birthday, which is about the best one can do without a car and with primarily tourist shops at Port!
Andee did have time to enjoy a St. Kitts style birthday dessert, which is a microwave chocolate chip cookie cake with chocolate frosting!  (A lack of oven has made cake-making impossible...but don't worry, it had candles!)  And a very happy block-exam-birthday was had by all!

Worst looking cake ever...we need an oven!

For myself, most of this week consisted of pools, beaches, skype, and dentists!

Monday was St. Kitts Independence Day, and so all of the students had the day off!  Andee and I did find time to do a little snorkeling (ok fine, I gave him the snorkel set early...) right outside of our apartment!  Andee spotted 2 jellyfish, and we both discovered lots of different kinds of fish and coral!  It was not as colorful and creative as if you went to an actual snorkeling location, but for right outside of our apartment, it was pretty good!

 

Tuesday and Wednesday were spent by the pool and beach, as well as random housework (desperate housewife...) and Thursday was the ever-popular spouses pool day!  This type of post shall be a regular occurrence on this blog!

On Friday, my new friend Abby and I took the Ferry to Nevis for the morning!  The reasoning was two-fold; the obvious being to explore Nevis, and the other for me to go to a job interview!

I had called some dental offices in St. Kitts and Nevis, and found an office that may be able to have me volunteer as a Dental Assistant, Receptionist, and possibly Hygienist 3 mornings a week in Nevis!  What a neat experience, and an excellent addition to my resume!  If all pans out, I would be starting in January.  Please pray for this possibility, as it would give me some great experience as well as something to do!

Abby and I were also taken on an Island Tour by the Dentist, and learned a lot about another part of the country of St. Kitts and Nevis!  It is a very pretty yet small island, and it was a lot of fun exploring!  We also went to a very cute restaurant and food market close by to the ferry, which I will definitely be attending regularly if this job prospective pans out!

Tomorrow I am going to church, and if they ever do get us a second key for our apartment, I will hopefully be able to join the worship team!

Well, that is all for now, I hope everyone is enjoying the gorgeous high-of 12 degree weather in Canada this weekend! <3

Food For Thought

Clever title considering I'm sitting in the caf-bookstore-eteria.
I wore jeans and a hoodie to school today....just thought that was worth noting....

Quick School Update

Hey so it's Andee, back from my post hurricane hiatus. I apologize for the lack of bloggage on my part, I've been a bit busy and still am, and will be for the next oh... 4-6 years, but I'm handling that just fine. I'll try to keep this short and sweet so I can get back to the books, so I'll have to sacrifice some of my typical jaunty tone.

Despite waking up at 6am every morning, I'm still excited about each day of school. The work load is heavy, the best way I've heard to describe it is from my new friend Will who told me learning the information is like trying to take a drink from a fire hydrant. This semester I have Cell Bio, Histology and Gross Anatomy (by far the highest in volume of information). Anatomy lab has been very exciting and interesting. Working with our cadaver; though difficult because of her age and diminished health late in life has been a great experience. We have dissected the muscles of the back and front, we've performed a laminectomy (removing the back half of the vertebra to access the spinal cord), we've removed the front of the rib cage, and exposed/ removed the lungs. Tomorrow my group gets to remove and dissect the heart (which I'm very excited about).

I will end by saying that Diana and I experienced our first and very anticipated wild monkey encounter. I'll let her blog about that later. One more quick thing...I know quite a few of you read this out there on the Information Superhighway, please become a follower. We already have 12 which is nice, but the more we have the higher our self-esteem will be.

Apartments, White Coats, and Beaches

So, long time no blog!  This is Di, and I want to apologize for the lack of blogging because I know that reading this is by far the best part of your day........

So contrary to popular belief, we have not had Hurricane Earl for 16 days!  However, we have had our share of shinnanigans!

The day after the hurricane we were scheduled to move into the Royal St. Kitts...but that never happened.  The moment we stepped into our room we knew that something was wrong - namely, that the room had a peculiar smell that was difficult to stand for more than 5 minutes at a time.  As we investigated further, we realized that the smell was MOLD!  Gross!  So, needless to say, we checked back into the Marriott and started looking for a different place to live. 

Long story short, after another 5 nights at the Marriott, a Monday, we were not able to move into our new apartment until the Friday!  thinking we were homeless, we immediately resorted to the ever popular and typical behavior of homeless people and began to feed the pigeons for well over an hour.  Being homeless would simply not do so, another 4 nights at the Marriott! (did i mention Andee started school on this day?)  I didn't think it would ever come to this, but we were actually excited to leave a 5 star resort!  And an even bigger shocker, we were sick of french fries!  No kitchen, no family, and no home makes Diana go what?  Go Crazy!

So we finally moved into our place this Friday, and were finally able to unpack all of our stuff!  Our apartment is beautiful, right on the 'Ocean's Edge', as the name suggests!  I did 10 loads of laundry, and we are finally caught up!  It is just wonderful to be getting settled after a long while of living out of a suitcase!

view from our apartment

And now for the positive half of this post!

On Wednesday, September 1st, Andee started his orientation at UMHS.  I was able to go with him as well, and the school is absolutely beautiful!  It is the only place on the island that makes me feel like I am back home, because the facilities are very new and kept up nicely!  You would think that you were in a North American Medical School!  We were taken on tours of the school, informed about Kititian culture and hurricanes, and met a lot of very nice and friendly students!  It was a lot of fun to visit the school, and I even got myself a "Wife of" Student ID so that I can visit the campus whenever I am bored!

On the Saturday, Dr. Ross hosted an amazing beach party at Cockleshell Beach!  It is on the Caribbean Sea, and there is a great bar and lots of fun activities such as snorkeling, banana boat rides, and lunch!  We went on an 8 person banana boat ride, which was tons of fun!  We also got to hang out with a lot of the new students, and it was great to meet and hang out with all of our new friends from UMHS before the studying started to take over!

On the following Saturday, Andee participated in the much anticipated White Coat Ceremony at UMHS!  All of the students took a student oath, and were rewarded with a symbolic and very snazzy white coat to commence their journey in becoming Medical Doctors!  It was a great ceremony, and I was very happy to be watching and supporting Andee as he made his transition into Medical School.

On Sunday, it was my birthday!  Andee got me a sweet St. Kitts beach bag that actually fits all of my beach stuff!  He also got me Swiss rolls (yum!), water shoes, and a bottle opener key chain (for my Ting, which is grapefruit soda)  Pretty good for someone without a car!  It also just so happened that another spouse of a student named Jessie was also celebrating her birthday on Sunday.  A bunch of the spouses went to play some Birthday Bingo at the Marriott (a big deal on a Sunday night!), and another spouse of a student named Kori won the jackpot!  It was the birthday luck!

Since then, Andee has been studying hard, and I have been slowly adjusting to St. Kitts living!  Andee has started dissecting his cadaver (fun times), which he finds to be quite interesting!  I, on the other hand, have been enjoying the beautiful weather and location of our apartment!  Within walking distance, I can go to the Marriott, the Royal St. Kitts, the beach right outside of our apartment, Ram's Express (a mini grocery store), a souvenir shop, and Rituals Coffee Shop, which, don't kill me, puts Tim Hortons to shame!  The donuts are massive and so delicious!  I have also made some great friends with some of the spouses of both UMHS and ROSS students.  Our activities have included swimming, Port Zante shopping, snorkeling, and beaching!  Just a typical day in the life of a St. Kitts desperate housewife!

Andee and I miss everyone so very much, and are looking forward to seeing everyone in December!  But until then, I think I will go for a swim!

Rock you like a Hurricane...Earl

So we are currently stuck inside our room while Hurricane Earl is selfishly cancelling a day of our honeymoon.  So we decided to buy internet and write a blog for y'all!

Since our catamaran and snorkeling voyage we have had a great honeymoon so far!  We had met some really great people that are going to UMHS with Andee and also some vacationers...who are not so happy about the hurricane.

On Wednesday we went on an Island Tour with our amazing tour guide/taxi driver Gordon!  He took us all over St. Kitts and we learned a lot about the island and where everything is located.  We even stopped by to eat some sugar cane and  for Andee to buy a Machete!  We are officially locals now!  We also discovered that St. Kitts has a beautiful rain forest which is full of monkeys!  Unfortunately, we didn't see any wild ones, but were told that they are absolutely everywhere!

That evening, we went to a nice little restaurant called Cathy's.  We went with a great group of people, mostly incoming students of UMHS.  So, being the oblivious person that I am, ordered the Red Snapper for dinner, a local fish.  Much to my surprise and horror, the fish came whole...a dead fish was sitting in front of me at the table.  Needless to say, I panicked and proceeded to look down and concentrate on not dying for the remainder of the meal while Andee enjoyed my fish.  I did manage to eat all of the sides, but could not look in the vicinity of the fish even when my wonderful hubby tried so hard to help by covering the remains with a napkin.  I was finally able to regain my composure when the waitress removed the fish from the table and it could not frighten me anymore!  As if my fear of dead fish would appear on my plate, right?  However, the rest of the food was so delicious that I would definetely go back...but next time order the barbeque chicken.

On the Thursday we were told that the place to be is the Shiggity Shack, about a 15 minute walk from our apartment.  Andee ordered a burger with fries, and I ordered the fish burger with salad and vegetables (don't worry, I frantically confirmed the fact that this was definitely a fish fillet and not a whole fish before ordering it).  We soon realized that the fish burger is the best thing ever, and that mayonnaise is brought over like ketchup.  Amazing.  Our new favorite restaurant!

Caribbean Sea beside the Shiggity Shack

At the Shiggity Shack, we were fortunate enough to experience the Amazing Blazing Fire Man!  He waved his fire wands over his body and did the limbo under a fiery pole!  It was incredebly entertaining, and I am planning on becoming BFF's with him in the future...

So the fish burger and fries were so amazing, that we made our way back to the Shiggity Shack on both Friday and Saturday evening, followed by our nearly daily trip to Rituals Coffee House for our donut fix!

On Saturday, we rented Boogie Boards with Tom and Emma!  They found an amazing spot on the beach where the waves are huge, and so we boogied our way down the beach to play in the waves!  As you may have guessed, we did indeed get raped by the waves on several occasions.  I had sand in all the wrong places, but we all had an amazing time!

The rest of the our time has consisted of lying in the sun, swimming in the pool and ocean, mini photo shoots (obvi), and eating our weight in breakfast buffet!

Andee would like to contribute to this post by saying...

Hurricane Watch!
I wanted to go outside, but they told me no, that is a real live Hurricane out there, and it will literally blow your face off!                   ...Anchorman anyone?

Rituals....Our Nightly Ritual

So this is going to be a quick post. We are at one of our new fav spots on the island. It's called Rituals; a snazzy North Americanesque coffee house a 5 minute walk from our place that provides free wi-fi, but most importantly 2 donuts for $3EC after 8pm. So we've been pretty much coming here every night and gorging with our new friends Tom and his fiancee Emma.

                                                                         Photo Evidence

We will blog soon to regale you all about our first few days of adventure which include: a trip around the island with our Taxi driver Gordon, prancing around in the waves and Diana accidentally ordering a whole-fish for dinner which almost caused her to lapse into a coma, but for now I have a donut to finish.

First full day in St. Kitts...We made it.

If I wasn't already happily married to Di, I would probably marry St.Kitts. Mind you, St. Kitts and I have only known each other 2 days. Chances are in a couple weeks when I start medical school I would start to ignore St. Kitts invitations to spend time together. The relation would become more and more distant each day until we'd decide to get a quick vegas-style divorce. But I digress...

Di and I are having a great time so far. We have done some fun things, and met some great people. However, blogging about it this coming week may be difficult because the Marriott wants to charge $15 US for 24 hours of internet.

Tuesday morning we departed from Port Zante with 4 of our new friends on a catamaran for a half day of sailing and snorkeling. We saw some really nice coral and a few quirky fish and a bunch of birds that looked and sounded like pterodactyls. In case people are curious. The weather here is great. It's hot and humid, but it's not unbearable.

Thanks to Joe and our Fujifilm Finepix XP camera for that shot

We ended the day with a dip in the massive Marriott pool and a delicious pizza from the pizza shack. Nice choice Di.

Flyer beware of American Air....lines

Okay so I was going to finish the first post with arriving in St.Kitts safe and sound....but that didn't happen. This was my first time flying with American Airlines, and if I had a choice, I probably wouldn't fly with them again. We were supposed to have a 1 hour stop in Miami and catch the American Airlines plane to St.Kitts. However, the plane we took to Miami (also American Airlines) was delayed an hour on the runway. This gave us 15 minutes to run through the Miami Airport like crazies and catch our connection. As we were ducking and weaving the crowds of people I thought to myself, "Eat your heart out Amazing Race, this isn't so hard"....but we got to our terminal 5 minutes early and they shut the door. They refused to let the 10 passengers we were with on. So now we're stuck in Miami for the night...it's raining...and there's nothing around for entertainment. We're sitting in the lobby using the hotels "Complimentary Wifi", that is only available in the lobby. Di is sleeping (sitting up in a chair I might add) probably dreaming of high jacking a plane and flying it into the American Airlines Headquarters...and for that I can't say I blame her.

Voyage to St. Kitts

Moving Day has finally arrived...

2:30am- Left for Toronto Pearson International Airport
3:00am- Waited in line for hours and hours
4:30am- Had carry-ons full of electronics thoroughly molested and received dirty looks
5:00am- Enjoyed 9 dollar sangwhich
6:00am- Boarded American Airlines flight to Miami
....and then the poo hit the fan