I thought I'd share a typical day with you. It sounds odd, but it took me a while to get all the photos for the typical day, mostly because I pass a lot of these items at high speed.
So, our day starts at 5 or 6 a.m. when Penny wakes me up for breakfast. She gets breakfast first, then she plays on her blue mat while I start laundry. Then I'm back to the kitchen to make my breakfast (often oatmeal with papaya and honeysuckle honey). Once the laundry is washed, it goes out to dry on the porch.
I like to get out once a day to somewhere and the bus is the best way to get around. St. George's University (SGU) provides shuttle service among the various neighborhoods where students live and shop, with the main hub being campus. So I pack Penny's bag, strap her into her carrier and do my best to get out of the house just before 9am so we can get wherever and back home before peak heat. Here's a view from inside the bus. It's sort of a cross between a giant passenger van and a bus. My favorite part are the little jump seats on the right side of the aisle. They fold down into the aisle to provide additional seating when it gets REALLY crowded (such as on the Grand Anse route on Fridays, when the grocery store does its big restock).
In any case, it's only a few minutes from our stop to the Maurice Bishop Highway. This is our biggest road...one lane each way plus some room to pass on the right. The buses use the passing lane more than any other vehicle. They're especially fond of passing a car and then stopping abruptly because there is someone at their bus stop. There is a traffic circle at each end between our neighborhood and campus, no onramps or traffic lights, to give you an idea of how busy it is (only a few stoplights on the whole island).
We don't live more than a couple miles from campus, but on the way, we pass much of the commercial/warehouse district, including a brewery for Carib beer. There are also a few construction sites, most often residential buildings presumably to house the growing student population at SGU. It was interesting to see the use of bamboo as temporary supports -- I suppose it's a lot cheaper to use wood that grows locally for this task than it is to import wood.
So then you get to the SGU campus - pretty standard looking at the gate. The dorm to the right of the sign is brand new, constructed in little over a semester. Dan's class is the biggest the University has yet seen, so they also had to construct a new building/classroom for their lectures as well. I believe Emily's class in Newcastle is bigger still, so I don't know if they'll have to construct more buildings soon.
Campus is built on a hill - not as high as Libe Slope at Cornell University, but still mighty daunting in this heat. Here is Dan at the top of the hill, looking down at the student union in the foreground, his lecture hall's roof just beyond his hat and the main study hall (building with the pretty window centered in the picture). You can also see the mountains in the distance that indicate the main part of the island to our North and East.
Now you COULD choose to study in that study hall or in the library, but campus is littered with spots like those to the right. I suppose students might shy away from spots like these because they pose too much of a distraction. I've seen SO's ("significant others" is the term for people like me) coming up from the black sand beach on campus with their snorkel gear because campus has more than academic resources. As in England, alcoholic beverages are sold by the university and can be integral in the study process (though I'm sure the Captain Morgan in the computer lab HAD to violate SOME rule).
To continue our imaginary trip...Penny and I get off the Lance aux Epines bus and wait at the upper stop for the Grand Anse bus. Grand Anse is the main shopping area, so there's very frequent shuttle service over there (often every 10 min). The bus gets back on the highway and heads all the way back to our Lance aux Epines circle, but makes a left instead of a right. Somewhere along the highway we usually pass the local lawn maintenance team pictured here. They obviously employ kids - must be legal here.
We pass Excel Plaza (our only
movie theater and a cheap veggie mart), the Round Houses (miscellaneous specialty stores, including toys, wine, video rental and other goodies), the Spiceland Mall (IGA grocery store, Do It Best hardware and touristy stores with overpriced stuff), before coming to a stop at the Grand Anse SGU campus. Grand Anse is where SGU started, but they moved to True Blue peninsula when they needed to expand. Currently, Grand Anse campus has a dorm or two, which I think are empty, a day care for SO kids and a little restaurant on the beach with a lovely view of the white sandy expanse.
Whew! It's starting to get hot. By 10am, I can start to feel the sweat trickling down my back. If I'm being good with my hydration, I've already finished one of my bottles of water. Sure, it's only a trip of a couple of miles, but there's students being picked up and dropped off all along the way and the bus drivers don't necessarily run right on schedule, so there's usually a bit of time spent waiting at various pick up points. In any case, we finally make it to our destination. It's not a typical day, but I have gone to Grand Anse to visit Celeste and Brent. They're just a short (and very steep) climb up from the grocery store. It's a brutal march up the hill, but the view is spectacular. Grand Anse campus is maybe halfway down the beach visible here.
Penny and I have gone to visit, play cards and generally enjoy Brent's hospitality. Brent seems to welcome the occasional distraction from his engineering projects. Celeste and Brent always have fun animals to visit as well. When we first visited, they were hosting an injured Scaly Naped Pigeon. We also observed a black bird the size of a big sparrow come in and try to steal a banana off the table. The best part is the only other color on him are his red eyebrows fixed in an evil scowl. We didn't get to meet the gecko that tries to hide in the middle of the floor when it's not hiding (much better, I might add) under the stove. When the day begins to cool, Brent escorts Penny and I back down to the bottom of the hill to catch the return bus at the police station. It's pretty here because they have a drainage ditch filled with these Common Water Hyacinths, though a bit annoying at the same time because of the mosquitoes inherent to standing water.
After flagging the bus down -- important note here about bus stops. There are few actual bus stops with benches and shelters here. A "stop" is a location generally agreed upon that people tend to aggregate at. This is usually a landmark or one of the dirt roads that leads to a residential area from a main paved road. Also, Grenadians have a habit of hitching rides. It is fairly common to see Grenadians hitching rides at rush hour on the highway. So for an SGU bus driver to know that you indeed are waiting for him, you must actively flag him down, back out of the street (there usually aren't sidewalks), and then walk to where he has chosen to call the actual bus stop. If I'm feeling lucky or I need some quick shopping,
I'll take the Grand Anse shuttle to the Lance aux Epines traffic circle (pictured at left). Near the circle are Matt and Maria's place, the Grenadian equivalent of wholesale (funny because it's not bigger containers, just you can buy a whole lot of the regular size containers for a bit cheaper per unit OR you can buy unbranded food in plain clear plastic bags with rubber bands closing them) and a little set of rainbow-colored stalls for vendors of touristy stuff or local veggies. There's also an actual bus stop with benches and shade (and the smell of rotting fish, but hey, it's shade).
It's usually a long wait at the bus shelter, but a nice opportunity to take some sips of water and maybe get a feel for actual Grenadians. Listening to actual Grenadians is funny because they're almost as undecipherable as Geordies back in Newcastle. Dan had asked what the native language was at some point and the response was "English." I think there must be some words or phrases that are different, though, as was the case with Geordie. In any case, this is the only actual bus stop I've used, so there are often Grenadians waiting here. By an "actual bus" I mean a taxi with a government issued route, number pasted into its front window and I think a standard charge. I don't know that they have a schedule, but they do seem to come by with some frequency.
The routes may only be a suggestion, though, because I've seen buses with the same number apparently choosing not to go down part of the route. I'll probably experiment with these as I need to get to St. George's (the capital city) on occasion and that's the only way to do it. Eventually, an SGU shuttle comes by and picks me up. I get off at the crab field to walk home if I feel like teasing the little guys a bit. Plus, we get to walk by some cool scenery (and fewer big angry dogs) on the way home.
Just a quick update on how we're all doing these days. Penny's the most fun, so she goes first. For her 5 month birthday, she went boating with Daddy at a really calm beach near Grand Anse. She really enjoys kicking around in the water and we've got a pool membership now, so we can go anytime we want to a place just a couple of blocks away (so I don't have to use a carrier or stroller or anything). She's chasing objects around the room a bit. It's more inchworming than crawling, but she's getting there. Her toys are now on a low shelf so she can select them herself instead of rejecting each of my suggestions.
She's so hungry now that I've started trying some oatmeal and stuff with her. She is COMPLETELY uninterested, so has some very soft skin and hair rather than a full tummy. Just when I think she's got sleeping through the night down, she'll surprise me with a desperate need for a snack at 4am. I'm sure she'll make it through the night again soon, though.
My mom is doing ok, but could still use some prayers. The trial period for the new chemo has revealed that she needs something more to get rid of this particular strain. So they've added in a biweekly chemical. This one has some nasty side effects. She was hospitalized briefly this week because the nausea prevented her from keeping anything down. Hopefully the combination of chemicals will put a dent in the fluid that has reappeared in her chest and abdomen.
Me -- my right arm is still annoyingly dysfunctional. I get my hopes up with each weird tingle or shooting pain, but no change as yet. On the plus side, the pain when I lay on it has decreased, so I have three options now for sleeping positions. Yay! One day I may be able to go back to tummy sleeping, which is my first choice and hasn't occurred for somewhere near a year now. A bit of good news - I had briefly had a reappearance of the ganglionic cyst on my left wrist just before delivering Penny. This sounds horrible, but is just a bump on the wrist that prevents me from putting pressure on my palm without some pain (brutal when going to public restrooms). I was unplugging the alarm clock on Wednesday or so and totally wailed the bump on the end table. It was excruciating at the time, but it jolted the cyst enough so it deflated and I can now put pressure back on that wrist. Yay! I'm now up to one fully functional arm.
