Living Quarters

Hi Gang. Today I am going to share with you my living space. It takes me about 5 minutes to walk to the main campus and then another 5 or so to get to the building where first semester students have all of their lectures. So, in the grand scheme of things, I am fairly close to campus. Here's what my place looks like:

Walking up to my apartment. As you can see there is still quite a bit of construction on my building (I didn't know about this when I arranged for housing prior to arrival). I think that I am the only tenant so far. My apartment is the one closest to end that we are looking at. Around here there aren't any street names and the apartments are named after the landlord.

This is the entrance way to my apartment. That's my door on the left. Everything down here is concrete. I am guessing that they build everything that way to withstand hurricanes. This picture was taken at about 3:30 in the afternoon.

This is my kitchen and dining area. I think it speaks for itself. The bowl that is in the drying rack is the one that I used last night for dinner. I had a fresh mango and some almonds. The mango was very sweet, not quite ripe because it was stringy, but very sweet.

This is my bedroom area. There is a bathroom with a shower off of my bedroom. I have a TV and small desk in here too. Its small and humbling, but its home for now.

And finally, for those of you that couldn't see the cows in the pictures from yesterday, I took this pic for you. This is my mooing buddy. She's always standing the same place chewing on something. Maybe one day I will get a little closer and take a better picture of this friend of mine.

Checking out the University

This is the view from my apartment. I took that picture on the stoop right outside of my door. There's a window in my bedroom and this is what I look at when I am home. It really is very pretty. If you look closely, you will see a few cows roaming about. Last night as I was walking home there were two cows just roaming around on the dirt road. It startled me at first (keep in mind that it gets dark here a little before 7PM so I couldn't see anything). But then I realized that they were cows and I wanted to pet them and talk to them. Cows don't want to be petted. They just want to eat. I wake up to their mooing in the morning.

This picture is the view from the backside of the campus. It's very calming to listen to the rhythm of the ocean. It takes a breath in and then lets it out. There's tons of tiny little crabs scurring around. They're really cute.

The people here are beautiful. It hard to understand them, but after I ask them to repeat themselves a few times, eventually I understand them. Many of the staff on campus are people who have been born and raised in Dominica.

This is the sunset off the island. You can see that there are fishing boats and cargo ships in the background. When there are fresh fish in the city of Portsmouth (about a 30 minute walk from where I live) they blow into a conch shell to let everyone know to "come and get it." I am thinking about heading to Portsmouth on Saturday morning for the market.

So yesterday all of the dead bodies (aka: cadavers) arrived on campus. I thought the way that they arrived was amazing. As you can see, the cadavers were packed in cardboard boxes with wood reinforcements. This wasn't at all how I imagined this to be. I think it gives new meaning to donating your body to science. I watched the men roll a few lifeless objects wrapped in what looked like a blue tarp into the gross anatomy lab.

Okay, I finally got my toes into the water this morning. The water is warm and clear. There are some places on the island where there are beaches, but so far, the majority of everything that I've seen is pretty rocky.

I am still homesick, but hopefully it will get better once classes start. Thanks for reading and replying everyone!

First Full 24 Hours

Well, its been a tough day. I am really homesick tonight. Everything is still so foreign, but I am trying to learn my way around. The island is beautiful. The ocean is literally in the back yard of the school and there are mountains all around. It's just the kind of place that I would want to go for vacation.

Tomorrow I register for classes and get my bank account. Whoohoo!

I'm here

It's been one day and I am already homesick. This is going to be much tougher than I had originally thought. But, I am going to try my best to see this through.

My day began with the alarm going off at 4 AM. My flight was at 6 AM from Dayton to Dulles. I landed in Dulles and thought that my ticket said, "boarding at 8:15." So, I decided to get some breakfast and stroll over at about 8:13. Well, all I hear is, "are you Rak? Rak? are you Rak?" I was like, "yeah" as I looked up and saw the "final boarding" sign. They screamed, "you better run, you are so lucky." So I ran to the door, they let me in and off to San Juan, Puerto Rico I went.

San Juan airport was interesting. All I can say is, it is a great place to people watch. The airport itself was filthy, but who cares, right? 3 hours in Puerto Rico and then off to Dominica on the prop puddle jumper. It was pretty interesting flying over all of the Caribbean Islands. I just kept wondering how all of the people live their lives. We're all the same and yet we're different.

Once I landed, I had to go through customs, get my "stamp of honor" on my passport, claim my laptop computer so they could tax me and find my luggage. (BTW Susie did a phenomenal job packing my suitcase.) The Ross University folks loaded us (there were 12 1st semester students) into a van and off we went. The roads are incredibly narrow and they drive on the other side of the road. (Why do we Americans drive on the wrong side, it's like not chosing to go with metric or international units, we have to do it differently.) Anyway, it took an hour to get to campus and one girl almost vomited because she was getting motion sickness.

The Island is lush with so many varieties of green and little color pops here and there. I saw a gazillion banana and coconut trees. Our driver showed us where the Pirates of the Caribbean was filmed. It was an interesting drive. We landed at the Ross University Housing facility and that's when my landlord came and picked me up. He took me to my apartment and I settled in. Oh yeah, it's important to note that there are cows and steer in my backyard AND I am totally bitten up from all of these damn bugs.

Tomorrow I will head over to the school for orientation. Life has changed for me. Right now I am feeling pretty scared and lonely. It's making me doubt what I am doing. I miss my dog and my friends and my life back home. But, it's time to start building a new life.

Thanks for reading everyone!

The Day Before

Well, friends, I leave in less than 24 hours. I can't believe it. I think I've got everything that I need. I am certainly going to miss everyone. I am going to miss my dog too! But, I guess sometimes you have to follow your dream even though the cost is seemingly high. I will be thinking about all of you and wishing you a wonderful second half of the year. TTFN!

JM one week before departure

Tonight we are celebrating my departure to the Hurricane Dean battered island of Dominica. The celebration is at Johnny Mango's in Cleveland. Today I stand on US soil, in one week I will be 2,500 miles south in the Caribbean. Wish me luck!