Mid Semester Break 2

Seven weeks left til the semester is over. We just had our much needed three day weekend... celebrating the climax of the semester. I spent it on St. Maarten!!!
On Saturday my landlord highlighted my hair to make the super blonde ends match the super brunette roots. She did a great job blending it so it looks ‘naturally’ Caribbean highlighted.

Took the ferry to St. Maarten on Monday. We were told to be there between 5-5:30am… which means be up and frantically running around the house at 4-4:30am! A group of us had decided to go, but since we lived on other sides of the island, we car-pooled in pairs. This was not a good idea since the other half of ‘our group’ slept in and missed the boat!

The ferry left port at 6am sharp, after charging us $6US exit tax. Leaving the island was beautiful as the sun rose with Nevis behind us. I even was about to see Ross and my unfinished apt house!
(Remember if you click on the picts, they will appear much bigger in a new window.)

Then my nausea meds wore off… PUKE! It was pink cuz I’m a girl. Not really, the puke was pink cuz I ate watermelon for breakfast. I went downstairs and passed out, so I don’t remember any more of the trip until we were docked and everyone was already off the boat.

St. Maarten was so neat! The drive on the right side of the road! It was weird. They also had this great clean grocery store, and nothing looked moldy! So weird! We walked further and saw restaurants; lots of restaurants that served reasonably priced food! Excitement building! Rumor was that there was a McDonald’s on island.

We walked down the wrong road and ended up passing a string of plastic-smelling tacky clothes stores. We ventured and found a hardware store, which my friend later returned to purchase a small vacuum. Realizing how off the beaten path we had gotten, we headed toward the ocean front strip, where of course, the high dollar shops were located.

Then we saw it: McDonald’s! Oh how exciting! It’s been… April since I ate at McDonald’s, and Dec since my friend had. Ordered food, but they didn’t have the buffalo hot wing sauce, so I was a bit disappointed. No matter! Reasonably satisfied, we did the tourist thing and headed for the beach for a nap… after getting an alcoholic beverage. Yes, it was still morning.

With some time wasted, we toyed with the idea of visiting the French side of Saint Martin, but that never came to be. The side we landed on was the Dutch side, hence the weird spelling of Sint Maarten. Venturing into a few shops, I invested in some cool T-shirts, Cuban cigars, and a new white and blue bikini.

Time was inching closer to when we had to be back at the boat, so we started heading back. My friend ran in one last store to look at cookware, and I followed. It then occurred to me that they sold pillows and I needed pillows! I bought 2 super nice pillows for $8US each. A very good buy methinks.

Rushing for no reason now, we plunge into the long line to board the ferry. Not wanting a repeat of the trip coming, I claimed 4 chairs on the bottom deck and sprawled out with my new pillows. I don’t remember the ride back, but I was told that the sea was so rough that at least 3 waves covered the entire boat during the first 30 minutes. Everyone felt some degree of seasickness during that 3-hour trip.

Six hours on a ferry and six hours on St. Maarten didn’t quite equate, but all in all, it was a good trip.

Car Story

Survived the first round of exams! Woo-hoo. Also did stellar in Physio… the prof is known for making A students cry. (I made a B though.)

I think I’ve successfully learned how to cook. I totally love that I can get fresh real breadcrumbs here. Fried things never tasted so good! I donno why but I’d been craving dove stuffed with jalapeno and cream cheese, especially since they’re flying around here in mass. So I go to the store and settle for the next best thing: ye ole box of breast ‘frying chicken parts.’ I also bought a meat mallet to beat them with (tenderize). Thawed, I ripped the muscle from the bones and separated the pectoralis major and minor. The pectoralis minor makes for excellent chicken strips. The pectoralis major was pounded and then, in chicken cordon bleu form, some jalapeno strips were put in it. Then I took a wad of cream cheese and place it on top. The chicken breast was rolled up around said jalapeno and cream cheese, fastened with toothpicks and battered. I was able to make 7 and let them all bake in the oven at an unknown temperature for an unknown amount of time. Absolutely fabulous. I bought all the stuff for chicken cordon bleu and will make that in the next week or so.

Made mac and cheese to go with my jalapeno cream cheese stuffed chicken. With the botulism contaminated green beans from IGA, you would think I’d know better than to buy something on sale at IGA, but I bought pasta. Sigh, pasta plus chocolate colored pasta beetles. They float to the surface when you add water. I was very tempted to just pick them out and cook the pasta, like no big deal everything is contaminated with something, BUT since I had friends over, they out voted me and made me throw the pasta away. No one but me eats bugs I guess. I think this dates back to when I was 3 years old, sitting in the green chair, when my mom caught me eating a june bug. Crunchy.

So, car story that I had promised to tell: about 2 weeks ago I went to a friend’s house and my car started to smoke out the tail pipe. Never good, so I turn off car. Turn car on 15-20 min later and it’s still smoking. (This is the maroon one I bought for $1000US, while most cars that work are a lot more.) So I decide to park the car and come back when it’s light out. My island AAA is Ross security, so I call them and they pick me up to take me home. I decide to not check on my car (which I can’t lock) until after my test. (Imagine 3 or 4 days passing…) A friend drives me to my car after school. Only problem, car is GONE! I can’t even explain how my stomach was doing flip flops. I just couldn’t believe someone would steal my car, I mean why? It’s so ugly!

We started to search the road and finally found my car down the street and around the corner. Someone had just moved it (pfew). We’re on St. Kitts, that’s not so unusual. So I take the car to my Canadian mechanic at the Marriott and it was like a tiny valve cover thing in the engine that just needed to be replaced cuz the car had been sitting for a while. The local guy putting the car back together accidentally dropped the distributor cap (?) and broke it, so they had to order a new one and my car was MIA for about a week. The part they broke was free to me!

Next car story: so a friend of mine that now lives in the same building as me was living on the other side of the island. One morning she gets in her car and she hears a loud screech-boom-hiss and her car dies. She pops the hood and what does she find? A huge rat! In her engine! Half of it was over on one side, half on the other, and it’s heart had been ripped out of it’s chest was still beating like over on top of her battery. Eek huh!? This came up in conversation because I saw one of the large Kittitian rats get hit by a car the other day. Saw the same thing happen to a little mouse, but it ran off into the bushes rather than being grinded into the pavement like the giant land crabs typically are.

Leashes anyone?

The first dog of the day met a dirty rasta sock that untied the leash and took the dog running across campus. I was finally able to catch the sock after 15 minutes and lots of laughs from my classmates. Catching the sock enabled me to catch the rouge dog. I can’t even begin to explain how sore my legs are from the 10 or so laps I took around the campus yesterday and today. Did I mention it was situated on a mountain? And I’m an infirm with a heart condition now? I don’t see how everyone else seems to get done quicker than me, but the dog walking is taking me a solid 2 hours… twice a day.

Anyway, I’m going to keep reviewing my Immuno. Got my car back this afternoon too! I’ve driven 100 miles on $50EC. I filled up with $95EC of petrol, so that’s 200 miles right? I’ll give the details on what happened to my car later.

Week of Walking Dogs

I was expecting a visitor last week thru the end of the month. I signed up to walk dogs am and pm this week because I thought I would have had help. We're each required to walk the clinic dogs for one week. Conveniently, I also have 2 exams and a presentation this week. So nice to be stood up and have my life even more complicated. Oh well.

There's a lot of construction on campus. I think they're putting some new buildings in, but they don't tell us these things. This however means that there is no way that Ross will be accredited by the AVMA any time soon. I think I'm going to try to transfer into 3rd year at a state school after my 5th semester. That will be next fall. We shall see how that goes.