1st Week Over & White Coat Ceremony

Well, our 1st week of class is over and boy has it been wild! Randy & Betsy left on Tuesday morning. They had a wonderful time while they were here and are already talking about coming back before we leave! We were able to show them around the island and we took them to several local restaurants...and surprisingly all of our food we had while they were here was very good! We really enjoyed having them here (and if anyone else would like to come visit we are open to visitors!) but they left at a good time.


We had to hit the books running when classes started on Monday! We know we have only had one week but we have been studying so much! Our daily schedule is something like this...7am wake up and shower, 8am study, 12 lunch, 1-5pm lecture, 6pm dinner, and study till bed at 11-12! We are hoping our bodies will get used to this new schedule and this much studying! Lecture is difficult because we have to keep concentration for the whole 4 hours but we are really enjoying everything we are studying!

Tonight we had our White Coat Ceremony! Which is kinda our initiation into medical school! The ceremony was really nice...much nicer than we expected! The new Prime Minister of Grenada was there and addressed our class (all 400 of us). The Master of Ceremonies, Dr. Randy Becker, gave a wonderful speech that truly seemed to be from the heart. He was a 2000 graduate of SGU so he has been in our shoes and knows how we feel! His message was not to let anyone or anything stand in the way of your dream. The Keynote Speaker was Dr. William Andereck who is from Tennessee! This gave us a little feeling of home! He is from Memphis, did his undergrad at Vandy and med school at UT in Memphis...a fellow UT Alumni (how cool is that)! Dr. Andereck now practices in California. His message was about the White Coat, what is means and what is represents! When we got our white coat they called out our name and hometown...and when on stage they put our coats on us. We think the school video recorded the whole ceremony...we are going to try to track down a copy of it...to bring home to show everyone! After the ceremony the university held a reception in our honor. Luckily, the weather was perfect (unlike the rest of the weekend which was rainy and stormy)! The sun was setting and there was a nice cool breeze! There was good food, drinks, and a steel drum band! Everything tonight was really nice!

Here are a few pictures!

These are all our books, WOW!!

Ready to leave for the ceremony!

The stage in Charter Hall!

This is also our lecture hall for this semester!

Lovely tropical flowers!

School Banner

Anxiously waiting for the ceremony to start!

Dr. Modica, who started the school!

Prime Minister, Tillman Thomas

The Prime Minister's car...nice huh?

The Keynote Speaker, Dr. Andereck

Us on stage getting our white coats!

Sarah is far right and Derek is to the left of her.

On stage after the ceremony...

Sarah with some of our fellow MPH girls!

Lots of our fellow MPH classmates!

This is our personal favorite!

Beautiful sunset!

Close-ups of our white coats!

This is a video of the steel drum band!

It is hard to see but you can hear the music!

We Are Back In Grenada

Well, we made it back to the island for another year of school! The good news is we have finished one degree and now have one more to go, but two more years here. Randy and Betsy are here with us for our first week here seeing the island. We have all had a good time but they are getting an up close and personal look at all the frustration we deal with on a regular basis!

We had a terrible time getting back to Grenada! Usually we fly American Airlines the whole way, however, this trip we decided to try Air Jamaica. Our first flight from Atlanta to Montego Bay Jamaica was fine, but, it went down hill quickly! Our last two flights were a nightmare! For both of the flights there was not enough room on the plane for all the passenger's carry-on luggage (because the crew was taking up a lot of the space), so some people had to "check" their bags to be put with the cargo...well we were some of those passengers! We had to check two of our carry-on bags. Also, at both stops in Jamaica (we flew from Atlanta to Montego Bay Jamaica to Kingston Jamaica to Grenada) we had to go through security all over again, which was unnecessary because we had not crossed security but for some reason they make everyone do this! During our trip here (from 8:00 am - 8:00 pm) if we were not sitting on the plane we were standing in line somewhere! The trip here was terrible...needless to say we do not plan to buy any further tickets with Air Jamaica! Not only was the trip terrible, but when we got here I was very home sick and missing Tee (our dog) like crazy!!!!

We have been busy getting registered and attending orientation this week! We have been on a few tours...I hope to post pictures later! We picked up our books for class today...we had 16 books to pick up, this is only one set of books (we will share them) for the semester and two sets of class notes. We have been very busy this week! We hope to sleep in tomorrow to catch up on some lost sleep.

One last note...you may have noticed our blog looks different. I found a website of someone who designs the look of people's blog. So, I contacted her and she did this completely for free! I am really happy with how it turned out! Check out her site...Great Gabbie Design!!

We are getting settled back into our room and we will be starting classes on Monday! Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we start this new and trying time!