Oh by the way...

The bags of spices (on the previous post), are $5EC or $2US!! So, if you would like us to bring you back some spices (From the Isle of Spice...AKA Grenada) let us know!

Happy Easter!

I hope you all have had a great Easter! I hear that those of you in TN have had a cold Easter, not the typical pretty spring day you think of with Easter. We had pretty weather here today but it was very windy and it clouded up this afternoon but nothing too bad & a lot warmer than the temperatures in TN!! I was really hard not being at home today to celebrate Easter, we really miss being at home, but especially on special days like today. But, we have had a good day...we got to see TN men's basketball win to send them into the sweet sixteen, which made Derek very happy...we hope they continue and go all the way!! We had BBQ chicken for dinner, I am sure it was not as good as the Easter ham at home!! We are getting ready for another week of class but we do have off Monday for Holy Monday!

Since, we had a 4 day weekend we went to the market on Saturday. Saturday is the day that all the locals bring their goods to town to sell. The market is located in the capital city of St. George's. We had to take a city bus (locals call them the reggae buses) to get there, it cost $2.5EC/person each way...which equals about $1US! Our first stop was at the fish market. We bought about 3 lbs. of fresh tuna it costs about $21EC ($8.40US), pretty cheap for fresh fish especially tuna! Here are a few pictures of the fish market.

Again, Saturdays are market day so lots of people were set-up on the sidewalks or in the streets selling fruits, vegetables, spices...whatever they have to make a little money. We even saw some people selling live crabs that were on a string, I thought about buying some but (1) they were alive so I don't know how we would get them home and (2) I don't know how to cook them. Maybe, we will try it sometime! This is a picture of a women who has her items set-up on the side of the road.

This is a picture of the street leading to the vegetable/spice market. You can see the congestion further up the street, that is where the market is. Also, if you can see on the side of the building on the left side of the street there is a sign that looks like a crown. This is a fast food restaurant called royal something...I don't remember the exact name...anyway I think it is suppose to be like a Burger King.


Now, we are at the vegetable/spice market. Here is a picture of some of the fruit/vegetable stands. We bought bananas, cucumbers, onions, green peppers, carrots, and tomatoes(which you can't get in the store)...all of this was about $28EC ($11.20US). If you go to Martha Stewart's blog... http://blogs1.marthastewart.com/martha/2008/01/a-picture-from.html ...this is the same market she was at in December/January.


This is a picture of the nice lady that we bought a few spices from...

And here is a up close picture of all the spices she had for sell...

Mimi, I took this picture for you! It is a Singer store, we did not go in, so I am not sure whether this is the same Singer as the sewing machines. But, I thought it was interesting!

We are in the height of tourist season now, so there have been lots of cruise coming and going. On Saturday while we were here there were two cruise ships docked, one left, while a third cruise ship was waiting to come in to dock! Here are a few pictures of the cruise ships...

While we were here close to the cruise ships we had LOTS of locals trying to convince us to go on a tour of the island with them, they thought we were tourist from the cruise! They had, "A lovely air-conditioned taxi waiting to take us to see the beautiful waterfalls, the beautiful beaches, and the residential areas!" It was such a lovely little speech they all wanted to give us until we told them we were students...then they knew we were not tourist and we did not want to go on their tours. I told Derek, I think they had mistaken us for tourist because we are white...hahaha!

So, after our day at the market we had the tuna for dinner. Here is a picture of the fish straight out of the bag from the market. I had to take the skin off, take out the bones, and take out the dark area in the middle (which is the swim bladder). (This was an interesting experience...the only time I had ever done anything like this was in Mr. Grime's biology class in high school!!)


So, after doing all of that we had chucks of tuna and not tuna steak that you would normally get in a restaurant.


We had the tuna along with rice, steamed carrots and cucumbers. We got the cucumbers and carrots at the market. By the way, try the new Ziploc steam bags to steam fresh veggies! They work great!! We love them, we have used them for these carrots (which tasted so good) and broccoli. The steam bags are a really wonderful product and super easy to use!!



AND...an added bonus...at the end of the day, we have a beautiful pink and orange sunset!!




HOPE YOU ENJOYED OUR DAY AT THE MARKET, WE SURE DID!!
Love and miss you all!!

3 Weeks Down & 6.5 To Go

Well, we have officially gotten 3 weeks behind us and we only have 6 and a half more to go...until we come home again! We have our flights scheduled to come home on May 1st! Classes this last week went well...but it is still hard to get used to being in class all day everyday, especially when we have class until 8 o'clock at night 4 nights of the week!
Friday, we had a class trip planned for that afternoon and early evening. This means that we had to get up early to go grocery shopping before our class trip! Even though we had to get up early for this it worked out really good! We were able to get everything we needed at the store...which is not usually the case...the store was not a mad house as usual...and we got to have breakfast at a new coffee place that has opened at the mall. The new coffee place was good, we will definitely eat there again, their sign almost tricks you into thinking it is a Starbucks (Yum...how good that would be) it has similar font and is the same color green as Starbucks' sign. Although we hate to admit it...it looks like Friday mornings (yikes!) may be the best time to go grocery shopping.
Anyway, back the the class trip on Friday...One of our classes is about community health assessment. So, for the class we are doing a community health assessment of one of the areas on the island...this is not by our choice!! Basically, this includes spending several hours each week in the community doing observations, talking to the locals, taking surveys, doing interviews and focus groups. At first we were both very apprehensive about the whole thing...However, it went much better than we thought. The people were very nice but nosey...most people and even the taxi drivers would pull over and ask what you were doing in the their community. The people and the community are very poverty stricken! Most of the homes are little shacks, they look like a strong gust of wind would blow down most of the houses. Some of the homes don't have toilets or running water. While we were in the community we were taking a break in front of the convince store...I saw a man run into the store with a chicken head he had just cut off...he was doing this just to scare the girls working in the store, you know that would never go over well in the States. We also had one of our team members almost get hit by a car. Everyone here drives crazy, however this was my closest experience with the crazy driving...if our fellow team member would not have turned his back a fraction of a second later the bus would have taken off his backpack, it was a close call!! Anyway, this was a fun experience and it really makes us thankful for what we have, here in Grenada and at home in TN!! We hope to take our camera this week when we go so you can see the poverty we are talking about!
I will update again soon when I have more things to say!!

First Full Week of Classes

First, I apologize for not posting any new items in a while. This past week was our first full week back in class! Last week was rather tiring but not too bad, today however was very tiring...we had our first FULL day of classes today. We were in class from 9 this morning until 8 tonight. WOW! What a LONG day! On top of all of this we also had our first quiz today. It will take a little while to get used to this schedule again! Thus far, this term does seem like it will be easier than last...so hopefully this will hold true! After last week, we went to the beach on Saturday to relax a bit before starting another week of classes. Sunday we went to church and watched TN men's basketball. Derek is looking forward to the SEC Tournament this coming weekend...Go Vols! Hopefully we will have more to add later! We miss you all!

Beautiful Day

Today was a beautiful day here in Grenada. We were amazed at how clear the sky was so we decided to go around campus and take some video and pictures to share with you!! Hope you enjoy!




All the buildings you see with the brownish/orange roofs are campus buildings. Also, the green fences you see are areas of construction. We are told that campus is constantly under construction, they are already built two new buildings since we started in August.

This video is of our room. We have been trying to upload it and finally it worked!!!

This is a video of the entrance to campus. You can see a lot of campus and also the security post where we have to show our IDs to get on campus.

This video was taken across the street from the lower bus stop on campus. The first building shown is the new Taylor Hall, that is set to open on Tuesday, we will have the majority of our class in this building this term. The next few buildings are dorms. The next big building you can see across the street is Charter Hall, the mail room is located on the ground floor and located above is the brand new 700 seat lecture hall for the medical school. The next area is the student center with basketball courts in front of it. Then on down the street are a few more dorms.

We were standing at the bottom of the hill for this video. The main building in the video is science hall, the big windows have a great view they look out over the Caribbean Sea. The later buildings are more dorms.

This video was taken from the top of the hill. You can hear in this how strong the wind was...and the wind has died down a lot today as compared to the last few days!! In this video you can see the Library, the anatomy building (next to the flags), then the front of Science Hall, and the last building is Bell Tower a lecture hall.

This is of the front of the anatomy building, the library and the Caribbean sea.

This video is of the library up on the cliff over looking the ocean.

This video was taken from the center of campus. These buildings are in order...Bourne Center, the upper bus stop and the Chancellory.

This video has a close up of our building, where our room is, then spans over to the rain forest and more dorm buildings.

This is a video of campus from black sand beach. The library is up on the cliff.

This video is from the cliff over looking black sand beach. This first beach is in the next bay over from campus, then the airport, more water, and the library.

This is a video of a few crabs on some rocks off black sand beach.

This video shows the pretty glittering black sand.

Pretty flowers on the steps of Science Hall and the Caribbean Sea.

Here are a few pictures...





There are lots of pretty flowers all over the island.

Palm Branches....



Black Sand Beach...

The beach in the next bay over between campus and the airport.





Okay, remember our adventure from the first blog of carrying our trunks from storage to our room. These are the two sets of stairs we had to carry our heavy trunks up but after we got them to the top of the hill we were only about halfway there. Again, that was such a bad idea!!

Grand Anse Beach

We went to the beach again today, for the second time this week. The beach we went to was Grand Anse Beach, this is the most popular beach on the island and the prettiest we have been told. Right now we are in the busy tourist season so the beach is rather busy. We have seen several different cruise ships docked in town.

Here is a video spanning the beach...

Here are a few pictures...

This a one of the cruise ships docked in St. George's

This is a picture of the town of St. George's

My feet in the sand...soft sand, clear blue skies, and turquoise water.

...and palm trees, blue sky and bright sun!!

Fish Friday Continued...

Here are a couple more pictures from Fish Friday...

These two pictures are of the entertainment. The guys on the right were playing music with the drums, the guy on the left was dancing and singing/chanting.