Doctors of the Caribbean

We’re finally on a slightly more normal schedule after slowly allowing our bodies to readjust from the chaos of trying to get back from the wedding.  It took about three days but I think we’ve finally caught up on all the sleep we missed.  Unfortunately, the second mini is just around the corner and things have been really busy with work, so I’m still not quite used to being back on the island.  Cooking seems dreadfully difficult after four days of (delicious) restaurants.  It was almost a cruel tease being in the States for so short a period, especially right in the middle of a semester.  It’s like getting everything you want, a little taste of heaven, and then having it torn away from you, only to face struggles and hardship and deprivation immediately after. When we’re home on breaks it doesn’t seem so bad because we get two weeks at home and then ease back into our schedules on the island. There was no easing back into life when we arrived at 8am Monday and had to go directly into work and school modes.  The good news is that we just passed the seven week mark on the countdown to the next break and I really hope it goes by quickly.

For those who are expecting wedding pictures from me, I promise I’ll send them out as soon as I can, it’s just been really busy around here.  I’ll do my best to get around to it this weekend.

The last five days have been some of the most chaotic, fun, and stressful days that Andy and I have experienced as a married couple.  We flew out of Dominica Thursday morning to go to Chattanooga for John and Natalie’s wedding.  Naturally, we wouldn’t have missed this event under any circumstances, but getting to the wedding and back from it was incredibly challenging, but being able to be there for them as a couple and experience the whole event with them made all the trials and tribulations more than worthwhile.

Getting There
We left our house at 6:00 Thursday morning.  We made it to the airport without incident, though I got a little nauseated for the first time on the island.  We left Dominica about 15 minutes late but arrived in Antigua in time for our connecting flight to San Juan.  Since we brought virtually no luggage with us, we zoomed through customs, immigration, and security in San Juan and were ready to hop on our flight to Atlanta.  Though our flight to Atlanta left five minutes early, we arrived an hour late because we had to take a different route due to inclement weather and there were a number of airplanes standing in the way of us and the gate.  By the time we made it to Thrifty and had picked up our rental car, it was 9:30pm.  We stopped for milkshakes and hamburgers at Steak and Shake and headed straight to Chattanooga, finally entering the inner sanctum of our hotel room at midnight.

The Wedding Weekend
Over the next two days we did all we could to run our own errands (stops at Target, Walgreens, the mall, and Circuit City), while making sure we were getting to spend as much time with friends as possible.  We shared lunch and a little shopping Friday afternoon with friends before heading to the wedding rehearsal.  The rehearsal and rehearsal dinner were very relaxed and a lot of fun.  At the rehearsal dinner, the boys (men) played in the pool as many of the girls (women) sat around tables and talked.  Andy and I received our attendants’ gifts and they are both items we will cherish for years to come.  For Andy, he added another pocket watch to his collection, this one matching the one he gave his own groomsmen at our wedding.  Natalie gave each of her bridesmaids a different necklace and she picked the perfect one for me - a single Tahitian pearl on a white gold strand.  I love it and didn’t take it off for the rest of the weekend.  We stayed and talked with family and friends for several hours before having to run a few more errands and then turned in for the night at a very late hour.

The following morning we were awakened bright and early to go meet the happy couple and the other groomsmen for the wedding breakfast of champions - fast food - for their last meal as single folks.   From there, we gathered our stuff to go to the church to get ready and tie up all the loose ends.  The next few hours passed in a blur as we dressed, took pictures, and prepared ourselves for the wedding.  Andy was running around like a maniac helping people, serving as a gopher, and just generally serving as a liaison.  The girls all stayed together and snacked, dressed, took pictures, and shared stories.  The ceremony was beautiful and very successful (a successful wedding is one where no one trips, no one falls, and no one faints).  Immediately afterward, everyone gathered for the reception where John and Natalie had their first dance, tried their cake, and were toasted by Will, the best man, as well as Andy.  I thought Andy’s speech was really touching and sweet, which was rewarding since he’d been working on it all weekend and I’d heard it about a billion times in various incarnations.  As the bride and groom left the party to go enjoy their honeymoon together, many of the attendants and our friends gathered together to socialize, talk, and hang out at a restaurant nearby.  Since Andy and I had an early flight and would turn into pumpkins before long, we said our goodbyes early and began hurriedly packing.

The Return Trip
After a brief five hour nap, we had to get up to drive back to Atlanta for our early morning flight.  We made it from Atlanta to San Juan with incredible ease - too much ease, in fact.  Once we arrived in San Juan, we enjoyed a leisurely lunch of mediocre, overpriced fried chicken and sat at our gate.  When it was time to board our aircraft, nothing happened.  For the next three hours, we were given no information by Liat as to what the problem was.  We were told various lies that were later retracted and were told things that were diametrically opposed to the information I was getting from their headquarters in Antigua.  After learning our plane was broken and that someone would be by to fix it or bring us a new plane within three hours (after the initial three hour delay), we were all a little upset.  Andy and I had already missed the last flight to Dominica so we knew there was no way to get home Sunday.  Finally, at 11:15pm, 7.5 hours after the scheduled arrival, we landed in Antigua.  Liat put us up in a hotel, if you can call it that, as it was the sleaziest, dirtiest, flea bag scum hole I’d ever seen.  Thankfully, we only were only there for four hours before we had to turn around and head back to the airport.  We made it on the 6:00 am flight to Dominica and were back in our home at 8:15 am, just in time for me to begin work and Andy to get ready for his Intro to Clinical Medicine class.  So, 14 hours later than planned, we were finally back at home and thankfully we were both fine, just a little tired.

John and Natalie’s wedding weekend was wonderful and even though we barely slept (we didn’t miss any meals while we were there, though),  we were still able to see friends and family, catch up with people we hadn’t seen in far too long, and be completely present for this remarkable time in John and Natalie’s life together.  We had a great time, but I don’t know that we’ll be making four day trips back to the U.S. a habitual kind of thing!

As Andy and I prepare to celebrate our second anniversary, I’ve been doing quite a bit of planning. We aren’t giving each other cards or presents this year; after all, what on earth could we get each other from here? On a “normal” anniversary, we’d go to Ruth’s Chris as we have for just about every special event we’ve ever had - including the proposal. Well, seeing as how there’s no Ruth’s Chris here, and not really even a restaurant worth going to, I figured I’d just cook. I ordered some ribeye steaks from Malcolm Stevens and tomorrow will be one of those rare occasions where we break the monotony of chicken, chicken, or chicken. I’ve created a special menu of our favorite foods that I can actually make on the island, which does limit the selection of favorites significantly. I spent about an hour tonight chopping, rinsing, and washing vegetables, roasting garlic, and doing other general food prep to save time after work tomorrow. Honestly, it’s much easier when other people do the cooking and cleaning!

The best part of the whole dinner is going to be the beautiful cake our friends (and fellow spouses) Andrea and Ashley made. I decided to save myself the trouble of burning another cake and instead opted to order one from their business, Daily Bread Dominica. I gave them carte blanche in the cake design, though I did mention Andy’s affinity for icing and my love of all things chocolate. The cake they made us is gorgeous - a beautiful recreation of our wedding cake they designed from a picture they found of us cutting the cake at our wedding. It’s a chocolate cake with delicious buttercream icing and we’ve already eaten about 1/4 of it! The part of this that makes it so special is the story behind our wedding cake, which is highly unconventional in design as wedding cakes go. I spent months designing and redesigning our wedding cake - I didn’t want just another white cake. I drove Andy out of his mind, showing him picture after picture after picture of different cakes. Eventually, I put together a design based on our invitations, which were lavender with green and purple polka dots. Well, all my hard work on the cake was worth it and it was a beautiful creation by a Frenchman named Gerard whose English was unintelligible but his chocolate mousse was spectacular. Nevertheless, I only got one bite of that cake (the one Andy shoved in my mouth) because I was too busy being the bride; somehow Andy managed to eat two or three pieces, though. Afterward I woefully told my Dad how sad I was that I never got to eat any of my cake, the cake I worked so hard on (indirectly). Right before our first anniversary, we visited my parents in Las Vegas and my dad had a layer of our cake recreated by Gerard so I could finally try the cake I spent so much time obsessing over! So having a recreation of our wedding cake as our second anniversary cake is really special and has kept up a trend that Andy and I plan on continuing for all our successive anniversaries. We’ve had this cake on or around June 24 of every year since 2006 and I hope we’ll still be eating it in 2056 and beyond.

This is the beautiful cake Andrea and Ashley made us! It tastes as good as it looks!

Today was one of those days that live in infamy, one of those inevitable terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days that come around every few months or so.  It all began with a sleepless night for Andy, filled with thunderstorms, torrential rain beating against our tin roof, and a power outage that took our normally cold bedroom to a warm, unhappy place.  Inexplicably, I slept through all of this, something that NEVER happens.  But Andy (who is usually the sound sleeper) had a dreadful, sleepless night.  We awoke to one of those cloudy gray days with sporadic waves of intensely heavy rain and the occasional thunderclap. While it does rain all the time, thunderstorms are much more rare (the last one was first semester), and Andy and I both find them oddly comforting. We both love Tennessee thunderstorms and here it gives you something to remember from home. The only downside is that all we want to do is curl up in bed and watch movies or play games instead of working or studying. Nevertheless, all play and no work makes Jack a poor boy, so the slumber party would have to wait.

I discovered at about 8:30 this morning that the water had been turned off and now 15 hours later, there is still no water.  It’s very easy to take for granted the amount of water a person uses over the course of a day.  You wash your hands, brush your teeth, flush the toilet, shower, do dishes, cook or boil things, and drink it!  That ends up being a lot of water at the end of the day.  I’m going to hope against hope that when I wake up in the morning the water will be on again, but there are no guarantees of that.  Miraculously, we made it work throughout the day utilizing rain water, bottled water, and the existing water in our Brita pitcher and I only have three dishes in the sink after cooking three meals today.  All the same, it’s been a dreadful inconvenience and a real pain in the neck.

To add on to the frustrations, the power has been fluctuating and we’ve been going through varying states of being on the generator and having power.  We’re very lucky in having that generator because a lot of people went through much of the day completely powerless, but we still have that uncertainty of knowing if/when it would go out and for how long.  Getting through the day just seemed like such a struggle - the workday seemed endless and everything was just so much harder.  Whether that was a result of the weather, the transient nature of our utilities, or some other factor, I don’t know, but I do know that we both had trouble.  Then there was an insect invasion and I had to kill at least two dozen insects within a two hour period in our living room. It was pretty disgusting. And the icing on the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day culminated in a moment of clumsiness by both Andy and me (but I maintain it was mostly Andy), that involved a chair flipping over and a collision with my knee.  We’re both fine, but it was just a totally crummy day.

Oh the weather outside is frightful.  Well, the weather inside is pretty frightful, too.  It’s been awful on the island.  I feel like it’s just sapping all my energy throughout the day and cooking seems like such a chore because it makes the kitchen and the rest of the house even hotter than it already is.  We keep the ceiling fans running all the time, our standing fan is on occasionally (it’s a little noisy), and we run the A/C at night (and sporadically through the day) but it isn’t doing enough.  It’s almost to the point where I feel sick if I spend too much time in the living room (watching TV, cooking, eating dinner, etc.) because the heat is just so intense.  There hasn’t been much of a breeze at night, at least not a cool one, and the air just feels stale and oppressive.  The expense for electricity is extreme (by normal standards) but we’re going to have to start running the air conditioning a lot more because this is getting ridiculous.  While I firmly believe in paying a little more to guarantee personal comforts, I think that a $450 (US) electric bill each month just to “feel comfortable” is an unreasonable tradeoff.  For those who remember how hot our wedding was (107* at the outdoor ceremony at 6pm), that was significantly more comfortable than the humid, muggy, and all around gross weather we’ve been having which I’m sure will continue throughout the summer.  Even the hot and humid summer Nashville endured last year seems like a piece of cake compared to this - mostly because everywhere you go in Nashville has air conditioning!

The heat really is an endless torture from which you never receive a reprieve.  Occasional trips to the pool and to the beach are just about the only things that help, although any trip outside leaves me with a dozen new mosquito bites, whether or not I’m wearing bug spray.  As my Dad knows all too well, I can always find something to complain about here!  He’d tell me to be happy about living in “paradise,” about how our family members in Minnesota get 40 straight days of below zero weather every winter there, and how most people would kill to live on an island in the Caribbean.  The grass is always greener, after all.  In all honesty, I think the grass is greener in places with air conditioning in the summertime, but maybe that’s just me.  However, there is one thing that I cannot complain about and that is that six months and two days from now we’ll be on a plane headed home, never to return to Dominica!  Hurray!  The countdown continues!

Here’s the electronic version of the Ross newsletter, The Physical Examiner.  Enjoy!

Click here to read the newsletter. 

As I was walking down Moo Cow Trail today seeking a bit of sunshine, I came across yet another family of displaced farm animals.  A very large family of sheep were herding together and I managed to get a few pictures of all of them.  Here is the very large extended family of sheep.

 
One of the younger sheep was too cute to ignore.  Just as a frame of reference, the sheep are significantly larger than the goats (but significantly smaller than the cows).

As I sat at my desk yesterday, minding my own business, I had a very Dominican moment.  The goats were hanging out behind our house, as they often do, when I heard a ruckus outside.  One of the gardeners was yelling, which is not at all in his nature.  Suddenly, I saw a very large animal run past the window that was definitely too big to be a goat.  Sure enough, one of the eponymous cows from our trail ran by, chased by one of the gardeners who proceeded to hurl oranges at him.  This frightened the goats who began bleating in distress.  Eventually things settled down, but I began to have the feeling that my office overlooks a strange petting zoo.  While several people can claim office windows that overlook parking lots and city skylines, mine overlooks the chaotic rain forest filled with displaced farm animals.

In other barnyard news, Wilma the goat had another baby.  This one, named Wilson by one of our neighbors, is so tiny and so cute.  Now the happy family consists of Wilbur, Wilma, Willow, and Wilson.  Notice a trend? 

Here’s Wilma and the new baby Wilson. Wilbur’s the brown one in the background.

Willow, who used to be the baby, is now almost full grown.

Another one of the happy goat family.

I am so completely and utterly exhausted.  It’s Sunday, a supposed day of rest, and I feel like I did anything but.  Since it’s exam week, Andy will spend the bulk of the week studying, going to various classes, and watching lectures.  This of course means he’ll be snacking and eating all day every day, but it’s hard for me to take time out of my work day to really cook for him.  The obvious solution is to spend much of Sunday cooking for the week.  I made homemade tortillas (our last ones tasted like the way James Store smells… like stale air, feces, and body odor mixed with old, sticky plastic).  They aren’t perfect… in fact, they’re not really even remotely round, but they taste good, which I guess is all that matters.  I made Andy’s favorite breakfast treat - doughnuts (complete with icing and sprinkles- check out the photo) - which we ate this morning and now have some left over for tomorrow.  I made chocolate chip cookies and for once they didn’t taste like cake batter (I think there’s something weird with the brown sugar that makes it taste faintly of cake batter rather than my dad’s delightful cookies). Plus, I managed to cook dinner (fried shrimp, french fries, and corn on the cob … and none of it came from the freezer section) and do the dishes about two dozen times. Mom would be so proud… But I think she’d be more pleased with the goat cheese and caramelized shallot stuffed chicken breast bordelaise with risotto and green beans I made Saturday night, although I’m sorry to say in all my risotto stirring I burned the green beans.  Oops… nobody’s perfect.  All this makes me all the more wistful for a grocery store, a dishwasher, and a vast selection of take out and delivery options which would only make this process easier.

We also took a friend (and her children) sailing this afternoon and that was a great deal of fun.  We took out one of the sailboats and circled the bay for over an hour.  “Captain Andy” was so great with the kids and it was a nice excuse to get outside and enjoy a little sunshine before a busy work week holes us up in our rooms like hermits.  Afterward we splashed around in the pool before getting a (very welcome) ride home.  Between the cooking, the dishes, and the sailing, my Sunday, my favorite day of the week, evaporated into thin air and has dissolved back into week days.  Oh well, there’s always the promise of another weekend for a little rest and relaxation and the faint hope that it will be sometime soon.

In my spare time (what little I have when I don’t work extra long hours like I did today trying to finish a project for one of the newspapers), I love reading.  I devour books.  I usually bring about 10 new books with me each semester in hopes that they’ll last.  Despite my careful planning, I usually run out about 3-4 weeks before the end of the semester, at which point I start re-reading.  Thankfully I brought books 6 and 7 of the Harry Potter series, which I could read over and over and over again without ever tiring of it…. but I digress.

As I was reading one of the books I brought down, I stumbled across a quote on the page that I just loved.  Have you ever read a book that had an idea in it that captivated you so deeply, you wanted to write it down somewhere and never lose it?  Have you ever run into another room to read a piece aloud because the idea is so powerful you can’t keep it to yourself?  I have many, many times.  I remember being really young and reading A Wrinkle in Time the very first time.  That book was so different from everything I had read and I was utterly transfixed.  I’ve probably read that book two dozen times and I can still remember reading the passage where they first explain what a tesseract is - a wrinkle in time that enables you to travel across the dimension of time.  As soon as I read that, I ran to go show my dad what I was reading.  I wanted to hear what he thought about it, what was mathematically possible (to the extent that a seven year old could understand it) and share this idea with him.  I can still recite the first line of The Outsiders… “When I stepped out into the bright sunlight of the darkness of the movie house, I had two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.”   Recently, as I’ve been reading The Scroll of Seduction (no it’s not a trashy romance novel) by Gioconda Belli, I came across a passage I just loved.

“Ideas have magnetic properties, thoughts attract other thoughts, they lead to sudden revelations and inexplicable coincidences.  To some extent, we’ve all had that sort of experience, those apparent coincidences.”

Everyone has had an experience where you read about something, see it on TV, hear about it in class, or discuss something with a friend and instantly you’re surrounded with this idea everywhere you go.  Sometimes Andy will learn about a disease in one class and then the next night it’s on mystery diagnosis and there’s a profile on it in one of my Newsweek articles.  Or maybe I’ve been researching something at work and suddenly this research will be incredibly topical and relevant to something happening in another part of my life.  Everyone has experienced this at one time or another, but I’d never heard an explanation of the phenomena in such a tangible and intriguing way. Ideas are like magnets… ideas are just swimming around and they can bring us together with powerful force or tear us apart with equal ardor.  Love it…

So is there a passage in a book that has changed you… has impacted you in such a way you felt that impulse to share or have made that idea, thought, or quote a part of who you are? I’m interested to find out…