Things have been so busy, I haven’t even had time to update the blog- I didn’t think that was possible. But between physical therapy, desperate attempts to catch up on Christmas shopping for family and friends, recovering from my surgery (everything seems to be healing well), spending time with the aforementioned family and friends, there really hasn’t been time to do much of anything else. Maybe after Christmas things will slow down. It’s my hope that it will, at least. But we’ve been having a great time seeing grandparents and cousins, best friends, old friends, and new friends. We saw Handel’s Messiah at the symphony and it was spectacular (it would have been better if we weren’t both completely exhausted by the time we went, though). We saw the lights at Opryland and it was beautiful as always. We’ve dined at a number of our favorite “comfort food” restaurants – among them Pie in the Sky, Amerigo’s, Wolfgang Puck Express, and Cheesecake Factory.

Today is Christmas Eve, so Andy will be preparing a beautiful brunch and I’m cooking dinner tonight – all the usual items with ham and mashed potatoes and more veggies than I can count. Then of course we have church late tonight. We’re very excited about Christmas tomorrow, excited about opening our presents, lingering over cups of hot chocolate, tea, or coffee, and spending a day relaxing by the fireplace, and playing with the “toys” we receive.

We wish all of you who actually read this blog a very merry Christmas and a very relaxing and joy-filled new year.

I still don’t think I’m quite adjusted to the time change (even though it’s only two hours) because I keep waking up at 6:00, which is not how I want to spend my break.  Andy doesn’t seem to be affected by the same affliction, but nevertheless I was grateful for it this morning.  We opened the shades to our windows last night and when I awoke this morning it was sunrise.  Outside out windows there’s a thick mass of trees, twisted empty branches creating a dense forest of tangled wood.  As the sun began to rise, a thick band of bright salmon pink lit the trees and colored the horizon above the hills in the distance. Above the pink band, the sky was a steely winter gray, that soft blue gray you get only in winter time.  The colors were awe-inspiring, looking like neopolitan ice cream with stripes of white, pink, and blue gray painting the sky.  Dominica has beautiful sunsets, but there is nothing quite like a winter sunrise to put you in the Christmas spirit.  There is no substitute for the frosty chill in the air, the leafless branches, the cloud-swept sky, the icy colors.

Everything just keeps going back to the fact that we’re glad to be home, with our cats, our friends, and our “normal” lives.

As Andy said, we did finally make it home, with relative ease considering we had three flights to three different countries, three trips through customs, six trips through security, and countless minutes of delayed flights. All told, we were up and traveling about 20 or so hours, but we’re so glad to be home.

Everywhere we go, we keep staring wide-eyed at everything we used to take for granted. We’re more patient. We’re more grateful. We’re so happy to be back in the US, back in Brentwood, and back around the comforts of home. Our first meal when we got back was Starbucks and McDonalds’ breakfast and I cannot even begin to express how good those items tasted. We savored each bite, something that’s pretty strange when you consider how mundane McDonalds’ breakfast really is. We’re also really glad to have our cats back. When we saw them I just about burst into tears I was so happy. It took Reagan a few hours to readjust to being with us and being upstairs, but he’s very very happy now. Peanut started purring the second Andy picked her up and she hasn’t stopped since. They’re back to sleeping in between our heads on the bed and it’s so wonderful to go to sleep to the sound of a cat purr. Speaking of the bed, good Lord, we had forgotten how comfortable our bed is! We got some new sheets on it and it is hard to tear ourselves away from it!

Though we’re happy to be back, we’ve been ridiculously busy and completely overwhelmed with all the errands we have to run. It seems like we’re being kept so busy that there isn’t any time for Christmas shopping! Hopefully we’ll find some time to squeeze it in over the next couple days. We’ve been shuttling between doctors’ appointments, the bank, haircuts and eyebrow waxes, and more, and it won’t let up much in the coming days. I start back part-time at my old job tomorrow, and surprisingly enough, I’m a little nervous. It’s like another first day for me. I know it’ll be great, hopefully it won’t wear me out too much though, as this is supposed to be a break.

In any event, we’re back, we’re happy, we’re comfortable, we’re busy, but it’s Christmas and there’s nothing that could be more wonderful than Christmastime at home!

We finally made it home at midnight December 15th.  Though we’re glad to be back, we must take a moment to remember the fallen heroes of our journey.  Ryan and Ashley were left behind by the impatient US Airways people because they got held up in customs.  We fought the system bravely to hold the plane yet it was not enough.  So we salute you Ryan and Ashley for your dedication and perseverance and hope that you do get home ASAP.  We now take a moment of silence in their honor.

Today and tomorrow mark the last days of our time here for 2007 and yesterday signaled the end of Andy’s first semester. It’s all we can do not to stare at the clock until Saturday morning rolls around. We’re watching the Weather Channel with trepidation, praying for no complications for our connections to Charlotte or Nashville. We’re going over and reprinting out all of our travel documents for Liat and US Air to make sure those miserable excuses for airlines don’t have any reason to delay us or give us trouble.  Josh and Krista left this morning and we know they got stuck in Antigua for a bit so we’re praying that they made it home safe and sound (and expeditiously) and that we don’t face the same fate.

We got our new couch today so we spent a good chunk of this afternoon trying to pick it up and then playing around with the setup of our living room. Imagine trying to fit a comfortable living room and dining room in a space that is smaller than most people’s formal dining rooms. It’s tricky, if nothing else! But Andy and I are smart people so we found a way that was at least passable for now, until we find something better.  The biggest challenge actually proved to be finding someone who could help us pick it up!  We called the usual taxi service (which has loads of pickup trucks) and they told us that they don’t have a single pickup truck available at any point today.  So then we started having to think a bit more creatively and we saw our landlord drive by in his pickup truck.  So after we paid our January rent (since we won’t be back until the 11th), we asked if her husband would drive us to pick it up, and he was very nice and agreed.  He even got one of his assistants to help us carry it.  It proved to be a very simple task once we arranged transportation, and now we have a great new couch to go with our great new TV!

I also defrosted the refrigerator and freezer tonight and what a mess that was!  Water, water, everywhere!  I was up to my elbows in boiling water in hopes of steaming the ice out.  When this took way too long, I grabbed a hammer and started prying the ice sheets off the back wall.  This was actually very successful and shaved probably two or three hours off my defrosting time.  The floor is still a little wet and there’s already a tiny layer of ice building, but it’s a vast improvement over what it was!

Things are just a little bit boring after all the rain we’ve been having, and we’re definitely anxious to go home, but at least we can finally take a breath after the chaos of the first semester and relax a little. At least, for a short time.  Just one more day and we can finally say that it’s time to go home!

Andy wanted me to make a useful post for those who will be moving to the island soon and might need a little guidance before moving out here. We learned a great many things just from experience – some good, some bad. Here are a few of our most useful tips:

• Bring anything that makes life homey for you with you. Whether that’s a favorite pillow, pictures and photographs, movies or board games, a stuffed animal, or whatever it is that you love and can’t live without, bring it! You will miss it terribly and miss having some of those creature comforts of home.
• Do not use Ocean Laundry under any circumstances. Hannah’s is also pretty shady.
• For shipping, use USPS, but plan on it taking 3-4 weeks. There’s really no such thing as an address on this island so if you ship DHL or UPS or FedEx it goes to the airport, meaning you have to catch a transport or hire a driver to take you to the airport to pick up your stuff then pay the customs on it. If you send it USPS, not only is it cheaper (but takes longer), but it gets delivered right to campus and you can deal with customs there!
• Get most of your groceries in Roseau, it’s cheaper and there is a much greater selection, and then get miscellaneous or frequently used items at James or Tina’s. You can take the campus transports on Saturday morning to Roseau for free, grab a transport (8 EC), or get together with a bunch of people and hire out a transport to take you for the day. Monthly trips are totally worth it.
• The Saturday morning market is an experience worth going to at least once, but if you need your beauty rest, sleep in and get your produce from Dee’s or the Shacks instead. You’ll pay a premium for it (9 EC for a dozen eggs instead of 6), but it’s so worth it to get my sleep; 5 a.m. is much too early for this little lady and her husband!
• Never expect fast service and never go to a restaurant with your heart set on any particular entree. They probably won’t have it. Even if you’re from the south and are used to a slower pace, it will boggle your mind how atrocious (and slow) service is here.
• Most Dominicans are very nice and very welcoming, though a few aren’t. Keep a smile on your face, say hello to people as you walk by them, and just be friendly.  It really can make all the difference in your experience here.
• Tipping is usually included, so it’s not expected to leave a tip at restaurants and don’t tip your taxi driver- they won’t accept it.
• Bring more prescriptions than you think you’ll need. This is not the place to run out of important prescriptions and birth control because you probably can’t get more of it (especially hard to find ones).
• Bring your own sheets and towels. No matter what your landlord says, the sheets suck. Bring them from the US. Bring extra towels because they never dry here so they’ll smell like mildew within a couple days.
• Bring extra batteries and bug repellent – they’re quite expensive.
• If you see something you like at a grocery store, buy a ton of it, whether it’s on your list or not.  Chances are, it won’t be there again next time, so buy what you can when you can.  Our first trip to Roseau, they had tons of cheese so I bought several pounds of it.  They never had that same selection of cheese again and I was able to freeze most of it.  Once at Brizee Mart, they had a bunch of Bisquick so I got 4 boxes of it and it lasted half the semester and I haven’t seen it since.  It’s counterintuitive, particularly if you are used to budgeting, but it’s what you have to do here.
• You get charged a conversion fee on your debit card (and most credit cards) every time you make an overseas transaction (usually 1-2%, not counting ATM transaction fees which total $6.50 per transaction).  Ours ended up amounting to over $150 for the semester, so talk to your bank and look into other options to avoid paying all this money to “Stupid Tax” (if you’re a Dave Ramsey fan, you know what that means!)
• Get Vonage.  It’s the best way to call home very inexpensively.

Those are a few of the pearls of wisdom we found out about… as we think of more, I’m sure we’ll post them.  Moving here is not easy, but once you have a whole semester under your belt and you learn how things work, it become much, much easier!

Well, as promised here are a few of the things we’re most looking forward to about being at home… and a few of the things we might actually miss about Dominica.

What We’re Looking Forward to the Most (in no particular order):

1. PEANUT AND REAGAN!  We miss the kitties so much that we can’t wait to scoop them up in our arms and cuddle with them!
2.  Food.  We have a HUGE list of restaurants where we can’t wait to eat (P.F. Chang’s, Basil, Molinari’s, Amerigo, Pie in the Sky, just to name a few) and I know Andy can’t wait for me to cook Christmas dinner.  If only I could remember what the heck Mom and I did to that gravy last year to make it taste so good!!!!
3. Getting Dressed Up.  Seriously, I’m longing to wear heels, cute boots, cozy sweater dresses, and tights.  I know Andy can’t wait to break out the blazers and sport coats, dress shoes, and cologne.  It will be so nice to be able to wear real makeup, do my hair, smell like perfume, and just feel pretty again!  Another bonus is not sweating through those dress clothes, like we did at the White Coat Ceremony.
4. Not Itching.  I’m so over the constant mosquito bites and smelling like DEET 24/7.  I told Andy I’m going to get cancer from all the exposure to DEET and the toxic stuff that is in the bug repellent.  Over the break, I’ll be wearing perfume, lotion, delicious-smelling hair products and I won’t have to battle insects because of it!
5. Going to the Symphony on the 22nd.  It’ll be our first time going to the Schermerhorn and we can’t wait to go hear Handel’s Messiah there.  One of the things that bummed me out about moving here was missing Broadway at TPAC because Andy and I always go to at least one show and this year we were going to miss all of them!
6. Getting Hair Cuts.  Neither of us have had our hair cut since August and it looks like it.  Andy’s quite shaggy and my hair just sort of sits there, completely shapeless.  I can’t wait to feel a little pampering in the form of a thorough shampoo, condition, cut, and style!
7. Our Friends and Family.  Many of our good friends will be in Nashville at the time and I can’t wait to see everyone, catch up, grab a coffee and chat, and just hang out.
8. Christmas Lights and Decorations.  I’m practically counting down the days until we can go to the Opryland Hotel and wander the hallways and pavillions, seeing the decorations, hearing the music, and experiencing the holiday overload that only they know how to do.  It’ll be nice to sit under the Christmas tree at home by the fireplace, with some hot chocolate while marveling at the brightly wrapped presents.
9. Christmas Presents!  I’d be lying if I said we weren’t looking forward to giving and receiving a few presents!
10. Southern Hospitality.  There’s no such thing as service in Dominica (with a few rare exceptions) and we can’t wait to see people smiling, being friendly, opening doors, and just plain being southern! It’s funny, but I’ve been making appointments and confirming things and I’m always astonished when I call somewhere in Brentwood or Nashville and people are just so darn nice!  It shouldn’t surprise me – that’s what businesses are supposed to do- but here, no one does that!
11. BONUS 1: Modern conveniences.  Water heaters that work regardless of whether the sun is shining or not, having a washer and a dryer in the house, waking up on our Tempur Pedic mattress and setting my feet down on soft carpet, driving around town instead of walking, a dishwasher, an oven with temperatures, consistent electricity, outlets you don’t have to turn off, our widescreen HD-TV, my straightening iron and my curling iron, and oh-so-much more.
12. BONUS 2: Not having to dodge the cows every time we leave the house.
13. BONUS 3: The paycheck that should be waiting for me when I arrive.

Okay, so I couldn’t narrow it down to just ten.  There are just so many things we miss, we’re longing for, and we can’t wait to experience in just three and a half days.  But with the great joy of being home, there are a few things we might actually miss about our life in Picard.
Things We Might Actually Miss About Dominica (believe it or not):

1. This one’s from Andy: Sailing any time we want, whenever we want.
2. Not being cold.
3. We’ll be running around like crazy when in Nashville, shuttling between doctor’s appointments, meeting up with friends, working and volunteering,  and trying to cram everything we could ever possibly want to do in Nashville in a single month.  At least there isn’t all that much to do here so you feel a bit more relaxed!
4. Our maid.  Cassandra is a joy and she makes everything smell so clean; I’ll miss her mopping the floors and cleaning the bathrooms while we’re at home when I’ll be relegated to doing it!
5. Being so close to the beach.
6. Really fresh juices and inexpensive, organic, locally grown vegetables.
7. Not having to work out so frequently because I walk (and sweat) everywhere I go.
8. The verdant rainforest behind our cottage and the clean, cool river that’s just down the road.
9. The baby goat (who’s name is actually Willow, and not Steven, which is what I’ve been calling him).
10. Having enough spare time to cook and bake.

That’s about it… frankly, we miss Nashville a heck of a lot more than we’ll ever miss Dominica, but we aren’t blind to the fact that there are a few positive qualities about this place.  And so the countdown continues with only three and a half days standing between us and the “real world.”  It never seemed like this week would come, but here it is at long last and we’re overwhelmed with all that must be done before we leave.  Things like defrosting a fridge that is so frozen, I’ve lost probably 2 cubic feet of space due to a huge ice block in the back, getting our laundry picked up so we have clean sheets and towels and clothes when we get back, helping Andy study for his final exam which is tomorrow afternoon, and more.

10:45 on Saturday night cannot come soon enough!

We’ve had more than our fair share of strange, wonderful, awful, and ridiculous moments over the last 15 weeks… these are the first few that came to mind as we looked back over our first semester in Dominica.

1. Our first night here. Traveling the Airport Road for the first time, taking a tour of campus in complete darkness, eating at Bob’s Chinese Restaurant and not really knowing how things worked, seeing our cottage for the first time, and just feeling really out of place were some of the things that marked our first night on the island. It was a little bit of culture shock and a whole lot of information overload.
2. My first trip to Roseau. Seeing cold cuts, cheeses, salad dressings that had not expired, and real American products was a huge deal and so memorable. It was one of the first moments when I realized that we could, in fact, survive 16 months here. Andy was beyond excited when I came home with oreos.
3. Poking an octopus with a stick at Secret Beach. You just don’t get to do that every day.
4. Our excursions to Victoria Falls, Trafalgar Falls, and Ti Tou Gorge. Each was absolutely breath-taking in its own way and a really great experience. These excursions also served as reminders of how beautiful Dominica really is; that’s an easy thing to forget when you see the dinginess of Picard and the poverty of Portsmouth.
5. Our mini vacations: lounging around Jungle Bay, sailing to Les Saintes, and feeling positively civilized at the Fort Young. All three destinations were very different but we were able to relax a little and feel pampered and normal, if only for a few hours or a few days.
6. Tracking down our missing laundry after they failed to return more than a dozen articles of clothing. I don’t think the people at Ocean Laundry were quite used to a person calling every hour on the hour and demanding the return of their missing articles of clothing. I was so thankful for when we found Magdalene’s Laundry and discovered that not everyone loses your clothes when you send it out.
7. Our first Thanksgiving on the island – a successful and delicious meal with real American foods and delightful company. Though there were a few things I wish I had had at the time (an instant read thermometer, a tablecloth, four matching glasses, etc.) it was nice to feel like we had a traditional dinner with friends.
8. The power outage that occurred just as I was putting food in the oven and then subsequently eating in the dark. Power outages are pretty common but it was really surprising when it ran out when I was right in the middle of cooking a meal. Have you ever tried to make tacos in the dark? It’s not easy.
9. Getting stuck on a transport that broke down in the middle of nowhere en route to Roseau. This needs no further explanation.
10. Andy having to battle a huge cow that started “charging” toward him late one night. The cows are usually pretty docile and content eating their weeds but on that one occasion Andy must have made him mad or something. Luckily he just yelled at it really loud and it got scared and ran away.

This only begins to scratch the surface and I think at this point we’re getting so acclimated to the culture that things don’t really surprise us anymore. I think next time I’ll list a few of the things Andy and I are most excited about when we return home… and maybe in the spirit of Christmas, list a few of the things we might actually miss about Dominica. Surely we can think of one or two…

As we sat down to dinner tonight an often forgotten and ever elusive visitor came to call.  His name is Perspective.  We’ve now been in Dominica for 3.5 months and in a week’s time we’ll be (hopefully) on board a plane to take us back to the US.  A lot has changed in that three and a half month period and so much of what scared us at first has become commonplace and so much of what used to be unlivable or intolerable has now been made almost comfortable.  It was a strange experience to step back and just revisit how far we truly have come in surviving this island. 

Take for example, our dinner tonight.  I made chicken parmesan with an amazing twisted spaghetti noodle we bought in Terre-de-Haut with pesto sauce and Caesar salad, paired with a glass of French Bordeaux.   That meal was a far cry from the disastrous pasta I attempted to make (and ruined) my first time cooking here.  The cupcakes that Andy has been nibbling on for the last few days are far superior to the funfetti cake I burned in the first month.  I remember freaking out when I found it impossible to find cheese for the first week or two and then relaxing when I went to Roseau and discovered that there is cheese on this island – you just have to know where to look. 

There are no longer hundreds of mosquito bites covering every inch of my body, though I now have pretty consistently 4-8 bites at any given time.  The laundry that left me spending all day panicking about whether our underwear would actually come back or not, now comes back smelling fresh and clean and intact every time.  The cows standing on the roadside no longer surprise me (though I do have to say they still scare me a little).  We’ve found restaurants we like and restaurants we don’t, we’ve found places to get the best chicken, the best juice, the best pizza, the best hamburgers, and the best cheesecake. 

It would be impossible to say we like living here.  That would be a lie.  But we have, after three and a half months, found a way to make life tolerable, at times even pleasant, amidst all the chaos and the foreignness of this island.  Finding things like bathmats, US cookware, some newer dishes, and board games have gone a long way in making our cottage homier and when I stuff my carry-ons with photos and books and a few of our reminders of home after the break I know it will feel even homier.  A little creativity in the kitchen has led me to figure out ways to bring all our favorites from home to the island and I can now say that I can make both a cafe mocha and a cinnamon latte that rivals Starbucks’!  My Mexican pizza is way better (and healthier) than Taco Bell’s, my grilled cheese and bacon tastes just like Steak and Shake’s, and I can make a pan pizza that tastes almost identical to Pizza Hut’s. 

All this has been trial and error and it hasn’t been easy, but armed with a few new tools and a lot of experience, I think we’re ready to embark on the next three semesters with greater ease than this one has been (though we know we’ll encounter plenty of struggles, as well).  One semester is about to come to a close, meaning we are ¼ of the way through our time here.  It was strange to stop and think about our first few nights here and the foreignness of it all and really remembering how much has changed and how quickly time has passed.  Hemingway said “Never write about a place until you’re away from it, because that gives you perspective,” and I think that has only some merit.  I think after we leave Dominica, we’ll be able to look at the entire experience as a whole and really evaluate how this opportunity has changed us (and it will certainly give me plenty to write about), but I think even by stepping outside ourselves now and looking at this one semester as a microcosm for what our experience has been, will be, and can be, I think has really helped me appreciate how far we’ve come in such a short time. 

Andy took his third mini exam yesterday, so all that’s standing between us and home is his final exam and one more week.  I’ve been making lists, and lists for my lists, and then subcategorizing those lists, just to make sure we know what we need to pack, what we want to bring back, and what we’ll need to ship back.  I’ve been making dozens of phone calls for various appointments and staying busy with work and organizing the house.  I have schedules for when we need to pay January rent, confirm our ride to the airport, and more.  But right now, my attention is focused on all the 4th semester sales and my quest for quality American cookware and housewares for the cottage, because the more I get here, the less we have to bring back.  Also, we’re looking into getting a few furniture items to make it a little more cozy (since we’ll be here another year) and our landlady said that anything we buy, she’ll buy back from us when we leave.

Though there are only a few more days, they’re going to be a hard couple of days because we have to stay focused on studying and being productive and not on Nashville… a difficult feat when the light at the end of the tunnel is so close.