Greetings from St. Kitts

I have apparently already lied to all you loyal blog-readers and am late on an update. My apologies—Saturday was a tad bit crazier than I ever anticipated… AND I don’t have the internet at my apartment just yet, so I had to wait until today to leech off the Wi-Fi of the Ross Campus.

So… I had successfully been awake since noon-ish on Friday and was still packing until about 3:30 am on Saturday--partly due Jeff having some of his friends over and partly due to the fact that I REALLY procrastinated with the packing.

Nevertheless, everything important made it into one of the 4 severely overstuffed pieces of luggage that are on their way alongside me. (And an interesting security pointer: You know that laptops have to be scanned separately… so don’t X-Boxes and CD/DVD cases.) And, of course, my carry-ons were subject to two “random” checks. Perhaps that is because I struggled so much trying to lift the duffel-bag getting to the plane… hmmm…

The first flight left early by about 5 minutes to head from Boston to Atlanta… and I splurged a little to get the WiFi on the first bit of the flight. $10 wasn’t that bad for the 2 hours of internet to try to make sure all the loose ends were all tied up before arriving on the island. Oddly enough, the girl that sat next to me was also on her way to Ross, but to visit a friend that had been there for a year already.

I couldn’t have asked for better timing between the two flights. By the time I arrived to the gate (having given up and starting to drag the carry-on that felt like at least 100 pounds), they were already boarding my section of the plane. The funny thing about that flight was that I slept for a majority of it… yes, including the take-off. I still don’t quite know how I managed that one!

Customs to get into St. Kitts was much easier than any European country I visited—no real questions asked, and I was on my way through the immigration along with my luggage kiosk within half an hour. Of course, as soon as I walked through the doors, the humid heat of the island hit me like a ton of bricks. I’m not used to the Caribbean being THIS hot and humid—it blind-sided me. Eventually, everyone in my orientation group made it through customs as well (but I think it took everyone else maybe about an hour to an hour and a half total) and we piled into a mini-van
to drop everything off at our apartments.

I lucked out with the first stop of the journey and the fact that my new roommate, Lindsey, was arriving on a later flight that was delayed. So you know what that means—I had first choice of bedrooms! Naturally, I took the one that had thicker curtains that would trap the cool air in better during the day (as I tend to leave an A/C on at night) and block the sunlight better in the mornings. Well, it worked out because I later found out that purple is Lindsey’s favorite color, so she wanted the other bedroom anyway.

After unpacking and a quick nap, Frank (the orientation leader) picked up the group again and we headed off for dinner at a local restaurant/outdoor bar. I honestly have to say that I was not overly impressed with their style of BBQ chicken, and I hope that the rest of the island’s food isn’t as bland as theirs. At that point, we had our first lesson in the local currency—although it’s still hard to remind yourself that $1.00 = 2.65 EC… so to see prices on a menu as high as $65, it scares you for a brief second. After dinner, Frank took us to Ziggy’s… the local bar that a LOT of the Ross students frequent. General consensus was that we were exhausted by 10:30 and wanted nothing to do with this socializing. Luckily, we were in bed by 11:00.

Sunday was a whirlwind as well. Frank picked us all up at 7:30 in the morning for breakfast. I’m still having a hard time adapting to the “island speed,” which is more like inefficient and slow as a snail compared to the Boston way of life… but, I’ll eventually adapt. I’m good at that. :P

Then, the fun of grocery shopping! I’m glad to see that a lot of the same products we’d use back home are down here—Pantene shampoo, Sunchips, Tide laundry detergent, and one of my personal favorites—Chunky’s clam chowder (yum!)… but it slipped our minds more than once that $8.00 EC is a normal price for a bottle of shampoo. Once that culture shock was done, we were returned to our apartments to relax for an hour, where I was greeted by a rather large gecko that reminded me of the Geiko gecko.

Then, the not-so-fun part of the day commenced—the beach. And yes, I did see one of the monkeys… and no, he was not drunk—he was in a cage on this one. They also have a local pig… a HUGE pig… like a 500-pound-pig waddling (well, in the instances we saw him, sleeping) around the beach. His name is Wilbur. How fitting, huh? After several hours of watching the boys playing beach volleyball and taking some pictures of the island landscape, we went to another bar/restaurant nearby for dinner. I decided to be brave and try the conch fritters… and have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. Luckily, this day ended at 6:00… and I finally had some time to get to know Lindsey before her group leader took them out to Ziggy’s for the night.

I think she and I will get along nicely. :P

And, that’s all for now… I’m off to finish up day 1 of the ACTUAL orientation process… I’ll talk to you all again on Saturday (I hope!).