Plate o' Shrimp

Scary Showers

Week two and I have been busy.. I think. I don’t even have to think about driving on the left side of the road. The good news about my car is the squeaky belt problem has gone away, but the bad news is that my AC quit along with the sound. My neighbor Mark fiddled with the carburetor the other day and it is now running much easier. He was very happy to have been paid in beer and I was very happy to have him check things out. I have been getting terrible gas mileage in my little Nissan., which is even a bigger deal in Grenada where gas is about a $4 a gallon. My afternoon was taken up with a fruitless search for a new air filter that I hope will rectify the situation. The auto supply store was out, but I got the kind of service that doesn’t exist in the states, with an auto supply store clerk carefully removing and replacing the many bolts and clips that cover my air filter so he could check to make sure they had the right one. The errand seemed to take most of the afternoon after, and produced little except an encounter with “ the guy who sells the good mangos” -- who is a man who wanders around the Grand Anse area saying “I am the guy who sells the good mangos” I am pretty sure I knew him last winter as the “:guy who sells the good loofas” I think he is a seasonal guy, changing as the needs suit.


By the time I walked shade and made diner it was 7. That included time for a shower in the scary little shower that has the heater attached directly to it with wires held together by electrical tape sticking prominently out the top. All this too say time flies and things seems normal until they are not. Until I am driving on the left hand of the road thinking about a cold shower because it both seems safer and more refreshing and wondering if I should try the Nissan dealer to find an air filter or just wait ten days for the next shipment to arrive.

Studying is still a lonely business, although Shade does make good company. I have more names in my speed dial here in Grenada than I do back home, but getting to know folks better is already getting cut short by ever present study guilt.

Saturday night I went to a barbeque on campus and then out to Nichole’s for a small party. We ended up at the prickly bay marina, drinking wine and eating pizza in the soft warm Caribbean night. My friend Christine and I ended up talking to a couple of dive shop operators, one of who was also a former chef and who had just signed a contract to wear a suit and help run a hotel in Dubai. It was nice to have a nice normal non med school conversation with people who had histories. I love my classmates, but most of them don’t have histories yet.

And Shade came to Prickly bay and ponied up to the bar.. ate a little pizza. And she was and is universally admired. My vet student apartment mates tell me she has been singing a bit when I am gone – But they are understanding and clinical, talking to me about separation anxiety instead of why my dog won’t shut up.

SO I am settling in. Physiology is good and feels very familiar. I am already more than half way though genetics, and I feel like it will take more memorization than I am comfortable with. I love to problem solve, hate to memorize. We had a clinical skills patient interview workshop today, and I still love the opportunity to do that type of work. Many of my classmates complain, but as the physician who was supervising us said, it is what most of us will be doing all day every day. It is good to remember why exactly I am doing this, and good to meet that feeling of rightness.

posted by Sa @ 8:06 AM