My Dorm

Super Dorm 1

My room is on the first floor (actually 2nd floor, but the first floor is called the Ground Floor, so I'm on the "first" floor), Room 1. Currently we are without A/C and have been since I arrived. They say that we should get it Monday, but they've been pushing the date back since I arrived. After arriving at my dorm, Shaheryar and I, went out and tried the campus cuisine. We got a large cheese pizza at the Student Center, located right next to my dorm at their "Pizza Express". A small pizza is 11 EC (Eastern Caribbean currency; 1 EC = 2.67 USD) and a large is 21 EC (aprox 8.40 USD). The pizza was decent, though it seemed they may have added sugar to the sauce to make it taste "better". A large can of Arizona Iced Tea labeled as "Great Buy 99 cents" cost almost $3USD! After our pizza was consumed save for two slices, we walked a bit around campus. There are a lot of black cats here. We saw at least 3-4 black cats, that could easily be mistaken for the same cat except for the fact that cats cannot possibly be in multiple places at the same time. Some have white socks to distinguish them from the completely black cats, but yeah, there are a lot of cats on campus.

Anyway, upon returning to our dorm, I went to my room and proceeded to unpack. The room is actually not nearly as small as I had been lead to believe after reading forum posts by current students. It's decently sized for a double. The room is not quite as large as a normal BJ dorm room, but it's furnished with 2 twin beds, desks, and closets (4 shelves and 2 rods). The room also has a kitchenette with fridge, 2 stovetop burners, sink, microwave, and undercounter cupboards. We also have a private bathroom. My roommate arrived before I did and had already settled in. Her name is Mahsa. She is 27, Persian, from Atlanta, majored in neuroscience at Emory, and a 1st term med student. I didn't see much of her the first day or two because her parents are here with her and she's been spending the night at their hotel room since they have A/C.

My Side

Mahsa's Side

On Thursday, I met with an advisor for the MPH program and picked out my classes for the year. The program has 5 required core courses and 2 required program courses. There are 4 tracks of study you can pursue: Epidemiology and Biostatistics Track, Health Behavior and Policy Track, Environmental/Occupational Health Track, and a General Track. The classes are 3 hours each with a 10 min break every 50 min lasting 8 weeks. The classes are arranged so that they are staggered throughout 10 week term with some beginning the 1st week, some the 2nd, and the rest the 3rd. This term I will be taking Principles of Epidemiology, Principles of Biostatistics, Principles of Environmental Health, Substance Abuse and Public Health, and Concepts, Practice and Leadership of Public Health. My schedule came out so that I have Fridays completely free (oh yeah!) and for 4 weeks, on Monday and Wednesday I will have class from 9am to 8pm, with an hour off for lunch and dinner. Those days I predict to be exhausting...

It's been quite a time trying to register for my classes... It's not so much the actual registering process, but getting my registration voucher I need to present in order to register was a bit of a nerve-racking. When I first went to register I found out that I had not been given an email account so I could not get my voucher. Then when the IT department created my account, there was no voucher waiting, so I called the Financial Aid office in Bayshore, NY and was told that they had not heard anything about my loans from any bank. Without receiving confirmation that my loan was approved they could not give me a voucher. So I emailed my dad who told me that the bank had sent out the info to the school. I emailed my FA advisor last night notifying her of the situation, and when I called her today she said that I should be receiving my voucher in my email today. And voila, after about 4 hours, it was there, only to find that I couldn't print it out because my inbox suddenly went from 17% to 0%. I ran to the IT department, who informed me that they were working on some stuff, so it was causing issues. But praise the Lord, they were able to print out my voucher and I'll be able to register for my classes. Yay!

So anyway, Thursday I went on a tour of the Annandale Falls and the Grande Etang Lake. The Annandale Falls wasn't exactly a huge waterfall or anything, but it was kind of cool. The scenery, flora, and rock formations were really neat. We had some "chaps" or 2nd term student volunteers that were there to make sure none of us jumped off the falls. There were some natives there that were part of the "Annandale Falls Jumpers Association" and they did some jumps off the falls, approx. 50-100 ft. About the distance of Turtleback Falls, for those who know what I'm talking about. They took a collection afterwards for their "fund."

(L-R) Tristan, Jamela, me, Shaheryar
Thanks, Robin, for the great pic

I believe I failed to mention before, but this is supposed to be the dry season right now in Grenada. From January til about June/July it's the dry season and July to December it's supposed to be the wet season. However, it has rained so much since I've been here. It rains about 7-10 times a day, short bursts usually lasting no longer than 20 minutes. So while we were out at Grande Etange Lake, which is a volcanic lake, it began to pour. All of us ran to the 3 gazebo structures they had, but due to the wind the rain was pretty much coming at us horizontally and it was cold, so there was no shelter to really be had. Some of the students just decided to jump into the lake since they were getting wet anyway. I seriously considered the idea, but figured it'd be an uncomfortable ride back to campus if I did. Had I known I was going to get drenched through and through anyway or if I had brought a change of clothing, I'd prob have been in the lake with the rest. So yeah, as you may have gathered, we were completely drenched to the skin. What wasn't wet from the run down to the gazebos got wet running back to the shuttles. But after the run back to the shuttles, my body warmed up and then the rain was actually enjoyable. Warm rain can be a lot of fun as long as you're open to the experience. heh, you should have seen the lot of us. We were soaking wet and while some were grumbling, I was loving it. They had free drinks for us as well when we got to the shuttles: Ting, a carbonated grapefruit soda. Pretty good, shockingly sour. A nice combination, in my opinion. They don't have any plastic bottled soda here. When you ask for soda, they give you a half liter glass bottle. Very spiffy, and they ask that you return the bottles (I assume to be reused).

Thanks for most of the following pics go out to Jon and Ken...

Okay, finally I'm almost caught up... now on to today's events...

This morning I went on another school sponsored event, a cruise of a sort actually. It was called Rhum Runner, after the ferry/boat we were on. We boarded this double decker ferry and were told that it was probably the largest party boat in Grenada... well, that sounded promising . There was a steel band, New Dimension, that played Caribbean music and I have to say, I liked it. We left the docks and headed out to a reef where they dropped a glass bottom box into the water so we could view the reef, and they fed the yellow-tailed snappers there so we were able to view some of the sea life as well. From there we headed toward the beach. During our cruise to the beach, the band played and the "bar" handed out free drinks of Rhum Punch (a "street" rum punch) and soda. I didn't try any of the rum, but many students did and said it was very strong. From what I saw of them nearing the end of our trip, I'll have to agree.. there was more than one red-eyed stuttering student... Anyway the beach was gorgeous. We were told there weren't any dangerous animals or such but that if we saw a green ball shaped object in the sand that resembled a Granny Smith apple, not to touch it. While it wouldn't kill us, it'd give us a really nasty blister. (L-R) Me, Jamila, Ken, Payle

White sand, crystal clear blue/aqua-marine (kind of a redundancy there) waters... simply exquisite. We spent about 2 hours at the beach, most of which time I spent walking with friends and meeting new people. I did get to go swimming and it was awesome. The water felt great, warm, soothing.. paradise. I did get some mild sun burn, having forgotten to put on the suntan lotion I had with me.. fool was I.

I can hardly believe how nice things are down here. Everything has far exceeded my expectations... then again, classes haven't started yet, so who knows...(L-R) Hashim, Me, Jon, Shaheryar, ?, Robin

(Back Row) Tristan, ?, Mike