They're Over!

Yay! Midterms are over! Actually they were over yesterday, but I didn't turn in one of my take-home midterms due to my studies for the Social and Behavioral midterm, so I just finished it up today in class and turned it in. The prof was fine with it, and that's part of what I was relying on, his ambivalence *grins*. I know, I know, I'm bad, slacker, slothful, academic misfit, or whatever.. but it's all good. I'm just glad to have them over with and am looking forward to relaxing and sleeping for more than 3 hours a night.

To give you something else to be happy about, here's a really cute pic of Vasco a friend of mine, Marc Armstrong, took a couple weeks ago. Vasco's actually grown some I think since this pic was taken.



Ta-da! :)

Midterms

Well it's that time of the term again when things start to pile up (well, actually they've been piling up since last week and I've just been procrastinating like I am now by writing this post and have been all day if you haven't noticed that I'm at an all time high of 3 posts in one waking period :p ). I've been working for most of the night on a presentations my Community Health Promotions class (all 6 of us) is going to present to the La Sagesse community about drug abuse prevention interventions that have worked elsewhere so that they can choose a model that they believe they can modify to work in their community. For the rest of this now morning, I will be working on spewing out an 8-10 page paper for my take-home Health Policy midterm (extremely boring class). And tomorrow, well, rather to be accurate, today, I will spend all my non-class waking hours studying for my Social and Behavioral midterm that's scheduled for Wed night. The material covers over 600 slides and is purely memorization and I've barely started. So yeah. I'm excited! Yay! Whoo-hoo! It's great that my coffee's actually kicking in and having a "positive" effect this time so I'm all up and ready to goooo! Otherwise, I'd likely be in a state of despondence and despair over the seemingly insurmountable amount of material I need to cover in such a short period of time. Alrighty then, it's back to work with me!

Racist

I think Vasco's racist :p This afternoon when I was taking him out to do his thing, one of the girls who live next door asked if she could come walk Vasco with me. I was glad for this because Vasco hasn't had much interaction with children so this would be a good chance for him to do so. Her name is Camilla and she's in the 5th grade. I think she's a native, or at least of African decent. Anyway, Vasco was focused on getting to his plot of grass, found his spot and proceeded to pee.. in the process he looked up and saw Camilla. He then did this crazy kick spin thing with his legs and started barking at her. It was actually kind of funny, but he kept going on and was getting distracted from the main reason why he was out. My impression was that he had never had anyone with darker skin stay so close before. Strange as that is since the natives here in Grenada are mostly of African decent. Color blind or not, he can tell the difference. But after about 2 min he seemed to be a little better with her around. She asked if she and her sister could come over sometimes to play with Vasco. I said that that would actually be great. It'll help familiarize him with those of darker skin and children at the same time. It's great.

He's such a poser :)

Addendum:
Though now that I think about it, it may be because he was protecting his territory. He kind of considers where he does his business 3 times a day as his. I do remember now, that he did bark at this one white lady hanging her laundry out. So maybe that's it... Either way, more exposure to diverse populations will be good for him. :)

You know you’re tired when…

You go to bed at 3, wake up for your 8 o’clock class, thinking that the bus comes by at 8:45, only to realize as the bus passes you when you’re taking your puppy out that it actually comes by at 8:40. So you walk 10 min to the next bus route, propelled and compelled only by the fear that you may miss a random quiz in class, and catch that bus to campus, only to remember that “oh yeah, class isn’t til 9” which is fortunate for you because otherwise you would have been an hour late to class instead of 20 minutes. Then you see a bunch of your classmates walking from the building where all your classes are held and ask them if class has been canceled and have them look at you like you’re going crazy. And they say, “Grace, it’s Monday, you’re on the Tuesday schedule and you’re thinking too much Social[and Behavioral]. Go get some more sleep..” And you foolishly try to convince them that you know its Monday and you have morning classes on Monday… only to remember after they go by that oh right, that 9 o’clock class you thought you had at 8, was really tomorrow and you hadn’t had to get up til 12 today because your classes today didn’t start until 1pm.

So I’m finally back at my apt and going back to bed now :p

Commuting

Stupid Mont Toute bus was AWOL for 2 of it's departure times from campus, so I'm now stranded here for another 3 hours for class.. This'll be another chance for Vasco to demonstrate the resiliency of his bladder *grins*... It's the second time this has happened to me, only the previous time it never came to pick me up to take me to school. I ended up waiting, along with 2 other girls, for 45 min in the searing sun til the next bus came. And when I asked the bus driver if he had come by, he said he had.. What a bunch of bunk...

Series of Unfortunate Events

Last night, my Community Health Promotions class went back to La Sagesse village and presented to the community risk factors for the problem they told us they would like to address - Violence and Drug Abuse. We did a great presentation and all was well...

However, just now in class, my prof told us that one of our profs who came with us, Ms. Frame, on her way back home fell asleep while driving home and her car went over a precipice. She totaled her car, but only by God's grace, there was a tree that caught the car and saved her from almost certain death. Ms. Frame is okay and that is a miracle.

Also the mother of the girl who committed suicide 2 days ago, is associated with the Public Health dept. Two of the faculty/staff have buried family members in the past couple months. Sober events.

Death of a Student

Yesterday, an undergrad Business student here at St. George's committed suicide.

It was said that she had been having some trouble the past couple weeks with depression and stress, and had attended a counseling session here on campus and was scheduled to do more sessions that she missed. No one, it seems, checked up on her and it was said that there were other signs of trouble (she began cutting herself the last week). Her mother though didn't seem to be concerned because she went off on holiday so the girl was left on her own (they just finished classes 2 weeks ago). Her mother returned home to find her daughter hanging from a tree in the backyard.

She left a list of 30 reasons for why she was doing this.

First Dive Lesson

Okay, so I decided to go ahead and take diving lessons. Man, am I glad for that decision. I mean, the experience was amazing!

This past Sunday morning, I walked the 25 min to the dive shop, Dive Grenada (they specialize in wreck diving), located on the Grand Anse Beach and arrived around 8:30am. After liberally lathering myself up with suntan lotion, SPF 50, our party of 8 girls from the MPH program gather in a corner of the dive shop and watched a 35 min DVD that reviewed the first three modules in the PADI dive book we were to have read before coming for the lesson (I skimmed through most of it, but for all basic purposes, I read the whole thing :)

After the video we split into two groups. 4 girls with the dive shop owner, Phil, an older British man who's had hip replacement surgery. He's a very experienced diver, though of his experience I know little. The other group of 4, went with another dive instructor whose name escapes me presently since I wasn't in that group (oh yeah, his name's Mick). Along to help, since we were such a large group, was a Divemaster from Germany. She assisted the instructors with our learning.

My group was the first chosen to do the practical learning session first, while the other group did the academic/book work. We were first sized for our BDU dive jackets, weight belts, and fins. I ended up with an XXS jacket, size 8 weight belt, and size 3/4 fins. Not that I think that means anything to most of you who actually read this *grins* but I may as well draw this out as much as I can. We then learned how to attach the air tank to our jackets, fit the respirator apparatus to the tank, and choose proper fitting masks. Next we hiked the 100 ft to the pool located on the Flamboyant Hotel property. In the pool (wow, it was nice to get in and relieve the weight of the equipment!) we learned how to use the respirator to breathe underwater (the first time was so cool!), clear water from our goggles, retrieve a lost respirator, hand signals for communicating underwater, assisting another diver who's run out of air with the alternate air supply we all carry, swim underwater with our fins (I keep wanting to say flippers :p ), and adjust our buoyancy underwater (a tricky business, I tell you).

After we successfully learned how to do all the above mentioned and demonstrated proficiency in these tasks, it was our turn to do the academic/book work while the other group did their pool work. For the book work, we reviewed the 3 modules we had read, took quizzes on each module (easy quizzes). We ate lunch during this time and then after a short break the group of us (8) got our wetsuits (not altogether uncomfortable, surprisingly) and suited up for our first open water dive. The general feel from the other girls was one of both excitement and nervousness. I was just excited.. not really nervous, didn't see any reason for it, but that's just me ^_^

We rode on one of their 32 ft boats to Flamingo Bay, one of the top 3 dive sites in Grenada. "It offers the dive wall with the most prolific fish life. Shoals of Creaole wrasse, yellow chromis, grunts, and jack fish lead down the wall to 90 feet where grouper, jacks and rays can be seen." We learned how to do a backward roll of the boat and once in the water we followed a rope to the bottom. It was a decently shallow reef, we went down to a depth of about 40 ft and visibility was great, about 50 ft I was told. The aquatic life was amazing. I felt like I was swimming in a teeming aquarium. We swam around and over the reef. Seeing sea fans, angel fish, sea anemone, eels , flounder, and much much more. It was an amazing experience. I can't wait to do it again! I found myself time and time again wishing I had an underwater camera. Maybe a consideration for an underwater case for my digital... though there's a level of concern, more like paranoia, with that as well. Or maybe just get a relatively inexpensive digital for underwater use. Eh, to be determined.

Anyway, I'm greatly anticipating my next dive. I was told the subsequent dives with this dive shop will only be $5! That's incredible. Makes the whole thing much more worth while and is a definite incentive for going on more dives. Yay! I'm excited!

Meet Passion Mateo

Hey everyone! Meet the newest member to my family, Passion Mateo. The name is a tad odd, but my mom wants his first name to be Passion to remind my brother to focus on his studies for getting into med school. She said we could give him any middle name *grins* so we chose Mateo, which means "Devoted to God."


There is a story behind Mateo, but I only know a part of it. It's a sad story. My mom was coming home from work one morning and she stopped by a flea market. She said that she saw Passion (I'm going to use the names interchangably depending on who's involved) in a dirty cage with another dog. He was in a pittiful state and kind of sick apparently with an infection and some drainage from his genetils. She decided to rescue him, not really thinking that we would be able to keep him for long. But surprise, surprise.. .with just a little TLC, he's bounced back! Litterally.


My mom says he's completely healthy now, though a visit to the vet is still in order, and my brother tells me about Mateo's voracious appetite. He's always hungry and sometimes gobbles down his food so fast he gets hiccups. Dave said that the first time Mateo got hiccups, he thought he was having a seizure, but since they went away and he seemed fine he thinks they were just hiccups.


Needless to say, my brother adores the new puppy. He's a white/yellow lab and my bro has always wanted a lab. Purity of breed is somewhat questionable, though he apparntly came with papers. Dave tells me that Mateo follows him around everywhere and is very lovey and will just crawl into his lap and fall asleep.


They think he's about 11-12 weeks old. Only a few weeks younger than Vasco. I can't wait to get back so that Vasco can meet Mateo and the two of them can have some good puppy play time. He seems to get along well with the other dogs and the others with him. He's fearless. Dave said he was successful in barking Hope (our lab/shepherd mix) away from a papya peel. Believe me that is an impressive feat. Even Faith (our Sheltie) hasn't been successful in that. There's a vid clip my bro sent me where Faith and Mateo are outside and Mateo rolls over and does a stretch and Faith seeing this lays down and copies the move! How cute is that! :)


Wish I could be there to play with him, but I'll be there in a little while. I can't wait to meet him in person!

Morning at the Beach

This morning I took Vasco with me to Grand Anse Beach. This beach is one of the more popular beaches in Grenada and SGU has student housing located right on the beach. I however had never visited the beach, more from laziness and not really having any reason to (I guess if I had nothing to do and plenty of time and money, I'd got beach hopping in Grenada) but anyway, it was both Vasco and my first time at this beach, though it was Vasco's first time at the beach, period. It's a gorgeous beach. Better than I had ever envisioned. I can see now why it's so popular and why so many of the students love to live on the Grand Anse campus.

Anyway, I had to go visit the dive shop which was loctated on the beach to pick up my books and pay, so Vasco and I walked the 10 minutes to the beach and the 15 min it took to get to the other end of the beach where the dive shop was located.

When we first got to the beach, there was this little dog... dunno what type of breed.. small, short, white, fluffy tail with some sable patches. Her name was Angel and belonged to, I presume Grenadian, a guy who worked at another dive shop on the beach. She loved the water and would run into it, lay down in it, regardless of the waves washing up around or over her. She played tag with Vasco who didn't seem too interested in playing, but she sure didn't let up. She'd come at him full force, kind of like Lady does, and just pounce on him occasionally even knocking him over.


But Vasco seemed to enjoy himself on the beach. He'd run into the water when I called to him, even sometimes allow the waves to wash up to as much as his neck. He didn't seem afraid, just cautious.. Prob a few more outings on the beach, and he'll be chasing the waves.


But yeah, I was impressed by the beach. Got somewhat burned because I didn't think about the sun being up (duh) and I didn't realize the walk would be that long. No matter. It's all good...

Scuba

So I'm thinking of doing a PADI Open Water Course begining this Sunday with some of my classmates. It costs $250USD and will take 4 full days to complete. I am really interested ... the only think I'm hesitant about is the cost and whether or not I'll actually get anything out of it (e.g. use it) after the course is over. This course will allow me to dive with another person (without an intstructor), anywhere in the world where there's water, to a depth of 60 ft.

I'll prob do it. Go by the dive shop (Dive Grenada) tomorrow morning to pay and pick up the text. We'll see how that goes.. might not have room for me to join. But it would be cool...

New and Improved Grade

Well, I apparently did better in Epidemiology than originally had been posted on the class website. After the class ended last term, my final grade in the class was a B. However, I was curious as to why since all that the professor seemed to have calculated into the grade were the three exams we took in class. None of the homework, extra credit work, or other points (attendance and participation) had been included in the grading process. This was a big issue with many of the students who over break emailed the professor (including me, but mine was very polite and courteous I promise! ^_^). None of us received a reply. But it seems Dr. Amuleru-Marshall (dept chair) checked with Dr. Russell (Epi prof) and everything was sorted out and when the new grades were posted, I got an A! Yay! That was pretty encouraging.

Now, if I can just keep that up...