3rd week, here i come!!

I know, I know. I haven't posted in a long time, but it's incredibly hard to give information (in the form of writing) when you are trying so hard to retain (in the form of anatomy, histology, and the dreaded biochem)!!!

So far, everything is going well. The studying is very intense. I believe I have studied more in the last 2 weeks than I ever had in my entire undergraduate career!! NO JOKE!! The amount of material that is thrown at you everyday is insane. For instance, here is a typical day: Get up 7 am, eat breakfast, shower, and have a small amount of "free time" until 8 am. Non-Lab days I study and pre-read for upcoming lectures until 12:30, on lab days I can only pre-read for a few hours as labs run 8 am - 10 am or 10 am - 12 pm. At 12 or 12:30, I have lunch and take a much needed break. Lectures run from 1 pm - 5 pm. At 5 I run back to the dorm to eat dinner and grab study material. From 6 pm - 11 pm is study time. I'm back in my dorm around 11:30 pm, and in bed by 12 am. Then it's back up at 7 am to do it all over again!!

Weekends are little easier with no classes, but if you are behind or need extra help, the studying time may be just as long. For instance, yesterday I had a selective on complementary medicine that ran from 9 am - 4 pm. I did get some studying done after, but not much. So, sunday was the day to catch up. From 11 am - 6 pm, and 7 pm - 11 pm I did nothing but cram information into my head.

What i've found so far is that the first 2 weeks are the hardest. You are trying to find out how to be successful in terms of the best ways to study and retain information. Of course, everyone wants to give you their opinion on how they study and remember, but in the end, it is up to you to determine what works and does not work for you. Once you find that, studying becomes so much easier. I think I have found my way, and hopefully this will be reinforced by our first unified quiz.

Well, i'm off to class. In the next few days I will be posting more about fun stuff at school and also more about the island. Have a good day!

FOOD!!!

So this is my first official meal outside of the campus.....i had gone into the city of St. George's with friends to do some grocery shopping (this of course occurred on 1/13, so my post is a tad bit late). There is a port that docks cruise ships and they have this giant strip mall of duty free items. So, we went inside and the first thing we see is pizza. So of course we needed to eat some. I bought the vegetable slice. It had peppers, onions, corn, green beans, broccoli, and something else that was un-identifiable. However, the pizza was great!!! It was 5 ec for the slice (about $2.00) and it was oh so good!!! We were debating if we should get another. We didn't!!!

So the grocery shopping was not a great success. There is a huge farmer's type market in the city where fresh vegetables and fruits are sold. The selection was okay although it seemed that many of the farmer's had the same produce - carrots, mangos, grapfruit, oranges (which are green here), peppers, onions, etc, etc. I did pick up something called cashew. It is a fruit and tastes like a watered down version of an apple (at least to me). It was very good though. Anyway, I quickly realized that when three american medical students approached a stand, the prices suddenly jumped. I guess if you are grenandian the prices are great, but for us, it wasn't any cheaper than the over-priced supermarket. We did however get apples, gala apples. They said on the sticker, grown in the USA....it was pretty funny!!! Anyway, i was able to get 4 apples for 5 ec (about 4 for $2.00). Now you may be saying, WHOA, THAT IS A LOT!! However, in the grocery store apples were $2.69 ec EACH!!! That is almost $1/apple.

Alright, time to do some studying. I had embryology yesterday and already I can see that this class will be a big pain in the rear end in terminology. Have a great day and i'll post again soon.

St. George"s

rum runner 001
Originally uploaded by tuggy8844.

Just wanted to give you all a glimpse of the beautiful city of St. George's. I'm waiting to board the rhum runner for a short cruise.

Day 3

So today marks my 3rd day of being on this beautiful island. Although today is very cloudy and overcast, the temperature is still 85 degrees and very, VERY humid.

Today is tour day....i signed up for the campus tour and the tour of the national rain forest. The campus tour was okay....very short, and very hard to hear. The tour guide spoke so softly. I've noticed that many grenadians speak very softly and of course they annunciate differently, so it's very hard to understand them. The rain forest tour is at 2 pm, although it may be very wet considering there is a very dark cloud encompassing the entire island!!

Yesterday was my first trip to the grocery store. Prices were very expensive for name brand, american items, but cheaper for local items. For example, a small box of uncle ben's minute rice was 16 EC ($6.40), however, a 5 lb. bag of local white rice (not instant) was 5 EC ($2). Naturally, my roomate and I decided to go for the 5 lb bag. Fruit and vegetables were absurdly expensive....1 apple was 2.79 EC, which is about $1.10 per fruit. The capital tour is saturday and many 2nd termers have told us that they have open markets for fish and fruit there....so we will definitely check that out, and I'll inform you as to the differences in prices.

So between now and the tour, I will be picking up my books and having lunch, all in 3 hours of time. The orientation week is great, however, the days are not packed solid with things to do so there is a lot of down time....like now....most students use the time to meet others or explore the campus on their own.

Last night, i went with two other students to a bar off campus...it was fun!! I only had 1 beer, a local called caribe....it tasted like miller lite.....oh...i'll be right back, time to go get books....

okay, i'm back.....we have alot of books.....12 to be exact.....luckily we didn't have to carry them from the bookstore.....a girl down the hall allowed us to ride with her and her parent's in their rental jeep.....

so back to the bar.....it was right on the water and they played alot of 80's and 90's dance music....by 10:30, the bar was packed with students and unfortunately it was very hard to hear with the music. add to that all of the different nationalities and accents, and it was very hard to converse and meet new people, but i tried.....i did meet a guy from south africa, another from brazil, and several from england and scotland. although many students are from the states, most of them are from different nationalities and speak other languages. For example, my roommate stephanie lives in new jersey, but her parents are hungarian so when she speaks with them, she speaks in that language. Joanne down the hall lives in LA, but she is asian....she speaks with her parents in their native tongue.....i met a another guy the other day from nyc talking to his parents in jewish. So it seems i am a minority when it comes to speaking other languages!!!

Well, i'm going to have lunch and get ready for the Grand Etang tour. I'm desperately trying to learn how to add photos...i did sign up for flickr, now i just have to figure out how to get them on this blog.

Have a great day!!

I'm Here!!!!

Well, i made it to grenada!! my plane arrived today at 4:42 pm (grenada time is one hour ahead). Of course, I do have an airport story. My seat was in row 12 and usually they board the back of the plane first. So, by the time they called the remaining seats,(rows 6-18) there was no room for anymore carry-on luggage and everything had to go underneath. It was a very long process of hearing the whining and moaning from my fellow passengers, and then to have to hand-right tickets for the 30 or so people that needed to check their bags....the flight was delayed by almost 45 minutes. However, the pilots definitely made up for it in the air.

Customs in grenadanwas not bad at all. They are doing some renovations to the airport so we had to walk onto the tarmac and then about 500 yards to the six custom agents. It was fairly humid and there was no air conditioning, only a few fans which made the wait seem like forever, but in reality it was only 10 minutes. The custom agents don't speak much. My agent asked how my flight was and that was it. I handed him the appropriate paperwork (passport, immigration letter) and then I was off to get my luggage. There were way too many black bags!!! i'm glad jenna got me a green luggage set!!! although, one of my bags was black and it took me forever to find. Then I was off to the claim center where you have to declare the items you are bringing in to grenada. Basically, they just want to see your laptop. I handed the agent my laptop and receipt and he punched some numbers and said "$46". Then it was out the door to be picked up by SGU. And the weather is awesome!!!! Bright blue skies, palm trees, i am so glad i decided to come here for school!!

I arrived at my dorm, superdorm 2, which is located near the b-ball courts. I am on the 2nd floor, room #3. So far I have met my roommate Stephanie, and another girl Chelsea that lives a few doors down. I also met another girl but I can't remember her name, so i'll have to get that tomorrow!!

I decided to unpack as soon as I got into my dorm. That took me over an hour, and when I was done, it was too dark outside to see anything. So, tomorrow is a day for just walking around!! I have to register at 11:30 for classes, but after that, the day is mine to do whatever I like. I think I'm going to go check out the grocery store and maybe the beach too. Although I didn't bring a bathing suit!! I figure I can where my board shorts and a sport bra!!

i'm also going to find time tomorrow to figure out how to get pictures up on this blog. They will be awesome!!

Have a good night all, and be safe!

J