A Little Weekend Vacation

Ever since I decided on studying abroad in Barbados I had wanted to do some island hopping around the Caribbean. Luckily I wasn't the only exchange student who wanted to, and soon after we arrived here the group planned a trip to the closest of islands, St. Vincent. Last Thursday night I caught the late flight over to St. Vincent on the smallest, loudest, and most rickety plane I may have ever been in. It's a good thing the flight was only 30 minutes, because it was quite rough. We landed at around 10 at night so it was already dark and sightseeing wouldn't start til the next morning. We stayed at a guest house that the EAP students from last year recommended to us, which ended up being a nice 5 bedroom place with two kitchen/living rooms and 2 tvs. All of this for only $30 each per night. After settling into the master bedroom by myself (I was the only guy so I got a room to myself), I was quick to bed to get ready for the weekend.

The first thing I noticed in the morning was the immense amount of rain outside, but I have gotten used to the rain and figured it would blow over eventually. After a free breakfast upstairs, the rain was still going and it started to look like it would be a long rainy day. We had solid plans for Sunday and Saturday, but for this Friday we had nothing planned and didn't really know how to get around yet, so we decided to just walk around for a bit. We made our way towards the beach and found a tiny little black sand beach (St. Vincent is a very volcanic island and about half of the beaches are black sand beaches), but it was a little too dirty to swim in. After doing a bit more walking up and down the hilly terrain of the area we came upon a taxi who told us he could take us to one of the more popular beaches of the island. At the beach we swam out to a little tiny island in the water and climbed to the top of it and did some mini-cliff jumping into the ocean. Later that night we decided that we'd go out and find a nice dinner place, so following the suggestion of the guy who owns the guest house we were staying at we went to this little place nearby. Even though the food took over 2 hours to get to us after we ordered, it ended being incredibly good. It was an early night that night to prepare for our long day on Saturday.

Saturday morning started by waking at 7ish to get over the the shipping dock in St. Vincent to catch the ferry to a little island called Bequia which is part of the island chain The Grenadines. After an hour or so crossing the sea we arrived on the smaller secluded island to more rainstorms. Half the group went off to go scuba diving, and the other half (including myself) went off to find a taxi to take us somewhere. We ended up finding a guy who said he would give us a mini-tour of the island for a small price, so we took him up on the offer. After driving all throughout the beautiful jungle-like roads of the island our first stop was at the sea turtle reservation. We knew it was closed, but it was still worth stopping by since we could see through and over the fences and could see tons of turtles of all sizes. We took a quick stop at an abandoned sugar mill, then off to a beach in the area where we found a little restaurant and got some food. The taxi then took us back to where we started and we found we had 3 or so hours til the ferry left to go back to the main island and that we really didn't have much left to do. We decided to try and find the scuba divers and see what they were up to. After catching up with them we decided to go to a sports bar that we had heard about. We found the little place and spend the next few hours overlooking the bay and relaxing for a while. The ferry then took us back to St. Vincent where we spent the rest of the night in and watched Across the Universe before another early night.

The final day on the island was set to be our busiest, waking again at 7 a taxi-van came to pick up all 9 of us for an all day tour with a few major stops, the first of which was a hike up the island's active volcano. After 2 or 3 hours hiking up the mountain in scatterd rain showers and constant fog, we all made it to the crest of the volcano where we could look into the mouth of the volcano. After a couple more hours on the way down we headed to our next stop, the filming location for Pirates of the Caribbean 1. It was an obvious tourist destination, but it was somewhat intersting to see the leftover town and buildings specifically for the movie. Jerry Brukheimer's house that he lived in was also on the set, so I went in it and looked around. The house was also used in POTC2 for some scene with the king or something... I kinda forget the details. As time was running out (we had a plane to catch at 6:30) we made our final stop at a waterfall where we ran over one of the most sketchy bridges I have ever seen, then took a quick dip in the falls. Our driver then sped us back to the guest house where we quickly packed our bags, went to the airport, and had about 15 o 20 minutes til our plane departed and we came back home.

My Bad Luck with Electronics

Today is my last day of school for Week 3, and I'm sure at this point it doesn't come as a surprise to anybody that there is still one class of mine that hasn't started. The rumor is that it will start next week, but I'm not going to hold my breath on that. But there is a semi-legitimate reason for the lack of classes, and it's that my professor for two classes ended up getting very sick and won't be able to teach this semester. This threw the faculty of Social Sciences into a frantic search for professors to replace her. They found what seems to be a grad student to teach my Soc of Development class, so that started this week, but there is still no replacement for my Soc of Tourism. Classes have been going fine, but being the foreigners makes for some interesting situations. In my Pop Culture class, the professor always looks back and trys to get the 4 white kids in the back of the class to comment on every time he mentions America, and when he talks to us the whole class stares at us like we have some amazing responses to everything. There was one case where the professor asked the class to pull out our cell phones, and when 2 of us didn't have one he freaked out because he was amazed that someone from California wouldn't have a phone with us, going as far to ask how many cell phones we have back home, haha. My other professor things I am from England, and until I talk to her face-to-face I'll let her think that.

Last week I recieved a letter at the office that my package (my camera) had finally arrived, but that I had to go all the way into town to get it because it was sent via USPS instead of FedEx. It was a damper, but I had to go grocery shopping too so I decided to make a day out of it. The first stop was the post office which was the most ridiculous thing in the world. I gave them my slip, they brought out my package, had me open it, then told me I had to pay tons of taxes on it. I guess the way that they tax packages here is based upon the declared value of the package. The declared value of the camera was $400 which makes total sense to me, but the people at the post office thought I was an idiot to have that as the value. I then had to pay 3 different kind of taxes just to be able to get my package back. I ended up paying somewhere around $125 just to be able to get my stuff, luckily they took the $400 to be in BBD so I paid about $60 less than I should have.

The next day I was excited to be able to use my camera once again, but was a little hesitant of taking it in the water for obvious reasons. Once at the beach I took some generic pictures of the beach like usual, then decided that if Olympus fixed my camera it would be safe to take in the water. Luckily everything worked perfectly fine and I was able to take pictures throughout my swim. Later that night I went back down to the beach with my camera, and before I even took it in the water, the camera it started beeping at me. I was able to look at pictures I had taken, but not take any new ones. As frustrated as I was, I still had some faith that it would be able to fix itself, so I left it out all night. I woke the next morning to find it looking like it was working and went to the Mount Gay rum factory for a tour. In a not-so-surprising set of circumstances, my camera freaked out again and zoomed in, even whenever I didn't press the zoom button. After fighting with the zoom feature and zooming back out, I was able to get some pictures, but by the end of the day it was stuck in constant zoom in, with a few select buttons not working at all (like menu or delete), and it is still like that right now. So at this point I have one camera that auto-focuses right when you turn it on and can only take one picture each time it's turned on, and I have a second camera that zooms all the way in when it is turned on and can't eve take a picture anymore. It's incredibly frustrating, but I guess I'll deal with it.

But back to the Mount Gay tour... It was raining when we arrived so we took shelter in the gift shop, which was just a big room full of all different shapes and sizes of rum, with ridiculously low prices for such a large amount. The tour started with a history of the factory and a general overview of the 4 types of rum they make, it led through different rooms where they taught us about the distilling process, where everything comes from, and a video on the whole process. After the tour we were given samples of 4 of their liquors and that was the end. It was a very short tour, but somewhat entertaining. After the tour we headed across the street to a restaurant called Tim's on de Hiway, which had some really good Fish & Macaroni Pie, which we ate on the beach cheking out the clouds over the setting sun, then walked about 3 miles home to end the day.

Island Adventures

I am in the middle of Week 2 of school, but somehow have ended up only having 2 classes so far. One on Monday night and one Wednesday morning. My other two classes are taught by the same professor who has decided that she isn't going to teach class for these first two weeks, but maybe will be back next week? The school system is quite screwy, and even though I have some class it's still hard to realize I'm at school. As for the two classes I have been in, one is a straight up lecture and the other is smaller and is pretty much a discussion section. Being visibly and audibly foreign and different from the rest of the class has been quite interesting, at my Monday class my professor kinda laughed at me when I asked a simple question about how to get the syllabus, and for the Wednesday class there are 4 of us, who quite often get singled out when talking about anything American. It's not a big deal, it's a bit fun in some ways, but it is a very new experience being such a minority in a whole different world.

Early last week a couple friends and I decided we were going to go on an island adventure up north, so we took a bus til it ended and walked to the beach. We went down a small alley with a bunch of street vendors, and along the way got a coconut to chew on for a while. We ended up coming to this little beach area with a small part of the beach that was deserted. After mistakenly walking through a construction zone we found our way to the hidden beach and spent most of the day in the ocean and on the beach. (I know, all my stories are starting to sound the same). When we were ready to go back home we were getting hungry and walked down the road a bit until we found food that wasn't chicken or macaroni pie. Strangely enough we ended up at a Chinese food place which was actually very good, and a nice change from what we have been getting alot here.

The next day was another beach day, of course, but before that we headed to a place called the Surfer's Bar where we would pick up tickets for the upcoming 10-day Reggae Festival that takes place all over the island. Outside the bar we found a nice little beach and did the usual blah blah blah that I have been writing about far too much.

When we first arrived here our EAP liason had told us about a free island tour that we would be participating in, once it got closer we learned that it was a semi-off road tour in a jeep. When the jeeps picked us up this past Saturday we didn't know what to expect. The tour started off driving across the island over through a little jungle to a statue of a lion with his hold over a big red globe. This statue was made to signify England's rule over the world (it was made a little while ago), which is very important to Barbados since they had just gotten their independene in 1966. The tour then continued through sugar farms, old bulidings, George Washington's house (Barbados is the only other country he ever visited), and other various things.

An intersting fact we learned... There are 365 churches on this island, which of course means you can go to a differnet one every day of the year if you would like. This roughly translates to 2 churches per square mile. The more interesting part though is that for every church, there are 3 times as many liquor stores. 6 per square mile.

The tour then took us to a cliff which overlooked the beaches of Bathsheba, and had just a stunning view of the coastline. After overlooking the beach from above, we went down to the beach and spent some time at the unique coast of Bathsheba, which is widely known for it's great surfing. We then journeyed through some more jungle over to another beach which I don't recall the name of anymore, but it was quite nice. The next-to-last stop on the tour was over at some cliffs on the coast that overlooked the ocean, pretty much just another pretty place with palm trees everywhere. The tour ended at some random hotel where they fed us a free buffet and allowed us to go swimming in their pool, towards the end it started raining quite hard and we headed home for the day. Later in the night the school held a huge party on campus, which was quite odd. We went for a while but the big group of us white kids kinda stuck out like a sore thumb, and no one was really dancing, and it wasn't really the place to meet people, so we ended our day/night early.

A Collection of Short Stories

So not too much exciting has been happening lately due to school starting this week... well kinda starting...

I had two classes Monday right after each other (both with the same professor oddly enough, and the professor teaches both of the discussion sections too), so I stroll on over to the first class to find a note telling me that both the classes are canceled for the week. As weird as it was, I got a free beach day out of it, haha. My Tuesday class was half an hour instead of an hour due to the fact that the professor forgot to bring the syllabus, and my 3 hour Wednesday class lasted about an hour. In other words, the first week of class is not really existent at this school. Everyone I know had at least one of their classes canceled as well, it's quite the common theme.

Speaking of classes, this school does some weird things. For example... back at UCI I took Soc 1 and have to still take Soc 2 (the second intro to... class), so I figured I would take it here. There are two into classes here, "Soc 1: Intro to Sociology Part 1" and "Soc 2: Intro to Sociology Part 2," so naturally I registered for Soc 2. After the first day of actual instruction I realized I knew almost everything, so I went to talk to the professor. Turns out in this country you take Soc 2 before 1... she even looked at me like it was obvious and I should know... needless to say I had to drop the class, so I spent a while finding a class that fit and ended up with some other Sociology class...

School events here are slightly different than back home, last Saturday there was a school sponsored, ride-provided, trip to Club Xtreme, a big club/bar with free drinks all night. I feel like I need to reiterate that it is school sponsored again... when numerous fights broke out after the club as we were waiting for our ride back I realized that school events aren't what I am used to.

We have a dog who lives here at the dorms with us who is ironically named Gato. The story goes that she used to live up the street with a family, but one day wandered down to the dorm area and never left. She is a clean dog and is the community pet for the hall who gets plenty of love from everyone.

Every night around 9:00 there is a bread lady who comes to campus and sells bread/pasteries. It has turned out to be quite usefull since most places close at like 7 or so around here, so a nighttime pastery is very nice.

For whatever reason, females outnumber males at a ratio of 8:1 at this school. We have 10 halls in our dorm area, 8 for girls and 2 for guys, and the male halls aren't full. My floor of 6 rooms has only had 2 people since I got here. Also, people from all ages dorm together, so my neighbor is a third year (the final year here), while most of the rest of the residents are freshmen.

Security is tight here, well they like to make it seem like it is... The whole hall is surrounded by a fense with barbed wire on top of it to prevent anyone from coming in, and at the one enterance there is a guard who checks to see if you have your hall card before you come in. There are a few problems with this though. 1. I have never been asked for my residence card, I don't know anyone else who has either. 2. The guards are frequently asleep on duty. Yup, security is tight here...

The mail system in this country is pretty bad, well at least for the university. Turns out FedEx is the only way that mail will come straight to the university, and into my hands. Sending anything else gets sent to a local post office (which I have no idea where it is), and they don't have any way of informing me or the office if the mail arrives. This means that every day I have to go to the office here and ask if they can call the post office to check if my mail has come. It also takes much longer than promised by shipping compaines to arrive. USPS said 6-10 days for my package (which includes my camera), but it has already been 12 days and nothing has arrived. Other than that, I still have no idea how to send mail or how to pay for it. My first step would be to find the post office, but I haven't had time to roam around searching for the office. As soon as I do figure everything out though then I can get some postcards together and send stuff. And if anyone wants to attempt to send me something, fully knowing I may never get it, my address is:

Steve Ponce

Frank Worrell Hall

University of the West Indies

Cave Hill Campus

P.O. Box 64

Bridgetown

BARBADOS

sorry for the lack of pictures, my temp camera is broke and my new one hasn't come yet. Updates will come when I have stories to tell...