They tug at your heart strings

To not have enough to eat, or to know you may not eat tomorrow is something I personally know nothing about. I've never been hungry and had literally nothing in my fridge or cabinet, or been without some money to buy something. And even though I know that for many of the kids here (and all over the world) that is their reality, it  never gets easier to hear about-  and it definitely doesn't get easier to look into the eyes of a boy who has come to you to tell you he will be hungry tomorrow.  A boy with a bright smile and wonderful manners, who you play with day after day. It is heartbreaking. And what can you do? Thoughts go through your head- you're mad, and sad, frustrated and angry that this is reality. And it is standing right in front of you. There is nothing we can do to fix this problem, and there is always that question of who do you help, because we cannot possibly help them all.  There is also that lingering question of whether he is telling the truth or trying to pull a fast one over on us... either option is possible. But what if it is true, how do you walk away? I couldn't. And I've never seen anyone do a happy dance for a couple loaves of bread and peanut butter before.

There is so much beauty in the world, but so much ugly as well. Poverty is ugly. It makes me stop and think about how extremely lucky I am, but also makes me feel helpless because there is only so much I can do, and even then, I am left wondering if it is enough and hoping the food simply makes it home to them without being snatched up by someone else- who probably needs it just as much.

Mr. Nick visits Limes

Today Nick came with me to the Limes After School Program for the first time, and I am so glad he did! He finally got a glimpse of what it is I do during the week and got to see how and why these kids were able to steal my heart so quickly.

I warned him before we left that I haven’t over exaggerated stories and that Limes really is chaotic even on the best days, but I think even still he underestimated what goes into being a volunteer at Limes.  Until you experience having 3-5 kids hanging on you at once, and the constant yelling of “Miss” “Miss” “Miss”, and have attempted to break up a fight while continuing a game with 10 + other kids- you cannot fully understand or appreciate Limes.  You can’t understand what makes it challenging, but even more so, you can’t understand what makes it so wonderful, heartwarming, and all in the same breath- heartbreaking.

My heart  melted watching Nick play with all the kids, both big and little.  There’s pretty much nothing cuter in the world than seeing your guy with a buncha kids! He embraced their craziness, and let them treat him like a human jungle gym.  And I loved every minute of it- and think he did too.

Most of the volunteers at Limes are girls, so when a boy comes along, it is so exciting for the kids.  The boys love having someone they can rough house with a little more and who they can be competitive with in sports- not that this doesn’t happen with us gals- but with guys it is just different, and in their eyes, better.  And the girls, oh the girls swoon. I don’t think we had been there 5 minutes when a group of the girls called me over and all giggly asked me “Miss who is that?” When I told him it was my boyfriend Nick- they erupted with laughter and giddy-ness. 

Going to medical school in Grenada is an experience all on it’s own with its own challenges. Walking down the street you see the poverty- you do not need to go looking for it. But I think when you are able to immerse yourself in the community and get to know the children of the community you really get to see Grenada in a whole new light. You see how their lives are so greatly affected, and poverty is no longer just a name, but it is given a face. No, it is given many faces, children’s faces- they are the faces of the kids you hug, laugh with, tickle, and play games with. It’s the faces of kids who just want attention so badly.

Nick has only come once so far, and hopefully he will come more when his schedule allows it, but I think now he can understand why these kids mean so much to me, and why they are so easy to love. I know I sure loved watching him love on these kids! 

Midterms are done, time for some fun!

Not only did Nick survive midterms, but he absolutely rocked them!! All the long days in the library/study hall, and immunology making him want to bash his head into the desk- paid off, because he did great on all his exams! Needless to say, I am very proud, and enjoyed having him around for the first time in 3 weeks! We celebrated St. Patties Day, lounged at the beach, went to The Owl, and simply relaxed. It was much deserved- and fabulous. 

Friday night while pretty much all of SGU hit up Bananas (a bar located right outside of campus) we hit up The Owl- my personal favorite bar and in my opinion a million times better than Bananas. Anyways, it was dead and we were pretty much the only non locals there.  Fridays there is karaoke, and so the locals were tearing it up-- seriously, they were SO good. Naturally, we had to join in, and literally cleared he few people who were in the bar out... Apparently our 5 person version of Aladdin was less than stellar. Our night was full of adventures, and I'll let Nick's Facebook status tell the rest...  "just to recap tonight... sing aladdin song karaoke at owls with Marty and Chelsea and clear the place out, check; walk 3 miles with Mark having only one sandal on, check; take a grenadian taxi home and have his radiator blow in a back alley, check; smash the whole pizza by myself that Lindsey had me make for her but then she fell asleep, check; all-in-all i'd say tonight was pretty dece..."  


Yes. True Life Grenada. :) 

Saturday was Sandblast, which conveniently fell on the same day as St. Patrick's Day.  St. Patrick's Day however is not celebrated or even that well-known about in Grenada, so many locals were a bit confused by all our green attire, and shamrock get-ups.  When Nick's sister came to visit she brought us TONS of stuff- beads, stickers, buttons, and stick on tattoos, so we were very prepared to celebrate in style, and definitely got our green on! Although it didn't quite feel the same as St. Patrick's Day at home- it was perfect. We hung out on the beach, had some green beer, and the medical school students with their pale skin from living indoors, actually got to enjoy this wonderful island we call home... and most ended up quite sunburned.

Sunday we went snorkeling which was super fun! We went to the little beach by our house, so it wasn't the best snorkeling spot around, but was still fun! Then afterwards we got Prickly Bay pizza which is always so yummy and was such a treat for me because I was simply thrilled to not be cooking!

And of course, there was plenty of cliff action over the weekend. They kept the tradition of jumping immediately following midterms, and then we jumped again when Chelsea was here! Whenever you get to jump the cliff twice in one weekend you know it was a nice relaxing weekend! 

My new friend

This is Kevin. And I had not met him before Limes today, but instantly fell in love with him.  We met when he came running up to me and gave me a hug and asked if he could have the sticker that someone had put on my arm.  

I said smile, and he said "I have a better idea" and then I showed him the picture and he had the cutest belly laugh and thought he was sooooo funny! 

Don't you just love him?

He loves to read books and is rather snuggly. He is such a fun loving little guy, and I found myself thinking so many times throughout the day today that I just want him to stay little. He is so innocent, sweet, and lovey- and yes, I want him to stay that way forever. I don't ever want him to change. I want him always to be eager to read books and learn about the stories, and I want him to always be so nice and silly. See... I absolutely fell in love with him.

Apparently, I was not the only one because Jiivy proudly walked up to me half way through the day and said "Miss, he's my boyfwend" and pointed to Kevin.  When I asked her more about it, she smiled and got shy then ran over to him and grabbed his hand and off the two ran together onto the field.  This was followed by lots of chasing- first she was trying to get him, then he was trying to get her. Then Jivvy stopped and demanded I take a picture of them.  A few other kids tried to get in the picture and she said "NO. This is my boyfwend, my Kevin."  Apparently, they are already a known item because no one argued and the other kids backed off and let them have a picture before jumping back in.  Oh so much silliness!!! And, toward the end of class I had not seen Jivvy or Kevin in awhile because I was playing with other kids, so when I saw Jivvy again I said, "hey where have you been?" Her quick response, "kissing Kevin" and grinned. Oh, to be little and in love!

Their faces are so cute!!!  

I LOVE THEM!!!

Such an adorable picture!!! 

And that's another thing, I always want him to think his girlfriend is as fun and cool as he thought Jivvy was today. Stay little Kevin! Or at least, always stay little at heart.

Midterms, midterms, midterms

Midterms are quickly approaching and man will it be nice to have Nick back in a week! The guy has been living in the library/science hall.  The number of hours he puts in studying everyday is seriously amazing, and I am so impressed and proud :) Can't wait for Friday when he can have a weekend off to relax and hang out! Extra prayers as midterm term week approaches are always welcomed and appreciated!

All his hours in the library have left me pretty much riding solo on the island for the past 2 weeks and I have to say it's been a mix between being busy and being bored. I've been to campus a lot more in the past couple weeks because I take Nick his dinner instead of him coming home to save time, so that has added an extra bit of planning and running around to my life, but otherwise...  I really haven't done a whole lot.  The weather here has also been ridiculously rainy so there hasn't been many opportunities to go to the beach or pool, so I've just kinda been hanging out at home. Although, I've been productive, and continue to volunteer, and completed the empathy training program I was working on, I have to say the past 2 weeks were the first few times while here on the island that I have actually felt lazy. I don't think I really have been, but definitely been lacking a bit of stimulation some days, so maybe that is it. 

Bottom line, I am ready to have midterms over so that Nick and my friends are freed from the library. However, as ready as I am to have them done, I'd say they are all about 348985739 times more ready to be done themselves! One week!!!  Oh, and I did splurge and buy Nick Tropicana orange juice for his breakfasts for midterms. It's the small things.

Saturday mornings I babysit the little boy across the street and today we spent time wandering around Grand Anse.  The intention was for him to go to soccer practice with a friend, but he is in a new phase where he has been getting rather shy around people he doesn't know so once we got there he was all of a sudden "too tired to play soccer today" but was sure to assure me that he is "really fast." I think he was legitimately torn about whether to join in or not, but no amount of encouraging him to play worked, so instead we watched a couple of the drills, then decided to just wander around, and stop for a break and get a chocolate chip muffin :) Here are some pictures of our morning :)

The cow we passed walking to get our muffin. No  big deal. He was thirsty. 

He was 100% covered in sand within like 2 minutes... love it! Nothin' like some sand for a little bit of fun!

A little update on what's keeping us busy these days...

I was recently asked if I could put together information on empathy training for kids for one of the nearby Montessori schools, and was very quick to jump at the opportunity.  I am really excited to put together a fun little "program" for kids that will help them explore/better understand their own feelings, the feelings of others, as well as highlight similarities and differences among them in order to help them build the skills necessary to be empathetic as well as to learn to be more understanding and compassionate.

The fun thing about working with kids is that simply talking to them about "empathy" and what it means to be empathetic, would be pretty boring and pointless to them. After a minute or so they'd lose interest and be off doing who knows what. So instead I've found several really fun and engaging activities that will do the job much better than a long-winded speech ever could :) 

This has been my main project the past couple of days so I am really looking forward to either passing along the program curriculum or presenting the training myself soon! Even though they are young kids and I am not sure I will be able to use a powerpoint presentation here, I've started to make one up (a short one) mostly to organize my thoughts and help with the sequencing of activities, but figure it is also a good way to potentially be able to use it again in the future right?? And, lets be honest... it doesn't hurt that it's a good resume builder either! 

Nick update- with mid-terms quickly approaching Nick has been putting in long hours on campus studying. And when I say long, I seriously mean long! He leaves around 7:20 am every day and gets home a little after midnight. Nothin' like a 15 + hour day on campus eh??

Stumbled across this picture in Nick's tagged pictures and thought it was pretty awesome! Thanks for the picture Kelsey!  I'm assuming this is on a study break one day... not a bad way to unwind for a bit eh?

Ohh, the things I find in my washing machine

Remember when I thought finding a centipede in the washer was bad?

Well, today in the washer I found a dead mouse.

That's a new low.

He might have been small, but he sure did smell something terrible. 

And now I'll have the heebie jeebies for the rest of the day.

A big thanks to our neighbor Dan for being on mouse removal duty while I sat on the counter top incase he magically came back to life or had more friends. 

What is it about our washing machine? I will forever look twice before running a load of laundry.

It's raining... it's POURING...

What do you do on a rainy day in Grenada?? Well, run errands of course... without a car. Today, our rent was due so after putting it off for as long as I could this morning I finally set out to pay up at our realtors office. I caught the bus and got off at the Texico station rather unscathed, with only a little mist action going on. Of course, because I had to walk the rest of the way, the rain began almost immediately after I set foot outside the bus. Nice. It wasn't a hard rain, but enough to have me pretty thoroughly soaked by the time I reached the realtors. After that I had several additional stores that I wanted to go to, and since I was already wet and had to walk back to catch the bus anyways- I decided what the heck, why not?! I've been wanting to do some projects around the house and I brought a few things from home that I've been wanting to hang up so I was on a mission to find the supplies I needed. In true Grenadian fashion, I couldn't find everything I needed in one spot (or even two or three spots) so I did lots of wandering around, but think I ended up with most of what I was looking for. Ace as usual is my favorite place to get stuff like that, and after wandering aimless up and down the isles, while having my every move monitored by a very paranoid Ace worker who literally just followed me up and down the rows, I was satisfied enough to make my way back to the bus stop to finally return home. Oh, but first passed by a man in the street dancing and when that happens of course you semi join him in a little jig before realizing you can hear the bus coming and have to literally run down the road to beat it there. I wouldn't have made it, but the bus driver stopped to get a sandwich or something at the bakery (TIG) near my bus stop. Thank goodness though because when it comes to the busses- if you snooze, you lose- and they don't care if you were dancing or not. Anyways, I digress... My pedometer says I walked a little over 3 miles in total... nothin' like a few "quick" errands!

The war against the bugs continues, but let the record show- I am winning. We had the exterminators out yesterday and they completely nuked the place- with what I am sure were very environmentally safe chemicals (sigh) but it really helped so sorry mother nature, a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do! And today in my excursions I bought Terro spray (ant killer) and other cleaning supplies to further continue my household raid. It's on bugs, it's on.

It's absolutely POURING outside right now and it is so loud that I actually had to turn off the movie I was watching while cleaning the kitchen because I cannot hear the sound over the rain!!! I know, poor me right?? I have to sit here and listen to rain on my roof and the roaring of exceptionally big waves in the backyard... what a horrible night... Haha, yeah I love it!

Haha!! I seriously still laugh out loud every time I look at this. I made those instead of doing my finals at home last semester and finally got them up today...

Don't worry... I won't quit my day job. And the tape is because I am still unsure if I want the pictures there. I have to get over how hilarious my skills are to me first.

My sister made these for me at home and I was able to squeeze them in and bring them :) Yay! 

 Okay, off to stand guard in my kitchen with my spray bottle to kill any night time ant invasions.