St. Kitts: Day 1

Greetings Family and Friends!

Rob and I landed on St. Kitts yesterday about 2pm.  After waiting forever to get through immigration (tons of students arrived with us yesterday), which was NOT air conditioned, we met up with the Ross University delegation! We met our orientation Leader Cassie, and she provided us with our new cell phones, introduced us to the other new vets in Rob's group, had our bags brought to campus, and then brought us to campus.  It all took about 2 hours from when we got off the plane til we left the airport because a few people in our group did not get their bags. Rob and I were able to collect all of our bags, thank God!

Cassie told me and Rob that our room was special, but wouldn't tell us why. Once we got to the campus apartments, we collected our bags (again) and headed up to our room, Woods 301. There was even a little sign on our door with our names!  We walked in, and the two bedroom corner apt seemed normal enough, compared to pictures we had seen. Once we started to poke around the second bedroom we noticed instead of a double bed, desk, and set of drawers, we had a day bed, a couch, two end tables, and a wall unit... with a TV!!! We even have cable! The Ross website said that none of the rooms have television. Rob and I were actually assigned one of the rooms used by visiting professors or lecturers.  The digs are alright; the buildings are about 4 years old, so they are a big dingy in places, but hey, it's not any worse than when we moved into our apartment in Egypt. For those of you who have been to our Egypt apartment, you may remember our spectacular views of the Nile. Well, now we have views of the Caribbean Sea from every window! From our kitchen and living room windows you can also see Nevis, St. Kitts' sister island. It is pretty amazing. By pretty amazing I really mean REALLY FREAKING AMAZING!! :)

After kind of sorting out our things and settling in our room, Cassie took us all to Best Buy, a grocery store. Now, some of the people in our orientation group could not hide their disappointment in the variety, price, condition of the store. Rob and I, however, were real pleased with the selection (tons of American products). It totally blew Metro and Alfa out of the water! (For those of you who don't know, Metro and Alfa were our grocery stores in Egypt). The prices were a bit high, but we expected that since everything has to be imported. We only picked up some breakfast foods and some cleaning supplies. Just to hold us over til we are finished settling in and can really do a big shop.

We briefly returned to the apt to drop off our purchases, and headed to dinner. I was insanely excited when I heard that Cassie was taking everyone to Mr. X''s Shiggidy Shack! 1. The name is so cool, how could you not want to go? 2. It actually sounded cool when I read about it online! Cassie told us that it is in fact one of the cool places to hang out, but like all the places on the island, the service is slow and unhurried. We pulled up and I was NOT disappointed. It is right on the water, and has some open and some bamboo walls and ceilings. They had a live band playing reggae, a bonfire on the beach, a dude who does a fire dance, and a limbo contest! One of the girls in our group won the limbo contest.  Once the regular contest was over, fire man lit the limbo pole on fire and did some fire limbo-ing. It was interesting, the whole time I was freaking out his horrible blue rayon pants were going to melt into his skin!  Dinner itself was slow in coming like Cassie said, plus, they ran out of the first two things I ordered (shrimp, and a burger... the burger delivery man never showed up, so says our waitress), so I got some ribs. To wash down my scrumptious ribs, I ordered the house special: the Shiggidy Jig. It was some kind of fruit and rum drink, luckily this is my favorite kind of libation. I will be ordering more of them in the future. I love Mr. X''s Shiggidy Shack.

After dinner, Rob and I finished unpacking and did some cleaning.  We still have to find homes for a lot of things, but I think we can do four months here on campus. Although, I am hoping to find a sweet apartment for next semester! After nearly 22 hours of being awake, Rob and I crashed late last night.

This morning we got up to a message saying the water would be off between 10 and 11 (it is now 11:15 and still no water). So we rearranged our living room (much better now), and did some more cleaning. Later on we will be going to the beach with our group.  I haven't really taken any photos, so there is nothing to show just yet. Maybe after the beach I will have some beautiful shots to share with everyone! Also, once we are finished cleaning the apartment, I will post some before and after shots.

We love and miss you all!