The Ants and the M&Ms

Before coming down here, I made a list of things that I would miss most.  Of course topping that list was coffee. A close second was peanut M&Ms.  So I packed both of these things.  The coffee I have been consistently drinking throughout my time here but the M&Ms I have been saving for a special occasion.  I figured my birthday was just the special occasion I had been waiting for (I had to exercise a lot of self-control to not eat them for the two months--I made it through multiple stressful study sessions, etc without eating them.  Such self-control!!!)

I opened the bag last night and I had a couple of them as a birthday-cake substitute.  I then closed the bag (or I thought I closed the bag) and put it back in the cupboard.  I went to have a couple more of them today and was met by a very nasty shock.  After eating some, I felt multiple crawling sensations on my arm.  I looked down and I had over 20 ants crawling on me.  I then looked in the M&M bag and almost shrieked. The bag was writhing with ants (......ok well maybe that is an exaggeration but there were a whole lot of ants in there, munching on my precious M&Ms.)  Just imagine that....you are about to eat something that you are super excited for, something that is a "hot commodity" and you discover it is covered in bugs.  Not a good feeling!

The "nomed" on M&M.  I guess they don't like peanuts because all the destroyed M&Ms where like this.  And  for the record...the M&Ms were in tact yesterday when I opened the bag, which means this is not a shipping injury.  It is an ant injury.  The black spots are where they started eating through at new spots. 

Needless to say, the ants have finally exacted their revenge for my ants traps and for my spraying bleach on their entrances to my apartment.  I had told my mom a couple of weeks ago that I had a nightmare in which the ants had grown into giants and had come to take their revenge on me.  I guess I should be thankful that the ants didn't grow in size and that they just ate my M&Ms.

Right now the tally is.....Rachael 1: Ants 1.  Who will come out victor?  That remains to be seen. I am building information against my enemy and so far have learned that ants like chocolate but don't particularly like peanuts.

Dive-bombing Lizards

I was walking out of my apartment today when I noticed a lizard scurry across the stairs in front of me.  I didn't really think anything of it, so I continued walking down the stairs.  The stairs wrap around so I eventually came to a spot directly below where the lizard was. The lizard then dive-bombs me.  Not exactly sure what it was trying to do, but it definitely jumped/fell off the wall and almost landed on me. At least the lizard was super cute! 

The lizard on a different day (I think it was in a better mood  then)

On a more positive note, I think I am becoming more accepted by the locals, or at least by the locals at the grocery store.  I have noticed that only certain people are offered a shopper's club card (generally not students) but today they asked me if I wanted one!!  I think it helps that the store's bouncer likes me a lot and always stops to ask me how my day is going/offers to help me carry my groceries home. One of the cashiers is also very friendly. Today she asked me what I was doing to celebrate my birthday and told me that I should study in the IGA so she could hang out with me. After being on the island for two months, I am finally semi-accepted by the locals.  (Yay for the small victories).    

Dominica Bowling....

While waiting for our Small Group Learning (SGL) instructor to arrive today, my SGL group started talking about how living in Dominica has been so far.  One of the things that we all agreed upon was that the cows are scary!  (I heard that a new baby cow was born yesterday.  I wonder if the same concept applies to momma cows as momma bears?  I think for now I will just treat the cows as bears and avoid them  at all possible costs!!!) 

Another thing that we talked about was the lack of things to do.  There are tons of nature activities like hiking, diving and snorkeling but after you can't do those things as your sole form of entertainment. There are no "rainy day activities"-- no shopping malls, limited books stores and libraries, no movie theaters, and very limited restaurants.   The only night/rainy day activities are drinking at one of the numerous local bars or watching bad-signal TV.

So we decided that for a fun activity, we needed to develop Dominica Bowling.  Here is how Dominica Bowling would work...

• The pins would be Kubali Bottles (The beer produced on the island that resembles a Henigken). 
• We would use a coconut for the bowling ball.  
• Instead of a bowling alley, we would use the really long dock that is right by campus.
• We would keep score by tally marks in the sand.
• Resetting of the pins would be a little difficult because both the ball and pins would be headed straight into the Caribbean Sea but we figured that would give the divers something to do....they can be our manual pin resetters!

Needless to say we are all going a little stir crazy here on the island but who knows....Dominica-style bowling could be the next big craze! 

Dominica Laundry---The story of the homeless clothes

Do you remember the scene from Forest Gump, where Tom Hanks says the famous quote of "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get."

This quote pretty much sums up the laundry experience here in Dominica. There are no laundromats and the significant majority of apartments do not have laundry machines on site. Which means we have to give our laundry to laundry service.  My maid does my laundry for me which  makes everything a lot easier (no arranging pickup times).  Instead I can just leave the laundry bag in my front room on the cleaning days. I am sure most of you having green-tinged thoughts of jealousy right now but hang on....

Having your laundry done by someone else is amazing for the sole reason that it gives you time to do other things like study and sleep (especially since a lot of the laundry here is done by hand).

However, you get random articles of clothing back in your laundry (like a random pair of boxers, or someone's Banana Republic tshirt).  This morning while I was on my way out of my apartment, my maid stopped me while holding a bag of "homeless" articles of clothing.  She basically wanted to know if any of the tshirts, underwear, socks, etc were mine.  Thankfully I haven't lost any clothes through this delightful laundry process  and have only acquired a few bleach stains on my clothes (They seriously like bleach here!)

Also another hazard of someone doing your laundry for you is that they can take a very important article of clothes at a very bad time...aka my green Anatomy scrubs.  On Monday morning I was pulling stuff together for the day and I was trying to find my designated green scrubs for anatomy. I looked everywhere for them--in my closest, under my bed, in the couch, etc. I knew that I had laid them out on the chair the night before.  My maid must have thought they needed cleaning so she took them from under my dissection kit and placed them in the laundry. NOT GOOD!! Thank goodness I had an extra pair or I would have been in loads of trouble (I would not have been able to take my anatomy practical...major eek!)

So in summary, having your laundry done is nice and time-saving but it also comes with the hazards of bleach stains, homeless clothes and MIA articles of clothes.

Sequestering and Exams

Hey everybody!! Sorry for the long delay between posts, I had a crazy exam schedule.  Monday I had a histology practical and an anatomy practical and then today I had a comprehensive exam.

So the one really crazy thing about tests here at Ross is the process sequestering.  When I initially heard that we were going to be sequestered for our histology and anatomy practicals, I was sooo confused.  But then because of my amazing last name and the fact that it starts with K, I didn't have to be sequestered.  The middle of the alphabet really lucked out.  I didn't have to take my histology practical until 9am (instead of 8am) and I was able to walk right into the practical without having to be sequestered in a classroom for 4 hours.  For the poor people who were sequestered, they were pretty much kept under constant guard (seriously, there were 2 security guards outside the door checking IDs and ensuring that only the proper people got into the classroom).

We, the non-sequestered, did have to stand outside in the 90 degree, extremely humid weather for about half an hour while the rooms were reset.  I have to tell you that nothing adds more to the "enjoyable" exam experience like sweating profusely the 30 minutes before an exam. Everyone had visible beads of sweat on their foreheads.  You knew it was bad because we were excited to walk into the cadaver lab.  Even though it smells awful, the air conditioning was AMAZINNNGG! I have to say standing outside in the heat made me extremely jealous of all the lovely fall weather you guys are experiencing back at home!  

Pretty much how I felt when I was waiting for my anatomy practical. 

So thankful that those three exams are over because it meant I had this afternoon free. No classes, no assignments, and no academic thought necessary.  I spent the afternoon catching up on sleep (awesome nap in my hammock!) and then watching the Netflix that comes from some Latin American country.  The Netflix plays on my iPad but not my computer. Everything has Spanish subtitles and I have to actively choose English as the primary language (just one of the strange nuances of living down here).

Not my hammock but I have pretty much the same setup and I see palm trees from my balcony. 

 

Are you in the 14%?

Time for a fun science fact of the day.....

While studying the anatomy of the forearm and hand, I came across a nifty little muscle that I wanted to share with everyone.  It is called the "palmaris longus" and goes from your elbow region to your palm.  What I thought was really cool about this muscle is that around 14% of the population is missing it!!

There is an easy test to see if you have the muscle or not...
1.  take your thumb and pinki tips and bring them together
2.  flex your wrist slightly (move it towards your elbow)

If you have the muscle, you should see a little cord standing up in the middle of the inside of your wrist.  The reason why this happens is because the tendon that connects the palmaris longus muscle to where it inserts on the plam, does not go through the carpal tunnel.

That little cord thing in the middle means that you have this muscle.

 It turns out that I am one of the 14%! I don't have the palmaris longus muscle.  There aren't any negative affects associated with absence of this muscle, so no worries if you are like me and missing it!

Running out of electricty

My wall unit. If you notice in the top right of the little screen, there is a tiny face.  When I have electricity it  smiles, but when I get too low, it gets unhappy (like this morning). 

This morning I woke up to beep, beep, beep.  At first I thought it was my upstairs neighbors alarm clock going off.  So I calmly got ready.  Then I stepped out to the kitchen and realized the beeping was in fact coming from my electric box on the wall (picture above...) So I figured today would be a good day to write about my lovely electricity experience down here.

We have a pay-as-you-go system, which means you put a certain amount on your account at one time.  In order to put money on my account, I have to go to either the IGA or to the Housing Department on campus.  The worst part of it is that the IGA sometimes runs out of electricity.  Yup, that's right....the store runs out of electricity!  From what I gathered, the various electricity brokers (such as the IGA) are given a specific allowance of electricity per week that they can give out (Think of it as ration cards from wartime). This can pose a major, major problem. It can result in blank stares and a "come back on Monday" when you go on the weekend to buy electricity. I had this happen to me once and I will never make that mistake again!!  (One of my classmates kept going back to IGA and they didn't have electricity for 4 days in a row. )

So here are the steps to get electricity...
1. go to IGA/Housing
2. wait in line (can take up to 30 minutes at IGA depending on what time of day you go)
3.  ask the cashier to add money to your electric account (sometimes they will tell you that you waited in the "wrong" line because that register can't do electricity...I know this is a lie because I have bought electricity at each and every register.  I sometimes think they are just lazy/don't want to go through all the steps to give me my electricity lol)

The numbers I have to enter into the machine. I have been asking them to write out for me because  too many times, I couldn't read the printed numbers

4.  get the the 20 digit code that then needs to be entered in the wall unit back in the apartment
5. enter the code (hope you do it right the first time so you don't have to re-enter all the numbers.  Sometime you have to kind of guess the numbers on the printed receipt because the ink isn't so great)
6. Voila! You have electricity and your little guy on the monitor is back to his normal smiley face!

Positive of this electric system:
I. I am much more aware of how much electricity I use.  It has made me turn lights off, not leave extraneous things running, etc.
II.  You budget your electricity and then work within your budget.
III.  I have a smiley face on my wall :)

Negatives of this system:
I. I CAN RUN OUT OF ELECTRICITY! MAJOR PROBLEM!!  (People, there is no room for error here)
II.  Electricity in Dominica is really really expensive.  I spent around 100 USD on electric last month and that was me rationing it a lot more than I would have in the states.
III.  It takes quite a bit of my precious time to "top off" my account.

Well hopefully everyone now understands what I mean when I say  "I run out of electricity".  Just part of the lovely Dominica experience.