Parrot Drawing

After my exam I decided to take a drawing break.  Here is the result....

Parrot!!!!

An incredible act of humanity

One night I was watching the trailers move down my street and I heard a lot of yelling. Not only was there a lot of yelling, all the traffic police started running to the driveway across from my apartment.  I had my camera and I was videotaping the trailers so I turned the camera to the driveway.  This what I saw...

A guy had driven his car up a 2x4 onto a cinder block and was attempting to change its oil.  For some reason he left the car running and didn't put the parking brake on, which resulted in the car coming off of the cinder block and pinning him against the wall.  What the video shows is how the movers lifted the car off of the guy.

After realizing what was going on, I dropped my camera, grabbed my first aid kit and went over to see if I could help.  I was expecting some awful scene and wasn't really sure that if I could actually help but I figured it was worth a shot.  It turns out that the guy was extremely lucky, he only injured his knee.  I had a local run to the bar and grab some ice (I think everyone was surprised when I started barking orders...my crew chief training definitely took over).  I waited with the injured man until the ambulance came and took him to the hospital to get checked out.    Everyone was extremely grateful that I helped out.  I even got lots of hugs!

The whole experience was something you only read about or see on youtube.  It was so surprising to see it happen right outside my window and truly heartwarming to see how everyone ran to help.  

The Trailer Ordeal

Hey everyone!!  Sorry for the delay in making a new post, I was focusing on studying for my neuro/endo exam.  It was quite the marathon...seven weeks of material!!  The exam ended up being 170 questions and 4 hours long!  So glad it is over.  I have been meaning to write this post for a while but just haven't gotten around to it.  It tells the tale of a double-wide trailer being moved down my itty-bitty street.

I first realized something was going on outside when I heard a loud ruckus while studying.  I looked outside my window and saw the head of a tractor trailer.  Now this really surprised me because normally you don't see tractor trailer in Dominica (This might have been the first one I saw).  I had no idea why it was outside of my apartment, so of course I go out on my porch for a better look.   This is what I saw...

The Tractor Trailer

I guess the traffic police?  Not really sure...they just did a lot of yelling 

The trailer seemed to make pretty good progress until all of the sudden the "traffic police" realized it might get caught on the low hanging power lines.  (I would have thought they would have scoped out the maximum passing height for all obstacles ahead of time but I guess that's not how they do stuff down here...)  So the next picture shows their solution to the power lines...remember these are live power lines. 

Yup a guy sitting on the metal roof with his feet on a metal air-conditioner, lifting the power lines up with a piece of wood.  I guess they don't have OSHEA guidelines....

EEK! It made me so nervous.  All I could think was this guy was going to get electrocuted in front of me 

He survived! Whew.  Thank goodness

After successfully navigating the power lines, they ran into a new obstacle.  They road was not big enough.  They were stuck between the Dominican version of a "rock and a hard place" ...aka a french drain that was a foot deep and a shipping container bar (They use old shipping containers to make buildings. Pretty good recycling of resources).  

Oops they are stuck!  (Funny side note..this door leads to my old SGL room) 

 The solution was to cut the roof off the bar.  Dead serious...they procured an electric saw and cut the metal roof right off.  Didn't ask the owner or anything...just whipped out the saw and cut it off!

Beginning to saw.  

 Here is a video of them cutting the roof...

Needless to say this was an interesting experience to watch.  It would never happen back in the states.  My sister and parents got to watch by video-chat and I was entertained by a good 4 hours, watching them try to move 20 feet.  They finally got the trailer through and went along their way.  They did take down the main gate of campus in order to get the trailer onto the main part. It was kinda of like a runaway train that just knocking everything out of its way.  

I think in total they moved 3 trailers and improved a little bit with each subsequent trailer.  There was another crazy thing that happened during the trailer ordeal but that is a topic for another blog post (get excited!).