Our First Few Days

Hello All!

Our first few days here have been an adjustment.  We flew through Toronto, Canada to get here...why we go north to go south I don't know. :)  After a few exhausting days of travel, during which E was a pretty good baby for getting up at 3:30 AM, we arrived on 12/30/16 to the Charles Douglas Airport in Roseau, Dominica.

It took a 50 minute cab ride to travel about 17 miles from the airport to the campus because of the hairpin turns.  K let me sit in the middle so I could see out the front, and therefore avoid motion sickness.  (He's so great!)  We had a welcome lunch of chicken and rice for him and green beans and rice for me.  E was the star of the show and all of the ladies of the school were asking to hold him.  We were met by the lady who is substituting for our landlady and she drove us up the hill to our apartment. When I say hill, I really mean large, tiring, out-of-breath-when-you-finish hill.  On a positive note, I'll be losing a lot of weight soon climbing home every night.

Our place is pretty nice, albeit hot.  We only have A/C in our bedrooms, but with E, we've decided to keep the doors open and cool the rest of the house, because its just infeasible to try to keep him in a cool bedroom all day long and do anything else.  We do have that extra bedroom if anyone would like to visit during one of our breaks.  April '17 is spoken for, but we still have the end of August and next April.

Grocery shopping is also different here.  The most "American" grocery store is an IGA.  We went there our first day and were shell-shocked at the price of things.  We spent $70 US and went home with the following: one small jar of Jiff, two cans of tomato soup, one can of Campbell's ready to eat soup, an 8 oz. pkg of cream cheese, a pkg of bagels, a qt. of almond milk, a small jar of jelly, and a dozen eggs.  We're looking around for options now because we just can't continue to spend like that.  Luckily, we may have found something, but I'll keep you posted.

I've had some mini-orientations over the last few days, but the really long days begin tomorrow.  K has been absolutely wonderful with E.  It is such a blessing knowing that he is in good hands and that I can just focus and get stuff done at school.

The pictures are of our view at a restaurant on the beach and the mountains just SW of campus (that building is our mailroom on campus.)

We love and miss you all.
KCE