July 21, 2007, Finally, the rainy season!

Well, it's been a while since I've got the last post out. I apologize
for that. Things have been busy. Last weekend, Becky and I went to
Wacky Rollers Adventure park here. It was really fun. The weekend
before that, i was studying for Mini2. I came through that fairly
well, but with a distinct understanding that I need to study histology
and embryology different from the other classes I'm in.

We've finally got to the rainy season here. The locals, when I got
here, were apologizing for how brown and dead everything was. I have
no idea where they got that from. It was green green green when I got
here, and I haven't really seen anything comparing to what happens to
the grasslands back home. But now! Wow! We get 2-3 rain squalls a
day that last 20-40 minutes, and easily rain at about an inch and hour
sort of rate. Occasionally, it rains hard enough that the municipal
water pressure isn't enough to keep the water in the soil from coming
into the pipes, and then we get brown, gritty watter for a couple of
hours. So, now we run our water through a coffee filter before we run
it through the pur filter pitcher, otherwise, I'm sure it would clog
really quickly!

The funny thing about the rainy season is that the land crabs (fresh
water crabs) come out more when it rains. Apparently, they can't
handle how so much rain clogs their gills, or something. I've been
talking to the locals about them, because I'd like to eat one to see
how they taste. The locals say that they eat them all the time. So,
we've been asking around to see who we collect them. We finally found
one who is going to sell us some crabs today, so we'll see how that
goes. We don't have a big pot to cook a whole mess of crabs in, so we
might have to do them one-by-one. But, we're getting six crabs for
$10EC. Hopefully they're decent-sized, but it could be worse.

It's not like we have a problem getting food. Yesterday, as I was
leaving campus, there was a fish-selling pickup at the shacks, so I
asked them what they had. It was tuna. So, I had them hack me off a
piece--a 6-pound piece. Took it home and cleaned it up into 4
decent-sized steaks of tuna. Last week, we got sardines. The
sardines were lovely cooked in butter, and even better grilled.

Kody, our terrier has been kind of depressed and sad the past few
weeks, and we weren't really sure what was going on. We'd changed dog
food on him a couple of times since he got here, and he's been cooped
up in the house a lot because we've heard stories of locals snatching
dogs. But, yesterday, we finally took Kody on a run with us. We were
exploring a new running trail trying to get to a radio tower that I've
been seeing every day and just wanted to run to. The trail we went on
with Kody was so steep, that it even had him beat before we got to the
point we wanted to turn around, and he's 4-paw drive! This place we
went, provided us with a great view of Prince Rupert Bay, Cabrits,
Portsmouth, and even our place here. It was amazing! To make
everything better, Kody was so happy that we took him out, he has been
his old self ever since.

I've also gotten my feet wet into snorkeling. Becky isn't really
interested in it, but I talked her into letting me get a pair of fins,
and borrowed a mask and snorkel from a classmate, and over the past
week, I've got snorkeling 3 times in the bay right by school. It's
amazing! I've seen starfish, octopi, all kinds of fish that you would
see in Finding Nemo, sea urchins, sea slugs, coral, anemones, and all
kinds of great stuff.

Not sure what else is going on. I'll cut this short, and sent out
another update soon.

Cheers!

-j