November 18, 2007, Beginning Semester 2, Week 12

In which, our protagonist begins rapidly losing his patience due to
sheer load of work.

Well, another week has come and gone here with disturbing rapidity.
Last weekend saw Becky and myself going to a neighboring island, Terre
de Haut, a French island in the Les Saintes group of islands. It was
a much needed trip off of Dominica, my first in almost 7 months. The
island we went to was beautiful, and the food was some very good
French fare. But, the thing that made it all worth it was the five
hours we spent on a sailboat going there, and coming back. Especially
the moments where we got to watch the sunset, and then the rainstorm
we went through that gave me my first set of goosebumps that I've had
here below an altitude of 4000 feet.

Riding a 74 foot catamaran in the channel between the two islands was
quite an experience. The seas were somewhere between 4 and 6 feet, so
there would be good crashes of water onto the net where we were
sitting, but that only helped keep things interesting. The thing that
I just couldn't keep from watching was the whitecaps on the waves. As
the waves would go on their course at an oblique angle to our
direction, the whitecaps would start at the crest in small spots, and
lazily fall down the backside.

The whole boat trip, we were in sight of both Dominica, and Terre de
Haut, so that was comforting to a Nebraskan landlubber like me. But,
I can certainly understand why people wax romantic about sailing, and
sailing vessels. But, it's too much work, money, and everything else
for me.

Everything else? Well, I've had a couple of interesting turns here.
First, I had one of my classmates nominate me, out of the blue, for
the SGA (student government association) IT chair position. That was
pretty neat. A lot of my classmates are really happy that I accepted
the nomination. I hope it works out. The position doesn't seem to
necessarily be a lot of work, so it should all work out if I actually
do get elected.

Secondly, a couple of weeks ago, I found an interesting article in the
health section of the New York Times on a guy who started having
memory problems. I sent it in to the Neuroscience society here,
something that, quite honestly, I'm not interested in joining, and
have only tangential interest in. Well, they loved the article so
much, that they are arranging a whole program around the article, and
asked me to be there to read the article. The sad part is, I really
don't understand their whole to-do over the article. It was
interesting, but I don't see it as such an Earth-shaking article.
Although, not much news gets back here, so perhaps it's just a form of
homesickness--like all things Parisian, or some such fascination.

Otherwise, in a week and a half, I get a fascinating experience in
crash-course examination taking. I get to take 10 exams in 11 days,
or something close to that. So, if I don't e-mail, call, or anything
else, it's not because I don't want to. But, I'm probably swimming to
a more hospitable island--one without exams. Terre de Haut might be a
good first place to look.

But, December 17th, I leave Dominica for a week. I'll spend a night
in Miami before I fly into Omaha, but since Becky and the dogs are
staying in Dominica, I'll be flying back on December 24th, to make
sure they don't spend Christmas alone. Hopefully we can make some
extra scratch by showing new students around. The rumor is that the
school pays cash money for doing that. Hopefully they ask for
volunteers soon.

Cheers!

-j