Grenada first week

Grenada
the spice of the Caribbean

The Sixth Week
Sept. 18 - Sept. 24, 2006

SEPTEMBER 18, 2006:
HAPPY 27th BIRTHDAY, PETER!!

For Peter's carefully planned birthday, he got to take his very first exam! After two hours of test taking fun, Peter and Heather did away with the birthday tradition of fine dining and instead we enjoyed quite a different kind of experience: Heather's first attempt at homemade pizza! (Pizza is a Peter favorite, and we both absolutely loved the homemade variety!) After which we had some new friends over for a shmorgesborg of baked goodies! Mmmmmm!

What to choose? We had apricot bars (thank you Brenda for making another Peter favorite possible!), lime meringue tarts, iced brownies with and without nuts, and cake (with custard filling and whipped icing) and ice cream. Can't decide? Have some of each!

This year's cake theme was an octopus, as Peter had just seen one the week before during his Friday morning snorkel.

Thank you to everyone who came over to celebrate the end of the exam and the start of Peter's 27th year!

After having the chance to socialize at home for a while, we were off to the student government sponsored post-unified exam party so Peter could make an official SGA appearance. The party was held at a local restaurant/bar/nightclub close to campus called "Bananas." The theme of the party was "bananas in pajamas;" people wearing pjs got into the soiree at a discount.

The Bananas in Pajamas party netted a nice profit for the SGA - way to go!

Hold on to your hats ... we also bought a car this week! It is a charming example of the finest technology Suzuki motors had to offer in their 1995 "Escudo." It is a four door, four wheel drive automobile. The four wheel drive may be less important than the fact that it has a higher ground clearance than a typical sedan. Drivers in Grenada must constantly negotiate ... challenging ... terrain. In addition, our car came with a few special features - including massaging vibrator seats and a calming water feature complete with sound and waterfall-simulating droplets which gently calm your nerves and caress your body as you glide effortlessly along the road (this feature is only available during and immediately following rain storms.) Oh, and how could I forget? Gasoline is quite expensive in Grenada, so our car supplements the basic combustion engine with an alternative energy source. The car utilizes a portion of the energy product generated by an absolute army of symbiotic engine ants. The ants get a place to stay (plus the occasional food product and air conditioning,) and we get an extra mile per gallon thanks to their industrious efforts to produce more energy than the colony needs. Everybody wins!

One local man observed, as we were test driving a vehicle, that Grenadians know exactly where their wheels are, and they are very skilled at avoiding holes and ditches, which means they meander all over the road in their pursuit of traveling from point A to point B. Americans, on the other hand, tend to plow straight ahead, staying in their lane of traffic, bouncing along wildly. So far, this seems quite true! There's nothing quite like having a truck travelling toward you suddenly veer right into your path in avoidance of a pot hole, only to recover back into his lane moments before a collision to keep one mentally fit.

For Peter's birthday present, on Saturday we went on a snorkeling trip to Flamingo Bay with the Aquanauts. Peter, Heather, and a group of school friends took a boat ride past the capital of St. George's to a very small bay. There, we got to explore a new place and experienced the best snorkeling we have seen in Grenada so far. We saw many large powder blue Tangs, a large parrot fish, a reef lobster, a totally new type of black-and-white fish that looked like a cross between a cardinal and an angel fish, puffer fish ... and thousands more.