Princess Margaret Hospital in Dominica

Here is Alex playing at the park over lunchtime with her friend, Kenley, while Daddy spent the day at Princess Margaret Hospital in Roseau.

Keith left at 8 this morning for the bus ride to Roseau. When he got home about 6:45 this evening he said that there is no way he wants to spend his 5Th semester here. I was very interested in finding out what a hospital is like in a 3rd world country.

The hospital is not air conditioned (except for surgery) and he still had to wear his shirt and tie and lab coat! Talk about hot! He said the hospital was like a bunch of different buildings and it was all open (the windows and doors) most likely because of not having a/c. Patients do not have individual rooms but they have wards, which means the patients are in one room. He said it reminded him of the ER back home. There are a bunch of beds with curtains around them.

He did get to view two autopsies today, which he found interesting. Although this is not something he wants to do for a living. One of the autopsies was of a stillborn infant, the baby was born at 35 weeks, and the second autopsy was a 20 year old man that died from being punched in the chest.

Keith only has class tomorrow, Wednesday, and then has the rest of the week to study for his first "mini" exam on Monday. We are so anxious for this semester to be over with so we can get back to the United States. We miss the cold weather!

A few videos of Alex

Here are a couple of videos of Alex in Dominica. The first video is of Alex watching a cruise ship coming into port in Roseau, Dominica. We had a great view from our hotel room. The second video is of Alex having fun with friends at the Ross University pool. She has such a great imagination and loves pretending! And lastly, the third video is of Alex and her little friend Ben having fun in our apartment. It was a rainy day so the kids had to stay inside all day. Luckily they never got bored and had a lot of fun with each other!

Roseau, Dominica

We spent the last two days in Roseau, the capital of Dominica. We don't have a car and didn't want to pay the 120EC for the taxi so we took the bus, which is only 9ec. Here is a pic of us waiting for the bus in Picard. We waited for about 40 min. for a bus, then it was about an hours drive. They don't have a specific bus schedule here like they do in the states, you just have to wait by the side of the road.

The bus driver was so nice, he dropped us off right at our hotel, which wasn't necessary, so we paid him 40ec instead of 18ec. We didn't have to, we just wanted to.

Our hotel room was fabulous. We stayed at Fort Young Hotel again, it's the best hotel on the island! We had a beautiful view of the ocean and we didn't want to leave! Which we didn't. We spent a lot of time at the hotel, which is what we wanted to do-relax! We have been to Roseau many times before so we weren't interested in sightseeing.

Here is the view of the sunset from our room the first night. The sky was so clear and beautiful!

The next morning, Tuesday, we watched the Carnival cruise ship stop in to Roseau.


As we watched the cruise ship I thought about the time we had taken a cruise ship to see some different islands in the Caribbean. But now the cruise ships come to us. The cruise ship was only on the island for about eight hours before it took off again. Eight hours is definitely not long enough to get to know this island. There is so much here to explore!

This is the view of our sunset the second night. I loved all the colors in the sky! If you want to view the pictures in a bigger format just click on the picture and you can really see the pics. I will also add more to facebook. Below is a link to our Roseau trip back in 2008. We did more then because we we're new to the island.

2008-11-09 Roseau Weekend

Roseau Weekend

Keith had his second big exam this last week. He was very happy with his scores. He was only a few points away from getting an A in Biochemistry! So we celebrated by spending the weekend in Roseau, at the Fort Young Hotel. We were in heaven!

http://www.fortyounghotel.com/index2.cfm

We left Saturday morning on the free bus ride that the school provides on Saturday morning.
We didn't think our room would be ready yet so we stopped in for coffee and tea at Rituals Coffee. This is basically the closest thing Dominica has to Starbucks.

http://www.ritualscoffeehouse.com/

After walking around a bit we decided to check in with the hotel. Luckily the room was ready!

We were so happy as soon as we walked into the room. It was so clean and comfortable. The bed was like the beds back home (with a box spring and a full mattress) and it was air conditioned. The view was spectacular.

After checking out our room we decided to walk to Dominica's Botanical Gardens. It was only a short walk from the Hotel which wasn't bad with Alex. They had a lot of different trees and shrubbery. Alex was only concerned about one thing though. Seeing the parrots. Dominica has two parrots that are indigenous to the area, the Sisserou and Jaco parrots. The Botanical Gardens has an aviary that houses the parrots. Unfortunately they were hard to see.

http://www.rarespecies.org/dom.html

Then we saw a sign that said "Jack's Walk". So we decided to hike up the steps and into the rainforest. It was about a 15 minute hike, all uphill. It was hard with Alex so unfortunately, Alex and I didn't make it all the way up. Keith did, and he took a ton of pics. There was a beautiful view of Roseau and the Caribbean sea and there were also big statues of crosses up there too.

Here are some pics from the weekend:

2008-11-09 Roseau Weekend

It seems there is a virus going around in Alex's School. The hands feet and mouth virus. A few of the kids have it. Alex hasn't gotten it yet and I hope she doesn't. This week Alex and I are planning to take a trip to the Carib Territory and Emerald Pool.

Creole Day

Today I went shopping in Roseau with a couple other spouses. We took a bus which wasn't that bad. It was only 9ec each way. I love Roseau! It is so nice to be in a bigger city where they have real grocery stores! I wanted to get Alex a creole outfit to wear to school on Friday's and buy some chips (chips are hard to come by here). At Alex's school, the teachers dress in their traditional colorful creole clothes on Friday and they also have some island fruit set out on a colorful tablecloth. I have been looking for an outfit for Alex and knew I wanted to go to Roseau to find something. I think things a little less expensive there. Here is Dominica's Calendar of events for their Creole Day and Independence Day:

http://www.avirtualdominica.com/independence.cfm#sched

Their Independence Day is November 3rd. On Nov. 3rd, 1978, Dominica gained it's independence from Great Britain. So there won't be any class on Nov. 3rd. Also, the last weekend in October is the World Creole Music Festival. I was hoping we could go but Keith has his next exam on Nov. 4th. That's a bummer. This is a big festival and people fly to Dominica from all of the world.

http://www.wcmfdominica.com/

Today, I also tried to find some shoes for Alex as she is growing out of her sandals. But they don't have the sizes I'm used to and I don't know the conversion so I will have to bring her along with me next time. We also stopped at a cute little place that sells spices, spicy salsas, and rum punches. I took a pic inside before I realized there were no pictures aloud. It seems like a great place for gift buying so I will have to stop there again before I head home for Christmas. I did get a papaya salsa that I tried when I got home and it is extremely spicy! I have also been looking all over the island for Karo syrup or corn syrup. Apparantly they don't have that here and nobody seems to know what it is. I had not been to KFC yet so I had to stop in there and grab some chicken before coming home. I thought it would be a nice treat and it sure is!

Click below for new pictures. I have a picture I took of some diapers at a grocery store in Roseau. Now you will know what I mean when I say things are expensive! This pack of diapers was 74 EC. Can you believe it? I will post again when Alex wears her new outfit!

2008-10-21 Swimming and Roseau

Shopping Trip to Roseau

This past Friday, Alex and I, took a bus trip to Roseau the capital with some other spouses. It was a nice air conditioned bus for the hour long bus ride! Alex had fun because there was another little girl there she got to play with. We went to three different grocery stores and they were all much bigger than any grocery store you can find around Picard or Portsmouth. My favorite was IGA because it is air conditioned and it is the first time I had seen refrigerated Milk and produce. I was in heaven! If only I had brought my cooler along to buy more stuff. They also had a lot of items you can get in the United States, of course they are more expensive. But who cares! I bought some bacon from Florida, Prego spaghetti sauce, some tostitos, a few cans of soup, cheddar cheese, and grapes. They had grapes! That was a nice treat and they were gone as soon as we got home.

Before heading out to the third grocery store we had lunch at a coffee shop called, Rituals Coffee. The inside was just like a starbucks and they served food. Alex had a strawberry cooler and I had an iced mocha and tuna sandwich. It felt like home and I can't wait to come back and do some more shopping on my own. The last grocery store was a warehouse type store called Breezy's. There was a little park outside that Alex and the other little girl, Sarah, played in. Alex was so excited when she saw the park from the bus, she could hardly get off the bus fast enough.

Keith had his first exam on Monday. He has done nothing but study so I hope he did well. I think he will find out later this week on his score. He said the test wasn't has hard as he though it would be. Maybe that's because he studies so much. We pretty much only see him during lunch and dinner time. There was a lot of festivities the night after the exam. Of course nobody had to study. So there was a big beach bash. We got a few free t-shirts from there then we went out to dinner at Tomato's. Alex was happy to have some fun with daddy.

Click below for some more new pics:

2008-10-08 Trip to Roseau