Fruit Free for All!

            Anyone who follows my blog, even semi-regularly, is accustomed to my interest… nay, obsession, with food.  Were there any justice in the world, I would weigh at least 300 pounds more than I do.

            For the past couple weeks, Ivan and I have been gorging ourselves (I mean, barely coming up for air kind of gorging) on fruit!  I’ve never eaten so much fruit in such a short amount of time and I love every minute of it!  I know I should stop because those 300 pounds are definitely tracking my fructose binge.

            Not only have we been indulging in the sweeter side of Caribbean life, we’ve also been enjoying the plethora of other fresh produce available on the island.  An inventory of my studio apartment in the past week would turn up:

Mangoes

Rock figs

Green bananas

Ripe Bananas

Plantains

Coconut

Guava

Skinnups

Passion fruit

Breadfruit

Sugarcane

Eggplant

Seasoning peppers

Scotch Bonnets

Carrots

Green beans

Tomatoes

Potatoes

Cucumbers

Avocado

Pumpkin

Let the Second Term Begin.

Ivan’s first two classes, Parasitology and Community & Preventative Medicine, began one week ago.  They’re both two week courses; so Ivan will be taking his finals next week.  Only after this first series of finals do his core classes begin (Genetics, Neuroscience, Immunology, and Physiology).  As was the case last term, I am picking up little bits of Ivan’s subject matter and my periphery has been clouded with tapeworms, hookworms, roundworms, tsetse flies, sand flies, biting, blood-sucking, burrowing, suctioning, siphoning, oozing, pulsing, poisonous …

            Despite all nouns, verbs and adjectives disgusting, I still manage to cook a decent meal for the two of us, and happily eat it.  Aside from IGA—the most frequented grocer for students—we also visit a market called Ali’s Meat and Fresh Vegetable Market.  It’s just up the road from a little fruit stall we also like to visit, so it’s a two-birds-one-stone kind of errand for us.

Ali's storefront right along Maurice Bishop highway--walking distance from the first roundabout after leaving SGU, or a bus stop off of the Frequente/Point Saline bus. Hours: M-S 8-9 and Sun 8-2 (439-4300 or 405-2140)

The Maurice Bishop highway--first roundabout from SGU

Cleaning supplies and household items in Ali's

The non-speed limit near Ali's

Toiletries and dried goods

Fruit and vegetables

Some prices for meats offered. Mince Beef (ground beef) is $16 per pound at IGA

One of the two freezers, mostly stocked with chicken breasts.

Here We Are. Again.

In fact, we’ve been here (that is to say, Grenada) since Tuesday evening.  Our summer was short, hot and hectic.  And, were I any kind of courteous blogger, I would have posted a basic “on hiatus” post, or “away for the summer” notice.  My apologies to anyone who checked, however infrequently, for updates on my vacation.  I promise to work on my carelessness in the future.

First things first: Our escape.

Ivan's notes from first term the day before we flew home

Into the garbage!

We flew out of Grenada on May 21 via American Airlines to Miami, where we had a three-hour layover.  From the moment we stepped off the plane (note—this is after taxiing and farting around while everyone got their carry-ons unloaded) to the moment we exited security, took almost exactly one hour.  That included claiming and re-checking all of our luggage, following color-coded lines across the airport, like mice at a crumb trail, passing through customs and inching through agonizingly slow security.  Then we took the air train (Miami airport’s speedy people-mover) to the wrong gate.  So we hopped back on the air train to the correct gate and had just enough time to cram fast food down our gullets before our flight to Pittsburgh began loading.  All in all, I would not recommend students or SOs book flights with a layover shorter than three hours at Miami, unless you are thoroughly familiar with the above process and the airport’s layout.

On the plane and in the airports, we had our priorities…