I've Been Orientated.

Classes started yesterday, marking the official end of orientation week. Below are the highlights in digest format…..

Lessons Learned During Orientation Lectures:

“B” Does not equal MD.

Stressed out people do stupid things.

A few examples of aforementioned “Stupid things” can include: getting drunk the night before an exam, not sleeping, maintaining a poor diet, or exhibiting any signs of your typical med/pre-med diseases. These pathologies can include any of the following:

Negative Attituditis, Taintmyfaultitis, Social Prioritization Syndrome, Dietitis, Machoitistarzanitis…..,

Getting Around On The Island
Assuming you don’t have a car, which most likely you don’t if you are a first term or (as in my case) a pre-first term student, you have a few options:

SGU Buses: These are provided by the school for free and can take you quite efficiently to any of the main drags within a few miles of school. You need to show your student ID to get back onto campus on one of the buses (“security” gives it a visual check from outside the bus as you hold up your ID card before the bus is allowed through the gate), but they don’t seem to check it when you get on the bus at any point. When you want the bus to stop, you simply reach up (or ask the person next to you to do it) to a button above the window that makes a beeping sound. Of course, you have to do this at least a few hundred yards from the stop – ideally. Which means, you have to know your stop is coming. Hard to do when you don’t know where you are going yet and what it looks like: ).

If you want to go beyond what the school offers, like into St. Georges, you have to take a local bus – also called a Reggae Bus. This costs about $1 US each way. You can easily get off an SGU bus at one of two places and transfer to a Reggae bus. I did this with 4 others that are rapidly becoming good friends on Friday in order to go to the fish market in St. Georges.

The Fish Market/St. Georges

It was perfect. Fresh fish caught that day for incredibly cheap prices. I spent US $3/lb for Moonfish/Opah and the same for some Mahi Mahi which they also clean & gut for you. The groceries in town are also exponentially cheaper than at the IGA Grocery Store in Grand Anse where most of us are forced to shop for the sake of convenience. I am sure they’d be out of business if there were no students here. In their favor however, they do have a wide variety of options even if they do charge a few appendages for them. Capers or Ben & Jerry's anyone?

Food.

Hmmm, yeah. As, I mentioned food is incredibly expensive here unless you are able to go to places like the fish market and have time to cook it regularly. There are several options for Indian food – none of which have exactly rocked my world. For example, Kwality Indian Restaurant which is very close to campus was well…not so “quality”. Suffice it to say that it resulted in a minor GI problem. At least I only spent about US $8 for diarrhea. Could’ve been worse, eh?


Activities
The school takes us on various mini adventures during orientation week. I was able to make the Grand Etang Rainforest trip which was nice, except we didn’t actually get to do any hiking in it. Instead, we got to watch an all too domesticated monkey jump on people’s heads for photo ops by being lured in by a banana. Worked every time until the monkey got full.

Interestingly enough, it was raining in the rain forest. Actually, it was pouring.

On Friday night I experienced the full force of Caribbean rum. Note to self – do not consume. At the same time, that was quite educational and I seem to have gotten in touch with my inner lovesick child. Not fun.

Did I mention the beach is INCREDIBLE. No? Well, it's INCREDIBLE.

The Single Most Awesome Act I have Witnessed To Date
I’ve met some really great people already. My roommate is not only smart, but fun to hang out with and full of compassion. However, she did have an unfortunate experience while on the way back from Grand Etang on the bus. Her misfortune culminated in my witnessing an act that I was extremely impressed by.

Let me explain.

The road to Grand Etang is not for the faint of heart or the motion sick. It’s a curvaceous, narrow road, takes an hour to get there, is fraught with potholes, and is loud (very loud music & plenty of talking going on). This did not bode well for Bhumika, who apparently gets motion sick but was too polite to complain about it as she sat in the back with us – away from the window. She vomited. On herself and one of our other friends who happened to be on her right. I was sitting to that person’s right, by the window. The person sitting to her left didn’t even flinch. He realized that she would probably want to wipe it off and that she didn’t have anything that would be suitable. He pulled out his pristine Eddie Bauer jacket and handed it to her. No hesitation. She wiped it up – looking sheepish and profusely apologizing.

I think I’m in the right place and with the right people.

You know there are a lot of Indians around when….

You are one of three girls named Simrun in your dorm alone.

Favorite quote by my roomie so far (for the record, this was NOT addressed to moi : ) ):

“When God was giving away common sense where were you?”