Pictures from our first 2 weeks!

I realize that it has been a few days since I mentioned putting pictures up 'soon'. What I failed to mention is that now I'm on 'island time'. You see, in island time, '10 minutes' means '20 minutes, at least', 'be right there' means '10 minutes', and 'soon' means 'about a week or so'.

I hope that wasn't too confusing with all the apostrophes. Full quotation marks looked too intimidating.

In any case, here are some pictures to hopefully give you some more context.

This is the dreaded hill that leads to our apartment. We hate it. We hate it with a burning passion.

Here we are on a hill overlooking Roseau, the capital city, with the other med students that were on our bus. Fun fact: this picture was taken by a former Ross SA president!

This is really cool. At the southern end of Dominica, there's a tiny peninsula (is there a word for tiny peninsula?). The water on the left is the Atlantic Ocean, and the water on the right is the Caribbean Sea. As you can see, the ocean is a lot rougher and grosser looking, while the sea is green and calm. And it's only separated by, what, 10 meters? We also hiked up that hill you see. Almost as arduous as our demon hill, but a really nice view.

This is one of Dominica's famous sulphur springs. It's constantly bubbling, and smells like old eggs. We literally looked at it for 15 seconds, then got back on the bus. Quite noxious.

This is a sort of memorial to the last hurricane to truly hit Dominica (1979, as you may recall). The wind knocked a tree over onto an empty school bus, and they decided to leave it be. It's in the middle of a garden, too, which makes it all the more surreal.

This is the place to go for all of your Dominican sporting events! And by all, I mean football (soccer) and cricket (hence the roundness). Mark my words: I will learn the game of cricket. Whether I can get to a match is a different story; I guess Roseau is NUTS on a cricket day.

Funny story about the white coat ceremony: when we got down to the "Annex" (1st-semester lecture hall), I was told that there wasn't room for family and friends inside the hall, so I got to watch it via a projector outside. This is the best shot I could get of Melissa during the ceremony. Not sure what she's looking at. I'll have to ask her later.

So proud of her!

 

 

So there you go! There are many more pictures, but this post is PLENTY long already, so I'll put some more up next week, probably.

 

Let me know if there's anything specific you'd like to hear about. The more this works like a conversation, the easier it'll be for me to write.  Hope you're all doing well!

 

-Eric