It's been a sad week. My good friend Tarah moved back to the states yesterday and I'm realizing our time here is almost through. I've felt for a while now that Dominica is home, and it's going to be hard to leave. I've often heard that the best way to get through a rough day is by thinking of all the things you are thankful for.
1. Imported Starbucks coffee. By imported I mean C²W bought me 3 pounds of Starbucks in the states & imported it in their suitcases for me.
2. I have awesome friends here on the island, back in California, and across the oceans in Korea. They keep me sane & grounded while reminding me there is life beyond med-school.
3. We are officially in 5th semester of med-school! {Do you like the use of "we"? I may not be the one studying, but it's still my life!}
4. Adam Cat. My little buddy basically sleeps near me all day, wherever I am. Whether it's on my desk, under my feet, or in the window sill behind me. He keeps me company during the day.
5. The Internet & Bloggers. Seriously, without the blogging world I would be much lonelier. I love that even though I live on an island of only 70k people, I have been able to make friends from around the world. You guys make me happy! I have so much fun writing & designing posts {not to mention my awesome job designing blogs.}
Don't throw tomatoes at me, I couldn't help it. Look at that face, so intent on playing the game. Do you guys know about the wonders of Settlers of Catan? It is my all-time favorite game.
This is the travel dice version, that we got for Christmas, but the idea is still the same. You use "commodities" like wheat, bricks, or sheep to buy roads or towns. It sounds dorky, but it is actually really fun. Way better than Uno!
What a day we've had. Little Evie wouldn't eat yesterday and we noticed that she was very lethargic and pale in the ears/nose/mouth. Her health started deteriorating very quickly last night to the point that Chris and I starting feeding her sugar water with a syringe every few hours because she was barely moving and breathing rapidly.
laying on my homemade "heated waterbed" (the Bloggess gets all the credit for that idea!)
This afternoon a local vet and vet tech both came over to help. She was given fluids with an IV on our counter and several different shots. They said that she is anemic and most likely has worms. Apparently Advantix is not sufficient in Dominica to protect your animals. If you have a pet the local vets need to give them a special type of medicine that protects against local parasites. Please do this if you have a cat or dog on the island.
She started drinking water this evening, and I broke down and bought tuna for her to try eating, and it worked! I read online that sometimes cats will eat tuna when they refuse to eat anything else. If you know me, you also know that I have a mental allergy to all things "fish" so this was a big deal. I also hope that she isn't allergic, but I'd rather her be scratching and with us. My kitties have a terrible food allergy to poultry which makes feeding particularly tricky.
food allergies :(
Did you know that if a cat goes longer than 48 hours without food it's like a death sentence? So terrible. I am so thankful that the vet was able to come to our house.
p.s. Tropical Storm Emily missed us almost entirely.
So begins Semester 2. We are happy in our new apartment, and the weather has been fantastic. I can even walk to school without sweating! The kitties got a new a scratching tower, made by Bruno.
Portsmouth Harbor at Sunset
After all the traveling we did, it's really nice to be back here on the island. Especially because my wonderful Mom bought me a ticket home for the month of June. It makes the next year seem so much more manageable. Now, back to school work.
I know that your life must be rough, owning an apartment complex and all. I'm grateful for our third floor walk up with the mini-fridge, florescent lights, and solar heated shower. I don't mind that we don't have hot water in our sink, that the cable goes in and out, or even the patio furniture posing as a living room set. What I'm having trouble with is this pathetic excuse for a bed.
Even the cats wake up with a crooked back. It is slanted heavily to one side, rolls away from the wall during the night, and I swear I can still feel the springs through the egg crate. This bed is making me wake up with pains in my side, neck, and lower back. It is giving me headaches. Please find it in your heart to replace our bed immediately with something like this.
Before we got here, we had to leave our house. That was the worst bit of this whole thing. Super hot, super sweaty, super tricky to get everything we own into one upstairs storage unit. The last two nights, I got about 2 hours of sleep because there was no time to stop. It had to get done and it did. Rodney Atkins says it all:
If your going through hell
Keep on going, don't slow down
If you're scared don't show it
You might get out
Before the devil even knows you're there
Yeah, If you're going through hell
Keep on moving, face that fire
Walk right through it
You might get out
Before the devil even knows you're there
Love that song. By the time we left, the house looked amazing. It is a night and day difference from when we moved in. Our tenant is one lucky guy, and we are one lucky set of landlords to have him. Here are some before and after pictures of our home.
After the carpets were cleaned and I handed my keys over to our Realtor, it was off to the airport for us. Chris dropped the Shelby off at his parents and then we went to the bank and took out a huge chunk of our savings in cash for the trip and to get our bank account started here. Then we headed to my sister Julie’s house, cats and all. Thankfully, the cats and carrier weighed exactly 20.0 pounds (see last post).
So with the kitties in tow, off we went to the airport still stuffing things into every last nook and cranny of our luggage. Chris even put on two shirts and was stuffing shorts into his sweatshirt pocket. Little did we know, the airline wasn’t even going to check if we had less than 70 pounds of luggage. After all that careful planning and weighing, we could have brought 30 more pounds each! *sigh* I’m sure that if we had packed 100 pounds of luggage each, we would have been held to the 70 pound rule, as life often does. Thankfully, Chris got to unload his pockets and extras into the luggage before it got sent off.
When we got to security, they told us we would have to take the cats out of their carriers and walk them through the metal detectors while they x-rayed the carrier and our luggage. Thank goodness we were prepared for this with harnesses! My mom is a genius for thinking of this ahead of time. The kitties made it through just fine, and back into their crate they went for another... 24 hours or so. If you can believe it, they were quieter than any of the children on board the planes. No one even knew they were there! And, no, neither of them had any “accidents.”
The flight from LAX to Miami was quick and easy. I slept pretty much the whole time until the captain came on the next morning saying that Miami was currently closed due to weather and we would be circling until it cleared. Great. A few minutes later the captain comes on again and says that our fuel light is on and we are being diverted to Alabama, or something like that. Fantastic. Then, on he comes again, but with good news! We are landing, but nearly an hour later than scheduled. Off we run to the next terminal to catch our next flight to Puerto Rico which leaves in 30 minutes. The last ones on the plane, they take Chris’s carry-on and without checking put down Puerto Rico as it’s final destination. So, once we landed Chris had to go out through the airport to baggage, find his luggage, and go back through security.
Finally, we made our last flight to Dominica on a teeny tiny plane. Customs was easy, it was even smaller than at Cabo. Of course, none of our checked baggage made it, but we were kind of prepared for that, and we eventually got it two days later on Saturday.
The first thing I have to say about the island is: It’s Hot! Not California dry hot, but out of control, dripping sweat, feels like you’re in a sauna hot. I’m sure I’ll adjust but it’s my biggest obstacle right now. Walking anywhere is just torture. There is no point in putting make up on, because it’s going to melt off. No point in doing your hair, because it’s going to be dripping with sweat in 10 minutes. God bless the people who have lived their whole lives here.
Our apartment here is actually pretty nice, now that we’ve moved. We spent the first 2 days in a middle floor apartment that was pretty small, but then our landlord suggested that we move to the top floor for $50 more a month to a much bigger place. Not only is it bigger, but it’s nicer with a full sized stove, working windows, a bigger bed, 2 closets, and a vanity. These seem like insignificant things until you don’t have them! Here's a video of our new place.
Pretty much, island life has been about survival for the last week. Getting the cat’s food (frozen ground beef), finding a litter box (literally a box of sand from the beach), learning to use a match to light the propane stove, figuring out what to do when your propane runs out halfway through cooking dinner, and more significantly getting Chris ready to start school with all the orientation stuff and check in’s, etc.
I’m going to be glad for things to settle down next week when his classes start. Maybe I can find a groove here. And after the groove, maybe a part time job or school. We’ll just have to see!
For the cats to travel in one pet carrier on AA, the carrier must weigh less than 20 pounds in all. This is what I found out in the last hour by doing research online. Of course, it's 1 in the morning, and I'm a little too tired to round them up and do the scale right now. BUT, I will absolutely be doing that tomorrow before I pack a carry-on bag that may not actually be going on the trip because the cat carrier counts as one carry-on for us. Positive thinking here. We will be able to take both in one.
Today we got Adam and Eve their first collars, tags, and harnesses. Here is Adam with his new bow-tie collar.
Isn't he handsome? And here is Eve with her collar and harness on.
Dressed for Success! Also, I learned in my reading that we have to actually take the cats out of the carrier and walk them through the metal detector. This could spell disaster. I guess you can ask for a private screening room at security.. but who knows if that is true. We'll just have to see what happens when we get to the airport Wednesday!
Where did the last few weeks go? I've started the dual packing process: storage and luggage. Currently, I'm worried about how everything we need is going to weigh less than 70 pounds each. I think it will all fit, but the weight is adding up quickly. Packing is the worst.
Today we went to LA and got the USDA certificate for the cats. Glad that is all taken care of. And we found a renter! What a relief! Now I've gotta finish packing the house up, get our luggage under control, take care of changing our address at umpteen places, move our stuff into storage, and not lose my sanity.
It took about 2 hours of talking to people to finally book our tickets to Dominica this morning. In my experience, people either want to help you, or they don't. You have to find the right person sometimes to get things to work out in your favor. This morning, the first girl I talked to was not interesting in working with me and helping. She was helpful in picking the flights, but when it came to adding the cats to the flight she stopped being helpful. The computer wouldn't let her add the cats and she basically said we could not bring our pets into the country. I know that to be false and I told her as much, but she didn't want to listen. I asked her to please ask her manager and after 5 minutes on hold she said that she still could not book us the ticket with the cats because the last leg of the flight, from Puerto Rico to Dominica doesn't allow pets in the cabin. But that didn't make sense because I had read several stories of people bringing their pets on the airplane to Dominica. So.. after a frustrating few minutes of arguing with the girl that yes, people do bring their pets I finally put the tickets on hold. Then I started looking into pet shipping services and those cost about 1500 for 2 cats. Which just made me even madder, and so I called the airline back hoping for a more kind agent. This time, I hit the jackpot. Not only did this agent want to help me, but her niece is actually going to Ross University right now for veterinary medicine! She got the computer to override the 'no cat' policy, and bang! we have 2 tickets to DOM with 2 pet reservations.
A harrowing morning on the phone, in 100 degree weather with my laptop burning on my legs and my phone plugged into the wall while i'm leaning over trying to get this all finished.
Hi, my name is Katie! I'm a lover of graphic and web design, educator, and live in the CaribbeanCalifornia Michigan with my med school husband & our kitty cat. Life isn't perfect, but it's wonderful!
