Gong

It was such a beautiful day we decided to load up the mutts and head to the beach.  Gong is a shallower beach than Shipwreck (which is my favorite beach) and because there is no beach bar it is never crowded; these facts make it the perfect dog beach.  We took a cooler full of drinks and a picnic lunch.  Charlie, who is not a great fan of the beach, decided it was his duty to guard the basket and leave the playing to others.

The labs ran themselves until they were ready to fall over and Conner kept pace the entire time.  I really love Corgi's, no matter what you throw at them they are always ready to prove their worth!

I had a great swim as the current was strong and I really had to work for it while Cramer played just as hard as the dogs were.  After I got out of the water, we had lunch and then Conner and I settled on a beach towel with a good book while Cramer and the labs went right back to playing.

Cramer has always talked about getting a Great Dane or an English Mastiff when we finally settle in permanently somewhere, but since his time with the labs this week I think he has found his breed of dog.  The labs are so obedient and loving and Cramer enjoys them so much.  It is also funny to watch them play so hard together and then come in and crash, oblivious to the world, while Conner and I are curled up reading.  

That is all the news for now and don't forget, "Don't be content to follow someone else's path, but blaze your own trail!"

 

Break!

Well, thank the Lord finals are over and I made it through second semester!  I now have three weeks to relax a bit and regenerate for the next round of classes.  We decided a few months ago that we wouldn't be coming back to the states for this break as flying at Christmas is even more expensive than usual and we had to buy a car so funds were already short as it was.  Although we are missing family this Christmas season we are managing to thoroughly enjoy ourselves.

To celebrate Christmas we had a another couple over and the plan was to order Chinese food and watch A Christmas Story.  I had even called the Chinese restaurant on Christmas Eve to insure that they would be open, which they said they would, but in true St. Kitts fashion they were closed!  We drove around the city for a while looking to see if anything was open but no such luck so we can home and put together a Christmas from the cabinets.  We had:

A cheese plate
Spaghetti (of course since I always have this in the cabinet)
Homemade eggrolls
Steamed Shrimp
and
Wilted Spinach!

Despite the odd mixture, it worked out for the best as we laughed pretty hard while rummaging the cabinets and whipping up dinner in a flash.

Because most everyone went home for break, we have found ourselves taking care of a literal menagerie of pets.  At the moment we have 11 dogs, 5 cats, and 8 horses under our care and so find ourselves running from house to house (only two of the dogs are staying with us) and dealing with crazy mutts at every turn.  Most of the problems come with the Thoroughbreds and the Labradors, of course.  The Thoroughbreds have simply decided that these three weeks would be a great time to start fighting and to develop hoof abcesses.  The labs just eat everything in sight and never stop moving!  The best tales to date have to be the labs eating a D cell battery and one of the cats getting stuck in a fly trap ribbon (which resulted in an oil bath which in turn caused a vinegar bath).

Even Conner has caught the bug and one evening we came home to the following:

First the guilty face.....

Then we see the crime scene!

And there was no way he could have been hungry....

Because he had finished my yogurt for me earlier!

Merry Christmas to everyone back home and know you are all in our thoughts.

Only in St. Kitts 2

About two week before finals, I was out late at a study group and on my way home gave Cramer a call to let him know I was on the way.  Since I was driving, after I hung the phone up, I put it in the console of the car instead of my bookbag as is my normal habit.  When I got to the house I forgot all about the phone and just took my bag inside.

The next morning, as I was getting ready for school I couldn't find my phone but didn't think anything of it as I am losing it all the time anyway.  I just went on my way to school and determined that I would look for the phone when I got home.  I went to my morning classes and during my break I settled into a quiet corner of campus and hide from the world so I could study cursed Immuno.

In the meantime....I had left Cramer with an errand to run at the bank where they gave him trouble, therefore he tried to call me because he knew I would be on break at that time.  When he called, instead of me answering, a man did, so Cramer apologized and hung up.  As he was wondering how a preprogrammed number in his phone could dial the wrong number, the man calls back and is cussing up a blue streak, very angered at being disturbed and so Cramer apologizes and tries to explain to the guy that Digicell (our phone carrier) must have given this man and his wife (me) the same number.  At this point the man informed him that there hadn't been a mistake with the number but that he had his wife!

Cramer:  No you don't have her, she is at school.
The Man:  I have her
Cramer:  Then let me talk to her
The Man:  I can't let you do that
Cramer:  Well then I don't believe you have her, what does she look like?
The Man:  She is a big white girl with red hair and blue eyes and drives a white Nissian with no bumper
Cramer: hmmmm, well what do you want
The Man:  I want you to put $500.00 US in the trash cans outside your house
Cramer:  Well what good will that do you don't know where I live
The Man:  You live in Birdrock behind the track in a big two story house that is white and blue.  There are two trashcans outside your front gate with a bush growing over them; oh, and the curtains in your bedroom windows are blue (all this is correct by the way)
Cramer: hmm, well I don't have the money, she has the money; get it from her
The Man:  You telling me you don't any money!
Cramer:  She has it all, I don't know anything about the money
The Man: You have an hour to put the money in cans or I'm slitting her throat and coming back and burning down the house tonight and I know you have dogs but they are little so I'm not afraid

At this point, the man hangs up and Cramer proceeds to try to get ahold of me through my roommates, who alert security that I might be missing, who start a campus wide search involving about 20 people.  They finally found me safe and sound trying to hide in the library and took me to security offices to wait until they could go get Cramer and we could both file a report with the local police.  The police came and took our statements but if you want a report filed and an investigation to insure here in St. Kitts you have pay the police department!  I refused as I really didn't have any confidence in any thing being done and Ross security officers had already assured us that they would start patrolling our area more frequently especially that night.

For several days after this occurrence, my friends could call my phone and the idiot would actually answer and try to carry on a conversation with them.  We haven't heard from him again and have had no signs of any mischief about the house.  Everyone at the Mango House has been just a little more cautious here lately and a little more careful with their phones!  Poor Cramer suffered much more with this escapade than I did as he went about 40 minutes without knowing if the guy actually had me or not.  When I came home that evening, the laptops where shoved all the way back on the top shelf of our closet and the credit cards were hidden inside the backs of picture frames; everything of value was stowed!  I can only imagine what was going through his head :-).  All is well that ends well and it is just another crazy story to add our life's memoirs.

Mango House Thanksgiving

Pretty much as soon as we signed the lease on the Mango House at the end of first semester it was decided that we would host Thanksgiving as most of our friends had settled into Condo/Apartment style housing and we actually got ahold of a house.  In the early days of planning, the Thanksgiving guest list was about a dozen, but as we progressed through our studies, new friendships were forged and therefore the guest list grew.  As Thanksgiving drew closer we groaned in horror upon realizing that the list was now upwards of thirty people!

Michelle and Conner

The Mango House was in charge of getting and preparing the turkeys....we bought and cooked two birds although one was no good as we believe that it had been thawed before (probably on the docks) and refrozen; the other (a good old butterball) was just fine.  Everyone got at least a little piece of turkey and thankfully there was enough other food present that no one went away hungry.  Even with a house packed full of people we had a grand time and Conner was the guest of honor as he had been cleared the day before of a previous false diagnoses of adrenal cancer.  Talk about having something to be thankful for! 


Anna and I dressed in our Halloween Indian costumes again as it seemed appropriate to honor our heritage on Thanksgiving since Thanksgiving wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for the original Indian's generosity to the Pilgrims at Plymouth.  I think it was the doeskin dress that revealed my hidden talents at ladder golf!  Ladder golf is a game newly introduced to Cramer and I here in the Caribbean, and after playing it once at Reggae Beach, Cramer came right home and jogged off to the local hardware store to get some pipe to build his own set.  The game consists of two teams of two throwing two golf balls that are tied together with rope at a three rung pvc ladder.  If the golf balls wrap around the top rung 3 points are awarded, second rung gives 2 points, and the bottom rung gives 1 point.  The first team to reach 21 points wins the match, but 21 must be gotten exactly; a team goes over 21 and they go back to 9 points.  We have had many entertaining evenings with the ladder golf set but normally I'm not quite as accurate as I was on Thanksgiving.  Becca has informed me that ladder golf is derived from a warriors training where the golf balls represent metal balls that were thrown with the object of tangling an opponent's legs.  Once I knew this, the fact that I dominated the game on Thanksgiving makes prefect sense.  My warrior spirt was awakened by the doeskin as you can plainly see by the picture above.  

Missing from our festivities was the wonderful fall weather and colors I'm come to expect.  It is strange to know that time is passing only because I see the days on the calendar ticking off and not feel the passing in my bones as the seasons change.  Cramer and I certainly are making good memories here, but our time on St. Kitts is spent knowing home is going to be somewhere else; somewhere with seasons for sure.  






I hope your Thanksgivings were as fun-filled as ours,
Cramer, Rach, and Conner  

Mango House Tour

The lovely front gate

Coming down the side of the house to....

The Mango Tree for which the house is named

A view of the backyard and the occupants of the house (minus me)

The garden in the corner, tomatoes and butternut squash have succeeded the best so far

Our chicken coup (don't laugh, this baby survived Hurricane Earl!)

Our fire pit made by Cramer (the fire company has only showed up once)

The banana tree!

Coming into the front yard and looking at the construction across the street; studying to hammers and saws has been lovely!

The front porch and under the pink hamper are the adopted chicks getting some air

The front of the mango house; the two windows you see belong to my and Cramer's room as does the balcony

You may enter the porch if you can get past the watch dogs!

The lovely wraparound porch; home to.....

The plant nursery

Entering the front door, the dining room, kitchen, and living room fan out 

The living area; pay special attention to the state of the coffee table as that is a chronic condition due to someone in the house having a test around the corner at all times :-)

The kitchen, yes you are seeing correctly-five people, one fridge

The laundry room, aka chick nursery

The upstairs hallway with the roommates bedrooms at the end

I have the master bedroom since I have the husband and thus have this rather large bathroom that even has a walk-in closet 

The theatre, I tend to grow roots to that chair

And the most important feature, Conner's bed right by ours.  He may look relaxed but believe me, he still has his eye on the rawhide bone on the right!

Fun In The Sun

 
















Guess I have to admit that Vet School on an Island isn't all bad; we manage to have some fun!