White Coat Ceremony

This afternoon was the school of medicine's white coat ceremony. As I have learned from Wikipedia, it is supposed to mark our transition from the academic science portion of med school (first 2 years) to the clinical portion (second 2 years), but many universities like ours have early forays into the clinical world so they hold them earlier. Thus, I think the primary purpose of our little game of doctor dress up today was to be a carrot on a stick for our next four years. A little whiff of what we hope to eventually reach. Some of the speeches were good, others were unremarkable. And the graduation like parade of the entire class across the stage was grueling. The Prime Minister was there with his two impressive looking body guards though, so that did provide me with a brief bit of entertainment. A nice reception followed, so I was able to avoid another night of cooking. And a small group of us were invited over for dinner by a few of the vet students. All in all it was a nice night, but now it's almost Monday and there will be no relenting until midterms. The included picture is of me and a few of my fellow classmates and friends. Right - Pat my roommate from Jersey, Lower - James from NY, Left - Genc from Philly/Kosovo. Hopefully I'll have more official looking photos when friends get done sharing, and the professional hired by the school makes his available. (Disclaimer - This picture was taken before the ceremony. We've matured vastly since then. Now we always act like professionals :)

And it begins...

Today is my first day of classes. They're just the typical first days, nothing too important, but I'm sure I'll receive tons of reading nonetheless. I'm just glad we're actually starting. All the orientations have tried to intimidate us so we're ready for the workload. So it was a little uneasy just waiting in the calm before the storm.
Since nothing of note has happened in school so far I'll just tell you what I did on my last few days of freedom. Friday, like I said, was a student government sponsored party at a local bar/club that opened to the beach. It was very well attended and lots of fun. Saturday morning I went on a boat ride from the capital's central port to a swimming island closer to our school. We saw some yellow fin tuna on the way. And the posted picture is on the return trip as we enter the bay. Other than that we only had a few get togethers with free food and drinks, these are always packed with students for obvious reasons, so I had a good opportunity to meet a lot of my fellow classmates. Hopefully we'll still have some time during the weekends to have some sort of social gatherings. I'll let you know how my classes are once we get into a normal schedule.

Tourist Day

There were much more exciting happenings last night and today. Yesterday evening a few of us 1st year students went to a local resort's bar. It was an open-air bar under a canopy type thing and was situated right on the water. We enjoyed several beers from a local brewery. I actually saw the brewery while riding the bus into town. There is also obviously rum produced here, but I haven't tried any of that. This morning I got up and headed to the beach right away. Here are a few pics from there. The water is turquoise and crystal clear, plus super warm. I was surprised to see the beach was virtually empty of swimmers. Maybe everybody was at work. After returning from the beach, my roommate and I went on a school tour of a nutmeg factory and a waterfall in the mountains. The first picture is of the drying racks of the nutmeg factory. This is before they are crushed and sorted by grade. I took a little souvenir from the drying racks, but we need to find some nutmeg recipes so I can use it. The second pic is of the waterfall. It fell into a pool where several other students jumped into from the rocks. Tomorrow's agenda includes a student council sponsored outing at another local restaurant/bar called the aquarium. In addition I'll also be attending boring orientation meetings. I'll keep you posted.

I made it!

Just writing a little post to let you all know that I made it safe and sound to Grenada. I did have some delays which added 12 hours to my journey and a lot of grief. But, now I'm settled in here complete with all my luggage. I got in late last night at around 11. I've not done much today except for going through the short registration process, and going into St. George the capital for a little stop at the supermarket. Here is a picture I took from the supermarket parking lot. I thought the foliage and the cool hills in the mist in the background were cool. Plus the KFC at the end of the parking lot shows that I'm not too far from home. I'll be going on a nutmeg factory tour in the morning and probably heading to the beach. Grand Anse Beach is only a few miles away and is usually rated among the prettiest around the world. So i'll have more pictures to post tomorrow which will hopefully trump KFC. Thanks for keeping up with my going ons. And I hope to see you down here for vacation at some point.