Today marks the one year anniversary of our arrival to
Dominica.
CRAZY!!
Time has seriously gone by so fast.
We have come a
long way since that first night one year ago today.
Our very first picture in Dominica, on the runway after stepping off the plane.
We haven’t really shared our first experiences on this island with many people for fear of freaking them out. (Mainly family members!) However since today is our year mark, and we are so comfortable and settled here, we thought it would be safe to recount a few events from our very first day on the island for everyone to hear and somewhat experience through this post! This is very long, but here goes:
After two days of travel, an hour in an un-airconditioned airport/immigrations office, and a 50 minute rough bus ride we were more than ready to shower off, settle into our apartment, and rest for a little while. (Did I mention that it was like 85 degrees and 100% humidity?? UGG) When we arrived at the school housing office we were immediately swept off to our apartment to drop off all of our luggage. We met our landlord at the building and she informed us that our apartment was not available yet. The girl living in it was moving out the next morning, so we would be staying in the apartment next to ours for the night. We had no idea what to expect when it came to the apartment, we had never even seen pictures. As Barbara unlocked the apartment and we stepped inside we almost started crying. The apartment was an empty concrete box. We had a small bed, a small refrigerator, a small gas stove, a desk, a bookshelf, tile floors, and blank white concrete walls. How can we possibly live here for one night let alone the duration of our four month contract?? (Don’t worry, we still live in the same building and we absolutely LOVE it here!! You can check out the pictures from this post to see just how far we have come. Movin On Up)
We didn’t have too much time to work ourselves into a huge panic because our transport driver was anxiously knocking on our door waiting to take us back to the housing office for our campus tour. When we got back to the housing office we met one of the girls I had been emailing back and forth with. She pulled us off to the pool to introduce us to a bunch of the people from the branch who were hanging out there. It was a blur as everyone went around introducing themselves, telling us where they lived, and giving us quick advice. To this day we still can’t even remember who we met at the pool, but we do remember being very jealous that they were all so relaxed and settled while we were having the most overwhelming experience of our lives! But it was also very nice to know that there were so many other branch members who were so friendly! (Again don’t worry, soon enough we were just as settled as they were!)
Next on the agenda was the campus tour…yeah bright idea to schedule the tours fifteen minutes after arriving in town. Two students whisked us and a few other brand new students around campus pointing out all the different buildings and who knows what else. As exhausted, hungry, and overwhelmed as we were, all we got out of that tour was absolutely nothing.
After like a 2 hour campus tour we were very tired and hungry. (Did I mention that we hadn’t eaten anything other than cheese crackers for almost 10 hours?) So our tour guides turned to us and said “So where would you guys like to go for dinner?” My immediate thought “Seriously?? You realize that I’ve never been here before right??” We finally settled on a Chinese restaurant and Chinese food has never tasted so good! (Of course we had to save some for leftovers because we had no idea where we were going to find food for our next meal!)
After dinner our tour guide pointed us in the direction of our building and sent us on our way home. We crossed our fingers that we would recognize where we lived and proceeded to walk home in the dark.
We got back to our apartment and started to get settled in for the night when we heard a knock on the apartment next to ours. (Our real apartment.) We heard one of the girls from the branch, who also lived in our building, asking for us and getting a confused response from the student who was still living there. We tried to get dressed fast enough to catch her, but she was gone before we opened the door. I kind of knew which apartment she lived in so we decided to head over to her place. When we arrived the security guard told us that they were all at a different apartment and we should go there too. He wouldn’t take no for an answer so to the strangers apartment we went. We knocked on the door and to our surprise there were a bunch of branch members there. Again we were bombarded with tons of information and advice. (We still laugh at how freaked out and overwhelmed we must have looked that night!) As we were getting ready to leave one of the girls handed us a small black bag and said something like “Here, I want you to have this.” We were very relieved because the only food we had were cheese crackers and fun-fruits. We left the very well furnished, well stocked apartment, and went back to our bare concrete box with 6 suitcases. We opened the bag to see what food they had given us and low and behold we found a tiny round cucumber, half a garlic clove, and about 1/3 of a loaf of bread. At that point we knew we were going to die. If this is the kind of stuff that people cherish so much that they humbly part with it when new people, who have nothing, arrive then we were goners for sure! (This has become a funny experience that we bring up all the time. Paul wants to do it to other new people to the island…I won’t let him)
Here is a picture of our bare kitchen. See the plate and the few utensils on the counter? That was ALL that we had. We had to make do with only those until our boxes we had shipped arrived about a week later.
The next morning the Taylors (who have become some of our closest friends) made us breakfast. We were so grateful since we didn’t have any food, nor did we know how to get any! They also took us around town to do a little shopping. The stores are very tiny and they have super crappy dollar store stuff that costs about as much as your would pay at Dillards. Again very overwhelming! We didn’t really know what to buy. The stores with food were sooo different then anything we had ever had at home. So we came home with lots of water, Windex, toilet paper, spaghetti noodles, sauce, Cornflakes and a box of milk. That night we had very bland, Dominica tasting spaghetti, along with half of the small round cucumber and a thin piece of bread. Man we sure made that bread last, I think we had it for 4 meals!
Here is a picture of our very first meal in our apartment. This picture seriously makes us laugh! Notice it is our left over Chinese food and there is only one plate...yes we shared that small plate of food. (Please ignore how terrible I look in the picture.)
Anyway, we adjusted pretty darn quick and enjoyed the rest of the time before school started. The school offered tons of excursions around the island and we got to see and do a lot!
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This break we are staying on the island and we are part of the Welcoming Committee. We are enjoying helping new students transition to the Dominica, and it is a fun reminder of our own experiences adjusting to the island!
This has been such a fantastic experience for us. We have learned so much and have truly grown to love it here in Dominica. Whenever we think about our time on the island ending it makes us very very sad. We wouldn’t trade our time here for the world!
Happy One Year Island Anniversary!!
Gotta love having locals take your picture. I was jumping back into the shot as fast as possible before the lady who "has never taken a picture in her life" pushed the button.
