Welcome to Antigua…

As we walked off the plane, I was over come with the heat wave that hit me. It was dark out so I did not get an immediate feel for what Antigua was like. We went through customs with relative ease and our principal Wayne and the school administrator, Gilly, waiting for us.

Oh… side note… can I tell you what a fantastic dog Ellie is? Except for a quiet whimper on the first leg, she did not make a noise the whole flight. Not even during the San Juan Rollercoaster What a good girl she is.

My initial thoughts as we drove to our new home was, that the streets are really narrow, in poor condition and people drive really close together and pass whenever they want – which made me a little nervous. (after several days of being a passenger in a car, I have concluded that the driving still scares me). Did I mention that one never stops sweating? (After several days here now, I have concluded that sweat is constantly rolling down my face).

We were pleasantly surprised with our cottage. A two bedroom cottage with the rooms being much larger then any of our past apartments with a kitchen/living room and a huge wrap–around porch over looking Falmouth Harbour. It was only the next morning that we came to realize the real beauty of where we live. JJ, our landlord takes great pride in his property. Our cottage sits on 3 acres that is shared with another identical cottage about 15 m away (two more teachers will be living there) and JJ’s house is way at the top of the property. Walking around our land is like taking a walk in point pleasant park: there are several mango trees (with lots and lots of fresh mangos waiting for us to pick and eat), a bananna tree, a guava tree, lots of exotic plants, and some other fruiting trees (but we don’t what they are yet!). Ellie has lots of room to roam. JJ has a dog Maggie that is always down with us. She’s not used to dogs and is timid around Ellie, but slowly they are working things out.

Our first day was filled with unpacking in the morning and then a beach break in the afternoon. The water is literally bath water and crystal clear - nothing that I have ever experienced before. We stopped by the little grocery market a couple of minutes from our house to see what we could get. And they had almost everything that we will need including tofu and soy milk! (Although both are expensive.) But the staples, grains, pasta, beans, and lots of fresh fruit and vegetables are always minutes away from our house. After about our third shower and several dips in the ocean, we headed to Wayne’s for dinner – hung out, chatted, drank, swam – a very nice time indeed. By the end of the day, we were feeling like this place was going to work out quite nicely.

Day two consisted of finishing up the unpacking. Although we don’t have much here, constant breaks are needed – oh it’s hot. We are going through water like crazy. And showering all the time. To celebrate finishing setting up our new home, we headed to the beach for a dip. Later Andrew went down to the sports club to play tennis with Wayne and some other folks. We’re thinking of joining the club. Lots of great people, however in a country of mostly black people, the club members are almost exclusively all white and British – which is a little weird.

We headed to St. John’s (the capital and big) city to do some shopping and set up our phone, and we also went to the "mall" where the big grocery store is – The Epicurean. The grocery store is just like the big ones back home except, in addition, it has liquor. We’re talking veggie burger, curries, dog supplies – everything. It’s all a matter of whether or not you are willing to pay the cost. It is nice to know that these luxuries are there if we decide we want them occasionally. The phone, however, did not go so well. Organized line-ups don’t seem to be existent so you never know your turn. And nothing moves quickly. I finally got to talk to someone only to discover that we need our passports to set up an account, so we headed back deciding we will come back again tomorrow.

The next day we hit the local bus system, which gets us to St. John’s with relative ease. As we waited yet again at the phone/internet store, we were informed that their system is down and that we would have to come back on Monday. Sigh…. We’ll give it another try on Monday. Since we were in St. John’s, we decided to explore the city a little. Lots of old and brightly painted buildings outline the streets. Although St. John’s isn’t a beautiful town, it does have a lot of charm to it: narrow streets, deep gutters, lots of street vendors, and old military feel. Since we are white, we are considered tourists and therefore get asked if we would like to buy anything and everything. Therefore, we don’t have any pictures of it yet because we already feel too touristy when we are there. We hunted out an amazing little vegetarian restaurant that just blew us away. Meatless meatballs and sweet and sour tofu were ordered and devoured along with the best smoothie I have ever had. You just can’t beat fresh mangos, pineapples, and coconuts.

As I write from our porch, I rain storm blows by. It adds to the lazy afternoon I am having. It’s been hard to think about school these days. We mostly spend (and been encouraged to do so by Wayne) our time getting settled and putting our lives in order. Next week I think that I’ll start doing some work from home. But the lazy laid pack attitude of the island has spread to the school. They haven’t even been able to find the grade four school books yet. Here, one can only move as fast as the next person. Patience is a great attribute.