Classes and Day to Day Life

Well, things around here are becoming pretty busy. Ryan started classes on Monday, and things have been a bit hectic as we start to settle into this new schedule. He's lucky in that he was accepted to the PACE program so he can 'media-site' from our apartment. Media-site is basically a nifty little program that tapes and posts the lectures on-line, within a half an hour of the lecture ending. So if you miss a class or just need to review what a professor said, you can watch the lecture again online. And it's a pretty fancy little program I guess, since he can watch lectures twice as fast, twice as slow, pause, rewind, fast forward... all that fancy stuff. I also feel very blessed that he can study at home, because that means he's at least nearby. Otherwise he'd have to go to campus to study. This way we're together, even if we're both busy.

And yes, we are both busy. I'm working on a few articles right now. One thing I'm working on is finding a newspaper that would publish a series of articles somewhat like this blog. Even if I don't make a lot of money from it, at least it'd be experience on my resume and any income is better than none. 

Things also take much longer on this island than they do anywhere else, so that keeps me busy as well. Take yesterday. I had a wonderful RSO meeting (Ross Spouses Organization) where I received a lot of good hints and tips, some support, a lot of potential new friends, and free pizza! Then I came home and started some laundry. An average size load of laundry took me more than two and a half hours! I have to do it by hand, in my trusty laundry bucket and the kitchen sink. There are no laundromats, and the laundry services are pretty expensive, so I'm doing it by hand for awhile. It's exhausting work though! My arms and shoulders ached afterwards. I'm going to have some serious muscles when I go back to the States! After the laundry, it took me about two hours total to make dinner. Part of that time was due to the fact that I had to run out to buy an onion... which took half an hour. The rest of the time was taken up by making meatballs. And if you want meatballs you need breadcrumbs. And if you don't have breadcrumbs... yes, that's right, I had to crumble bread by hand. But we had a great dinner. The meatballs added a lot to our spaghetti, and I added chopped cucumbers and tomatoes to the sauce to make it taste a little better. And yes, in case you can't tell, I am proud of that meal. It took forever but it was worth it.

I worked on some research about writing markets and such for freelancers last night, and spoke to a few people on skype. By the time 9:30 rolled around however, I couldn't even keep my eyes open and went to bed. Poor Ryan, who'd spent the whole day studying while I was working at home, stayed up studying until about 11:00. I know that doesn't sound late... but the sun comes up EARLY and since we don't have shades, we're awake and doing things about 6:30AM.  Somehow everything on this island makes us feel more tired than we would in the States. Maybe it's that 'memory foam mattress' we have... or the fact the we are awakened a few times a night by a cow or donkey or chicken or dog... oh well. We do love

 it here and we're having so much fun. It's hard to believe this place is our home!

Today my big activity was working on an article that I'm hopefully going to submit tonight or tomorrow. No, you don't get to know where. You can know after it's published. :-) Jen and I made a shopping run to a grocery store we hadn't tried yet, and I picked up stuff I needed for dinner, as well as BREAD CRUMBS! I haven't seen them in any other store, so it was a nice surprise to fine them. They cost about $3.50 US but they were worth it. Now I can make meatballs and meatloaf... and everything is MUCH easier. Ryan and I did manage to have some beach time today. We go to the beach every day, but lately it's just been a walk. Today we both took a break so that we could go swimming... and it was wonderful! I'm still not used to ocean water being WARM. I'm so used to it being cold. And just to prove that we DO eat (since I know we complained about issues finding food at first) I tried out a new chicken recipe tonight. I don't know if I'll use it again, but it wasn't bad and we both ate a LOT of food tonight.

Here's a photo of our emergency power-outage candles ready and waiting! We set them up during the power outage on Sunday. Like our candle-holders? They work well when they're filled with a bit of dirt. You can also see our matches in the front of the photo. Those are very useful for starting the stove or oven or emergency candles.

Love you all! Try to stay warm, I heard that there is a cold snap this week. Know that we're thinking of you and we miss you all very much! Kisses and hugs!