Our First Few Days

I'm sure you've all heard that we made it here safely, despite a one night delay in Antigua. The delay was fine, the airline put us up in a hotel and paid for dinner, so we did enjoy it. We have an apartment here, and it's great. It's small by american standards, but it's a two room apartment and is a good size for a couple, and larger than average in this area. It's down a steep hill... but since we went to Hartwick we're used to it! The big plus of our apartment... it's about three minutes from Coconut Beach.
 

Yesterday was great. We got up (the sun rises early here btw, so because of that and the cost of electricity we might get up around 6 every day and go to sleep about 10) and met a group from the college at the library about 9. Another married couple was there as well (they're just like us... he's going to school and she's staying as well) so it was nice to get to know them a bit. Their names are Neil and Jennifer and they're from Illinois.

It was like a caravan of buses, and of course, the bus we were on had it's AC fail within half an hour, so we had to have the windows open the whole day. That wouldn't have been bad, except our bus also seemed to have transmission issues, so it was at the back of the line and got lots of bus fumes. But no one complained, everyone seemed to have a pretty good attitude about the whole thing.

We stopped at a few lookout points along the way to the Carib Reservation, where we stopped and tried some native coconut flatbread... it was very good! We also stopped at a little market to do some shopping. Ryan and I bought a pair of birds (lovebirds we decided) carved out of a coconut. Very cool! We want to go back again with this other couple to buy baskets and such when there won't be such a crowd.

We stopped for lunch at this little roadside place. They had a pretty nice buffet, and it wasn't too terribly pricey. We had the first meat we've had since we were on the island... we haven't found the butcher yet! After that we hit our final destination... Emerald Pool.
 

Emerald Pool is this little rocky pool created by a waterfall in the middle of the rainforest. The walk in was amazing... Ryan's seen the rainforest but it was my first time. The pool was awesome! Ryan and I were among the handful of people who went it... it was sort of like spectator swimming since so many people were standing there watching. That made it a bit awkward but it was SUCH an incredible experience. The falls were small enough that you could actually swim over and stand underneath them... it was amazing! The water came down hard, but it was still fun. I was a bit worried about losing a contact... but I was lucky and I didn't loose one after all... which was pretty amazing considering the amount of spray and the force of the water landing on top of us.

The water was cool, but a comfy sort of cool. Much warmer than the lakes in Maine or the Adirondacks! A few kids complained about the water temperature, so we told them they needed to swim in the northern parts of the US before they got to complain.
It was a GREAT day, and a lot of fun. There was a social on the beach last night, and it was a lot of fun. We met our neighbors, another couple who brought their golden retriever named Peanut. Ross gave us appetizers, which was nice. Food here is expensive... EVERYTHING is expensive. A jar of peanut butter (a small jar of off-brand no less) is about four US dollars. Pricey, but so far we are really enjoying it.

I want to get involved in the spouse's organization, it's supposed to be great. They do a lot of fun things... they'll have cooking seminars, little trips, parties, games tournaments... sadly, I'm looking forward to cooking seminars the most. I love cooking and I'm really looking forward to learning how to cook on the island. Things are different here.

Hope you are all having a good time! We love and miss you all, and we want to thank you again for all you did to help us with our wedding and our big move. We hope that many of you will be able to visit... and that's only partly because we want you to bring us stuff! Mostly we just look forward to seeing you all.