Canada to Caribbean

I am starting this Blog as an on-line journal to keep track or my memories and experiences here in Dominica. I will post it for friends and family to read as well so anyone who cares can see what we are up to. Please note before reading- I talk a lot!

To start off, we had about 3 weeks from getting accepted to getting to the Island. It was a very busy, emotional and short time. We tried to spend as much of our remaining time with Family and Friends as was possible. Which pretty much left us with about 3.5 days to pack up our entire house, ultimately leaving behind a huge mess and lots left to be done for our family and friends to deal with. I am extremely grateful for everyone who helped us with the packing, moving and cleaning both before and after we left the house. Your kindness will never be forgotten! Thank you!

Our first plane was from Calgary to Toronto, it left at 12:50pm and arrived at 6:30ish Toronto Time. When we got to Toronto we found out our next flight was delayed. This was stressful since we had another plane after that one that we really didn't want to miss. So we got to sleep a few hours in the Toronto Airport for the second time in almost a month. We boarded our plane from Toronto to Barbados at about 11 and arrived at about 4 -Same time zone as Toronto. Barbados was fantastic! It was beautiful and the people were so nice! We were in a crazy rush though, because we had less then 30 min from when we got in, to when the next plane was suppose to leave. We rushed through customs had to pick up our bags and ran over to check in. They told us they couldn't let us on  the plane because we had to be there at least 45 min early. We begged and pleaded and asked to speak to a manager and begged and pleased again. The Plane was delayed as well so it wasn't a huge deal in that regard. The problem was that because of Hurricane Issac many other planes this week had been cancelled and there were several people stuck at the airport on standby. They had already offered our seats to other people when we didn't show up on time. But they found a way to squeeze us all in. It was a tiny little propeller plane that had only 50 seats. They told us right away because the plane was so full that they couldn't fit all our bags and we would have to wait for another flight to bring them. The Plane was suppose to leave at 5pm but for some reason didn't leave until about 9pm.

It was 10pm when we landed in Dominica. Way to dark to see anything. There was a bunch of school staff there to help us around, pretty much everyone on the plane where students. They helped us fill out our lost luggage forms and loaded us into vans. The drivers get paid by how many people they transport so they PACK you in. The driver was really nice. It was too dark to see much but every once in a while we could see crabs scurry across the road. Apparently the Crabs right now are mating so the females cross the road to go lay eggs in the jungle and then go back to the Ocean (The road goes right along the cost) You need to be really careful, they dont want you to squash the crabs.

The van dropped us off at Jenner Hall at the school. We got there at about 11 30pm ish. Joel had to get his ID picture taken, Fill out forms, Update Information, Sign up for things....Once he was done all that stuff they gave us a wonderful buffet! The food was so so good! It was made from a local restaurant so we got the name number and price list for future reference. The school called our landlord for us and being the fantastic man that he is, he got out of bed to come pick us up at 1am. He took us to our apartment, gave us a quick tour and set up our internet so we could e-mail home. However we were so exhausted that as soon as he left we just crashed.

Saturday we slept in! When we got up we did a campus tour, walked around the Island a bit and ran some errands around time. Just went to a couple little shops to stock up on stuff we needed. We were super disappointed when our bags didn't come in. Saturday night we also tried walking into Portsmouth to find the church, we couldn't find it by the time it got dark so we took a cab home. We tried again Sunday morning, and we found it much easier this time, since we had ruled out so much of the city the night before. Also we saw other people walking to church and just followed them ha ha. Church was great, there are some very nice people, we are excited to meet them and get involved. The rest of the day we spent resting inside, until later in the afternoon Joel went to check on the Bag situation and found that all except 1 had come. Hurray! We unpacked and headed to bed early! Joel has a busy week of Orientation this week and after that the REAL fun begins! And that concludes our first weekend in Dominica.