Zombies!

In my last post I spoke briefly about my little hobby of imagining up horror stories. I was thinking about this a lot lately trying to figure out where that started. I think I figured out where it all began, and by sharing it with you, you all might think me a little less crazy. Remember that old TV show “Are you afraid of the Dark?” It was one of my favorites growing up! At the beginning of the show all the kids would gather around a camp fire and one would start telling a ghost story and that would be the show. I loved it. Joel did too which makes me happy, we can reminisce about all our favorite episodes. I remember as a kid when I watched it I was determined to be on that show someday as well as “Where in the World is Carmen San Diego”, and “The Price is Right”. Well I did make it to the Price is Right 6 years ago for Bob Barkers last year, but I didn’t get called up on stage, and my parents did buy me a pretty fantastic “Where in the World is Carmen San Diego computer game as a kid, which I think helped fulfill my longing for it. But at no time in my life was my need to appear on “Are you afraid of the Dark” ever satisfied. Again, going back to when I was a kid and I was SURE that someday I would appear on the show; I had to be ready with a pretty fantastic Ghost Story to tell when the producers called and invited me (of course it never occurred to me that the show had writers that would do that part for me). Thus, everywhere I went I was thinking up possible Ghost stories, and since my need to tell these stories was never satisfied properly, over the years they have progressed into full out horror movies. See when you think about it that way, I am not quite so weird am I? On that note, can I just say...this Island keeps getting Better and Better!! Sunday evening we had been at the school in the “Family Lounge” with friends playing games, and taking advantage of the free air conditioning and already filtered water. On our way home Joel and I have to walk past the Anatomy lab. The windows are high on the building, but are not covered, every once in a while I will jump up to see into the window just in case a cadaver was left out and I might get a peek. Sunday night,  Joel takes a look inside and says “Oh, the cadavers were left out”. Sure enough, 30 of them all sitting out on the tables. All of them were covered with sheets, but every so often you could see a foot or a heat sticking out. That was a sight I don’t think I could ever forget. I realized that night as we walked home in the dark with many bats swooshing overhead, the obvious truth that a tiny Island Medical school is the perfect setting for a zombie story. Why didn’t I realize this before? So without further ado- Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this Story The Tale of Caribbean Curse....Just Kidding!! (Editor’s note: For anyone unfamiliar with Are you afraid of the Dark, that’s the way every kid would start telling their Ghost story, and they had a little bag of powder they would throw into the fire as they said it to make the fire get all big and scary.)

Alright, I suppose I will move on to some information about our lives here that people might care about. Not too much has been happening as Joel has been busy studying like crazy for his first test-but that certainly wont stop me from writing a 2000+ word blog post! 

I receive a calling in the Branch. I got called as the First Counselor in the Relief Society-Hurray!!! I am extremely excited about this calling. It’s what I was really hoping for.

Sunday night 2 of our friends returned home after playing games with us at the school and something really horrible happened (no they were not attacked by zombies-this was much worse), they got home and while they were gone, a pipe had burst in the apartment above them and had completely flooded their entire apartment. Water was pouring in through the ceiling and all down the walls. They called their landlord who came and shut the water off and they had to clear all the water out of the upstairs apartment so it would stop waterfalling into theirs (the upstairs people were not home) and after it was clear they finally got to work on their own apartment. All of the outlets were completely submerged, so it will be a while before the landlord even dares turn the electricity back on. In the mean time they were moved into a different apartment the landlord's family owns. They are a first semester couple as well, and this was all the night before their first test! So so sad!! They did receive a lot of help and support from the ward and it was really fantastic to see people go out of their way and be helpful even the night before the first test when the timing was not great for anyone. Pray for HUGE blessings for my friends and all those so willing to help them at this time. There are a lot of really fantastic people here. 

Monday morning, I walked to school with Joel. He stopped off for his test and I kept walking up towards my friends house so I could help her pack up all her stuff so she could move later that day. They live(d) at the top of this Giant Hill that has a lot of housing units around so the vast majority of students live somewhere up the hill. As I was walking up, a hoard of students were shuffling their way down. I just want everyone to know that seeing a couple hundred medical students walking towards their first test was honestly more frightening and closer to resembling zombies then anything a person could see in real life ( I promise you! This is coming from the girl who the previous night witnessed a room of 30 real dead dissected human beings---the students are scarier!). All of the students had huge black bags under their eyes like they hadn’t slept in a week (which they mostly probably haven’t, too busy studying for this test), all were slouched, and hunched as they shuffled down the hill, none of them carrying anything, (the test center only lets you take a pencil into the test-no wallets-no bags-not even a phone) arms just limp at their sides, slowing and quietly inching their way towards their impending doom. I am pretty sure I even saw a few of them with their mouths gaping open and drool falling all over themselves. I hugged right up against a parked truck on the side of the road-just waiting to see if any of them were going to make an aggressive move in my direction. If so I would be ready to put my Zombie apocalypse plan into action. (PS. If there are any Walking Dead fans out there- Step 1 in the Zombie apocalypse plan is to break into the vehicle you are standing next to and drive away, do not- I repeat DO NOT attempt to hide UNDER the car- I cannot stress this enough, also if you don’t feel confident in your ability to steal a car-please familiarize yourself on this wiki-how to hot wire a car link. http://www.wikihow.com/Hotwire-a-Car ). Lucky for me the Hoard passed peacefully so I was able to continue up the hill to my friends house. Her and I packed up her whole house and when the boys got done their test they were able to move all the stuff down the hill into the new apartment. 

When we were done at their house Joel and I went home and enjoyed a lazy afternoon in which Joel didn’t have to study a thing! That night all the first semester branch members (excluding one) went out for a night on the Town...Er...Island I mean. We rented a transport driver for the night to take us to a wonderful Beach restaurant on the other side of the Island. A beautiful place called “Red Rock”. (About a 40min drive) Unfortunately the restaurant we anticipated going to was closed due to the rain, so we settled for something a little less known and close by. This restaurant was very interesting! She brought us 3 menus to share amongst 11 adults. Half of the things on the menu they didn’t have, and the food took forever to come out, and she brought it all at really random times. Some people were done eating a long time before others even got their food, and most of the orders were forgotten and had to be reordered later in the evening. The poor people who ordered Burgers!! The burgers came out first, but that was still about 45 min after we initially ordered. The Burgers came open style with just slices of bread, one side had a hamburger on it and the other had cheese on it. On the side was 2 pieces of lettuce and 2 cucumbers. Ketchup and Mustard were put on the table for everyone to share. And apparently the 2 slices of bread were stale and hard like a giant cracker. Some of you may be thinking you would have sent it back, or demanded not to pay the 18 EC (About $7 Canadian) for it. But that’s just not the way things are done in the Caribbean, services and quality are just sort of “as is”. You ordered it, and weather you eat it or not, you are going to pay for it. Also, tipping is not customary or even acceptable most of the time, more often than not it you leave money on the table the waitress will chase you down the street to give it back to you (that happened to me my first time at the Market!) So you can’t even “withhold a tip” to show your displeasure because they probably wouldn’t let you leave one in the first place. So you kind of just go only to places and people you know will treat you right for your money and avoid the places that don’t. Now we know one more to add to the Don’t list. (Just now I turned around and asked our friend studying behind me how much his Burger last night cost, He asked why I wanted to know and I said “I want to make sure I have enough money for when I go back”, he says “Your Going Back There?” and made a gesture that implied that I have been drinking. I laughed and told him it was for my blog). But the troopers who ordered the burgers ate them all! Here is a picture of one of the Burgers.

(I will note that I got BBQ Pineapple Chicken that was really good and Joel got curry chicken which he enjoyed as well. So we kind of lucked out).

Peter the Transport Driver

 On the note of stick with the good and avoid the bad...we hired the same transport driver who took us on our Island Tour a few weeks ago. His name is Peter and he is FANTASTIC! If any of you come to visit us we will for sure hire him to take us around. When we went on the Island tour a few weeks ago he stopped a few times to buy some native fruit from the locals and gave us all some of each. It was super sweet of him. He sent Joel and I home with an Avocado each. When we went driving with him last night he asked us how we liked our Avocados, he seemed pained when I told him the truth, that Joel tried to make Guacamole out of his and it was a very gross failure, which he later learned was because it was not ripe yet. The type of Avocados he gave us start out green but turn purple when they are ripe. My Avocado was turning purple and I took this to mean it was going rotten so I threw it away, mere hours before Joel came home and told me that meant it was turning ripe. Peter was not at all happy about this and while we were at dinner he went out and bought another Avocado for me and gave me very specific instructions on how to eat it properly. It should take about 3 days to get ripe so I will inform you all how it goes. I told Peter I could call him and let him know how it turns out as well and he laughed. Joel and I had a great time. Great Company and funny stories. Here are just some pictures from the drive towards Red Rock.  I could say more but Joel says this post is too long already. He is probably right.