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So this is the St. George's University Campus, which is located on the southern tip of Grenada in the area called True Blue. It is surrounded by the ocean which makes for a magnificent view and walk around the campus. Currently Ryan and I are living in the married housing on campus. Sometimes I get starting to really miss home and havin huge shopping malls and such, but then I realize that most people who give their right arm to live a beautiful, carribean country. I do feel truly blessed to have this experience.

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This is the building that Ryan and I currently live in. We are on the second level; so the little place attached to the top balcony. This is an example of the married housing buildings. Each building contains 8 private rooms. They are just studios so it makes for very close and comfy quaters to share with your spouse. Ryan and I are the Resident Assistants on campus for the married housing buildings. We work closely with the housing department on campus. It is a very sweet gig because it means we get free rent and a biweekly stipend. We love being the RAs.

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So here is a little tour of our humble abode, when you first walk in the door you are immediately confronted with the kitchen and this is it, as you can see I did not do my dishes before this picture was taken. Shame on me. As you further into the room, probably about 5 steps you are soon greeted by our bed/"living room". As you might see Ryan and I attempted to decorate to make it feel like our own home. I would like to be congratulated for being a good wife for allowing Ryan to wallpaper our walls with a Star Wars comic book he found in his duffle back from his mission. Not every wife would do that.

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Celebrating 1 year of marriage with dinner at Laluna resort.
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Taking on a walk on the beautiful Laluna beach
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Having some delishing Thai peanut spaghetti
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Ry eating his meal! It was sooo good

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Happy first year of marriage!
 
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Ryan and I, August 8th 2010, at Laluna
Well, Here I am just a little over year since my last post on my blog. I honestly do not really understand why I stopped writing all of a suddenly and so short into my blog career. However, after a year of self exploration I think I realized that I am a bit of a perfectionist and I just got feeling like I missed too many blog entries about so many events that it started to feel like it was an overwelming task to keep up with all the things I wanted to document, and then I just started avoiding my blog. Well I guess it is only my own loss but I think I realized this is something I really want to do and I going to be more diligent about it from now on.

Ryan and I have been in Grenada now for a little over a year, and it has definitly been an adventure, it has tested us both as a couple and as individuals. I am happy to report in response to my last blog post in which I wrote about our arrival into Grenada, that it is not so scary anymore being here and the foreign has now become the norm and we in fact did manage to find some food and some pillows our second day in Grenada.
Since those early days, Ryan has settled and adjusted well to medical school, despite spending much of 1st term being quite unsure if he should be here. Now, he is definitly a star med student and I am very proud of him and grateful for his big brains. So in the last year, we bought a car in November, had Mac, Leisl, and Tenly (Ryan's brothers fam) come down to visit. In January 2010, we moved off the SGU campus into a area called L;ance Aux Epines, the expat area, into a small but new apartment building. Survived an island-wide water shortage and learned that you CAN feel like you are camping in your own home and subsequently became a water hoarder and probably developed some superstitions regarding water in general. We came home in May 2010 for a month-long break and while home in Edmonton, I kept referring to Grenada as home, saying things like "when we get back home in June". I alarmed myself with these statements. When we did come back to Grenada in June, we moved back onto the SGU campus. We actually have a job here on campus as the Resident Assistants to 6 dormitory buildings on campus. So this is the reason we did move back onto campus and with this job includes free rent and a biweekly stipend, it is a very sweet deal. I also enjoy having something more to do with my time here and I am able to get to know more people, which I have discovered that making friends here is the key to survival, and don't count on your med student hubby to be a friend that will hang out with you very often. So my grandma was right when she told me to get a hobby! Very wise woman.

Also, on August 8th 2010, Ryan and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary! We had a wonderful and busy weekend together, juggling RA duties (i.e. welcoming new students and handing out keys) and a romantic day at an all-inclusive resort, a dinner at Laluna. We also decided to start a tradition that on every wedding anniversary we will write each other a love letter and we will get a our pictures taken in celebration. We will put these letters and pictures in a scrapbook for our keepsake. Its mushy, I know, but it is a good way to get Ryan to write me love letters; if he thinks it is an assignment, haha jk.  So anyways, I thought I would share some pictures taken in celebration of our 1 year wedding anniversary.

 
Our arrival into Grenada from St Lucia was a somewhat harrowing ordeal. The day before we were set to leave the resort, we received a notification letting us know that a taxi was scheduled to pick us up from the hotel and take us to the airport at 2:30pm. I think this is strange, considering our flight is scheduled to leave at 6:30pm but I dont say anything because I think maybe it is going to be a long trip to the airport. However this was not the case, the taxi comes for us at the scheduled time and I get in the taxi, get comfortable and prepare myself for a nap... 15 minutes later we are stopped and the drivers is hastily unloading our bags. I am absolutely flabbergasted! Here I am, at the airport 3 and half hours early and missing out on precious valuable honeymoon time, I could be on the beach sipping a banana smoothie!  I mean cut me a peice of cake here, my honeymoon, according to me, is already a little on the short side and now I have to spend some of it at a small, crowded and very hot open air airport. Ryan tells me to chill out, he is so easy going I really admire him for that. We are flying with LIAT, and go to check in, we have 4 suitcases to check and must pay for 2 since you are only allowed 1 peice each plus a carry on when you fly with LIAT.. The lady mentions we are a little early and I feel salt rubbed into my open wound.  After we are checked in, we go and sit in the wating area, it is so hot, I am sweating and craving water and a some gum. I see a little convenience kiosk, I ask the lady if she has gum and for how much. She says she does for 5 EC, I am shocked, mostly because at this point I am still thinking in Canadian dollars and I havent figure out the conversion. I sign to Ryan that it is 5 dollars and get ready to walk away, he tells me that it is in EC and to buy it, I have the husbands blessing, so I go ahead. If my ever level-headed and financially- cautious husband is cool with it so am I.  I chew my $5EC gum and we buy $10Ec canned sodas and decide to play a game of Phase Ten.  Eventually there is an announcement for us to proceed through security into the boarding area. They confiscate my 45 SPF Hawaiin Tropics sunscreen and I enter the boarding area which is about the size of a small classroom with classroom chairs in smalls rows. It is sooo crowded, we manage to find seats and continue our game of Phase Ten. In the front of the room is podium and two doors leading out onto the airplane runway. Eventually, we hear over an intercome!? that they will be boarding a flight going to Petit Martinique and that everyone may proceed to gate number 1 they repeat this announcement several times.. Ryan and I are confused as to why they need to use an intercom, we are in a small enclosed space and there are only 2 gates, each one at the front of the room clearly labelled gate 1 and 2 and no matter what gate(door) you exit they both lead to the area. We find this very amusing. Eventually we board and take our half hour flight and land in St, Vincent. We wait yet again in another small room, this time with a tv, an episode of Family Guy is playing and Ryan laughs hysterically out loud and I hear a child behind us say, " What is so funny about this show". We spend time trying to spot other potential students headed to SGU, we see a girl with alot of bagage with her father and we think she is one. We eventually board the second plane, scheduled to take us to our final destination. There is a group of school children returning from a week of camping and I sit next to a little girl named Leah, I ask her about Grenada and she tells me there are beautiful beaches and that Grenada is known for its waterfalls. She also tells me that she wants to be a veterinarian when she grows up and I ask her if she wants to go abroad to school and she tells me no and that she loves Grenada, I feel my confidence slightly boosted, if a child thinks Grenada is cool than I am in for a treat. She welcomes me to Grenada. Half and hour later we land and we proceed to the customs line. We need our passports and Ryan's acceptance letter to SGU, when it is our turn we approach the customs officer. He asks for our passports and the school letter, then he asks for my return ticket information. I am panicking, I don't have a return ticket, we were told we didn't need one. He says he can't let me in without a return ticket, I feel tears forming in my eyes, and tell him I am married to Ryan and he says it does not matter and that I can't just vacation forever in their country. After leaving me squirming and near tears for several moments he stamps my passport with a leave date of November 12th and says I need to buy a ticket home and apply for an extensionon that date if I want to stay.  I say thanks and we proceed through the gates, we are finally in Grenada, we pick up our bags and are required to declare any electronics we might be bringing into the country, we show him our laptop and pay some sort of tax or fee to bring it in.  At this point it is about 11pm, outside the airport we are greeted by two university students, finally, the first two friendly faces we have encountered. They check our names off and tells us where to go once we get to the SGU campus, we get in cab and off we go, after some time and  confusion trying to find our way in the dark, we eventually find our place. We are in building S at the top of the hill, this is the married students housing. Our room is S 1C. We open the doors and come face to face our reality for the next five months. This is not the small, cute, little apartment I had been envisioning for the past 2 months. No, this is a kitchen with a bed in it, or maybe its a kitchen-themed bedroom? Needless to say it is small! There is not even the queen sized bed we were promised. We are both tired and very very hungry since we hadnt eaten since we left the resort that day. But alas, it is nearly midnight, inside our bedroom sized home on a tropical island and there is no food in sight. We are starving and uncertain of how we feel about being here, i think we both feel like crying. We make our bed with our new queen sized sheets we brought from home, lie down on the bed holding each other and tell each other that everything will be ok in the morning, that these feelings of fear and uncertainty will go away, along with the hunger pains. Eventually we drift asleep, taking us far away from Edmonton Canada and bringing us full speed into the new chapter of our life.

    Author

    Hi, My name is Vanessa Haylin McComb. I am 25 years old, I graduated from the University of Alberta in 2008 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. I am originally from Edmonton, AB but I now live in Grenada, West Indies with my husband, Ryan, who is a medical student. My life goals are to always be in love, have success financially and have a career that I love and to be happy.

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