Sunday 22 February 2015

Busy Nevis Week: Exams, Elections, Goats, Ferries, Volleyball and MOVIES!





It has been a busy week here on the island. I actually haven't had time to post in awhile. We had a lot of events happening this week, so here is how it played out...

Monday
Kyle had block exams, so he was studying all weekend. He said they went very well, and he scored 90 in everything. Yay Kyle! 
It was also voting day here on the island. I posted an article about the elections, but basically after 20 years of having the same government in power, they have been over thrown and and now a new one is in place. So basically this whole week was a holiday, lots of parties.

Tuesday
To celebrate the blocks being done, Kyle's class wanted a poker tournament. So we decided to host, because we had one of the bigger apartments. I made a bunch of cupcakes, because so far that's the only baking I can do without it being a disaster. I attempted lemon squares again, they were okay but not like home. However the class loved it all haha. The game went well, Kyle won :) 
People really enjoyed the cupcakes!!

Can you guess which pile is Kyle's?
Oh and yes we had to improvise and use paper clips as chips.


Wednesday
The election celebrations continued. There was a huge parade throughout the city! People packed into their cars, music was blaring, horns were honking! It was intense! I tried to get a picture, but I wasn't able to get a good one. Kyle took a video of the parade. It was an incredible to be around the experience. I don't really know to much about the government here, but the majority of the people seemed to be very excited. I have only heard a few bad things about corruption, so I hope that this change will be good for the island. #nevisnice

This link shows a video of people on St.Kitts celebrating. So just imagine all those people filling up cars and touring the one lane road around the island. It was insane!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gBl1-s54Lc&feature=youtu.be

Thursday
The attack of the goats!! I'm sure some of you saw the pictures Kyle posted on instagram. The goats/sheep were outside our window making the strangest noises. It was pretty hilarious. I said to Kyle they are celebrating Chinese New Year. They have been hanging around here the past few days. 
I finalized my application for a possible teaching position. I am just waiting for an appointment time from the ministry of education. With the elections and everyone being in party mode. A lot of business have been closed, which has also led to a shortage on chicken and dairy products! When we went grocery shopping, all stores were out of milk! So we will have to wait until next week I guess. It was a little frustration especially since I can't get into town everyday. 

Thanks Kyle for letting me use this pic :)


Friday
WE WENT TO THE MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Kyle and I have finally done it! Haha, we had been planning all week. Our original plans fell through, but we still wanted to go to St.Kitts. Some of Kyle's classmates were going as well, so I booked us a hotel at a very cheap election price of 185 US...haha yeah we will only do that once. So we caught the ferry at 4pm and arrived on St.Kitts around 5. Our movie didn't start until 7 so we had some time, and Kyle hasn't really been to St.Kitts, so of course we ate dinner at Dominoes. He was so happy haha. We then took a cab to the Marriot, it cost 13US, which wasn't that bad. I asked our driver if he was happy about the elections, he was not. We checked in and explored the hotel. I thought the hotel was amazing! Our room was HUGE! and it had a great view. Oh and it had AC! Kyle loved that, walking into the room at 66...brrrrr. I was actually cold during the night, I'm pretty sure I'm destined to live in the sun forever lol.
King size bed.

View from our room. You can see the ocean in the corner.

This is the view while waiting for the elevator





So we caught another taxi to the movie theatre, on the way we saw another parade, and this cab driver was much happier with outcome of the elections. His name was Fonzie and he said he would pick us up from the theatre after we were done. What a nice guy!
The theatre was great!!! We saw 2 movies: The Wedding Ringer and The Kinsman Secret Service! Both were amazing!!! So worth it! Also, movie tickets are so cheap!!! It worked out to be 8 bucks Canadian!!! Way cheaper than home! I couldn't believe it! Even the food was cheaper, and omg movie theatre popcorn never tasted soooo gooooood :) 
I was expecting a small theatre with only one level of seats, boy was I wrong! The seats were raised up, better than the theatres near my cottage back home haha! We had a blast!




Nobody wanted to see the Wedding Ringer. Maybe because the movie had subtitles. lol!

So once the movies were done, we called Fonzie...of course he was on the other side of the island and couldn't pick us up. Kyle tried calling one of his friends from his class because they had their car with them, however the guy had given Kyle the Marriot number, not his own number... -_- so anyway we got the Marriot to send us a cab, which costed a lot more but at least we made it back safely. We ended up meeting up with Kyle's friends for a bit, and hung out near the beach. They had said they would drive us back home, but somehow that got messed up and so we didn't have a ride with them anymore



Saturday
Since we had a miscommunication with our ride, we had to take the ferry back. That was okay it just meant another cab ride. Anyway we had checked online and they said there was a ferry at noon, we got there at 11:30, waited for half an hour and then some random officer said no, they ferry will be coming at 1pm. Sigh...so we walked around the town for a bit, visited the duty free shops. Kyle and I were getting hungry, and KFC was near the port so we thought we would go there for lunch. However the line up was so long, and by this point it was 12:45, I was getting worried about missing the ferry, so we just decided to forget about lunch, well we got back to the port, and bought our tickets. Then we found out because of election week, only one ferry was running. So it was coming back from Nevis, it didn't get to the dock until after 1, then they had to unload everyone, oh and fuel up! So we could have had KFC because the ferry didn't leave until almost 1:40. We were trying to make it back by 2 because there was a volleyball tournament/beach party that Kyle signed up for. 
Kyle and I agreed that if we were to do the St.Kitts trip again for movies, to just use the water taxi, we have our driver Daisy who could help us out, and that way we wouldn't have to spend money on a hotel, because the water taxis go during the night. Hopefully next time we can convince people to go with us so we can split the cost of cabs. The movies are worth it, just a lot of traveling involved, but the ticket prices are great! 

We made it to the beach party, and luckily the MUA students run on island time because Kyle didn't miss his game, I even got to play. Even though everyone sucked and it was really windy, it wasn't much of a game, but I still had a bit of fun. The best was watching one of my teammates elbow another teammate in the face and gave her a bloody nose! Bahaha! She started running off, past all these people who want to be doctors and no one tried to help her...I feel like there is something wrong with that situation...?
Anyway the beach party was kinda lame, the music was cool to have on the beach except you couldn't have a decent conversation with anyone without screaming your head off. Maybe I am getting to old for this. Also, since we were coming back from St.Kitts I didn't have much time to prepare and got a bit of a sunburn on my back :( First time since being here! Boo! I lasted about 2 months lol. 
We managed to convince some of Kyle's classmates to go to Oualie Beach for dinner, because Kyle and I still hadn't eaten yet. They wanted to charge was to pay 40 EC each for a burger. Oh and it cost us 30 EC each to have unlimited non alcoholic drinks. This was supposed to be a beach party for Med 4 students to raise money for their graduation party. Apparently everyone does their own fundraising. That was a lot of money. We only bought drink tickets, but it definitely wasn't worth it. I felt like I had to keep drinking pop to make it worth it. The worst was when Kyle asked for some coke, the guy literally scooped up ice with his HAND and put it in the cup...EW! Doctors people! 
Anyway, Kyle's friends had never been to the Oualie beach and they had a car. It was actually the best part of my day!
We saw an awesome sunset, and ate some delicious burgers, that cost way less than if we had stayed at that party. We got there around 530 and I asked for menus and the waitress said that they aren't serving dinner until 630, but she said they will serve burgers. Some of us wanted to wait for the dinner menu, but once we saw it, nothing really appealed to us, so we all ended up having burgers anyway haha. Oh well, it was nice to get to know some of Kyle's friend and there was a dance party!! This group came out playing drums, and they were dressed up in these Caribbean costumes and did some sort of cultural dance. It was amazing! Kyle and I even got pulled in to participate..Slightly embarrassing but yolo! Hehe :)




If you look closely, you can see the dancers in the funky costumes.



It was a pretty eventful week! I'm exhausted, I got caught up on my homework today and I am excited to watch the Oscars in a bit. I can't believe I'm saying this, but this month is actually going by quick. It's almost the end, and I only have one more week left of my first course! I just need to keep myself busy, lots of reading and exercising. I still hate cooking but at least it takes up my time during the day. Tacos for dinner tonight :)
Anyway I hope you guys are surviving the cold, even my friends in Florida!! 
Visit us anytime :)

Miss you all!

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