Reboot: Part 1

Yes, it's been a while.

The laptop decided it needed a break and would not turn on for about a week. Then it took me another 2 weeks to get it back (including an aborted attempt to have Errin pass it through the bus window in Gouyave, much to her dismay), at which point the laptop again ceased to function. After a month total, it started to turn on again. Paranoid as always, especially since I did not possess an external hard drive, I would only leave the computer on when doing work and would turn it off as soon as possible. Then life got busy after becoming an official volunteer (see posts!) and I lazily put off blogging.

But now we're back :)

Some highlights from these past few months:

Swearing-In Ceremony

Taking the oath that every foreign service officer takes. Legit.

In mid-April, my fellow Peace Corps Trainees and I became official Peace Corps Volunteers. Although the Prime Minister of Grenada could not make it, we had a celebrity line-up: the Eastern Caribbean Country Director, the US Charge d'Affairs for Grenada, and the Governor General (a Grenadian representative of the queen). After attempting to create a musical, based on our training experience, in three days, we abandoned the idea and made a slide show presentation. After myriad speeches, I delivered the Vote of Thanks and off we went (as did my USB key, unfortuneately).

We all hand-made beautiful cards for everyone involved with our training only to not have given them out fast enough haha. So some people left before we could distribute them completely. Even my host family left soon after the ceremony and I had to run after them to get a family picture.

(from left to right) Me, host-grandma, Glenford, host-sister Deon-Ja, and host-mom Judy

Seven Sisters Waterfalls

This past week Sean and I hiked to the Seven Sisters Waterfalls with Errin, her friend Hayley, and my friend Kerita after a night at Fish Friday in Gouyave (weekly festivities with Grenadian food and music). After paying our $5EC and taking a hiking stick, we walked along a paved road past banana/fig, paw-paw, and nutmeg trees, and brown cows. We reached a dirt path with a small wooden sign that said "to waterfall" with an arrow next to a bar. Continuing through the bush, the trees would occasionally cut out and give us a glimpse of broccoli-mountains. At least they looked like broccoli florets to me. It wasn't raining that day, but it was pretty muddy. No falls, though, unlike Mt. Qua Qua (see upcoming). After climbing down a few natural rock and mud staircases and traversing a wide creek, we reached the bottom of the falls.


This is where we met our guide Cliffon a.k.a Super Butterfly (love it) and some tourists from Georgia. After duly stripping our footwear, we crawled up a steep path of mud, tree roots, and rocks, desperately grasping anything close-by, while Super Butterfly floated up the mountainside on two legs, not landing for more than a nanosecond before lightly hopping to the next rock. It actually felt nice barefoot, I need to rock anti-shoes more often. I only saw Hayley when I looked back and feared that Sean decided not to come up (he's afraid of heights). He did come, though :) and the only way to get back down is either though a helicopter evacuation or jumping the falls.



When we reached the top, we rinsed in the water and jumped the first waterfall. I got a skull full of water, but it was exciting. The second one required the "couch manuever", at which I failed miserably (no broken bones, however). We then got to travel down a raging current between a narrow mountain passageway where I sustained a bad-ass knee scrape. After jumping a few small waterfalls, we came to the BIG sister, waterfall #5. It didn't look too intimidating from the ground and I had been skydiving, so I thought I had nothing to fear. Until I looked down, that is. About 4 stories high with rocks at the bottom and slippery rocks at the top. Slightly unnerving.


I had this wonderful idea to have Kerita (the friend who opted to watch us jump and take pics) take a video of Sean and I jumping at the same time. Errin jumped first and suffered a wedgie. Hayley went next and sustained a bloody lip. Sean and I were next, right when my camera ran out of memory. Sean jumped, knowing that it was now or never, before the camera situation was resolved. I waited a few minutes before finally jumping myself.

As you can see, I landed on my thighs and J-Lo booty like a prize idiot. Even J-Lo wasn't cushioney enough to spare me the pain. My award arrived a few days later.


After overcoming my temporary paralysis in the water while saving face by yelling how awesome it all was, I swam to the rocks. The Georgian tourist jumped followed by Super Butterfly, who backflipped off the cliff (of course). We sighed in relief, only to find that there was one more waterfall. Luckily it was small and manageable.

Bruised, bleeding, and beat, it slowly dawned upon us that we needed to hike up all of those rock and mud stairs and hills back to the road then to the bus stop. I was so tired I didn't even bother foraging for callaloo on the walk to the bus junction.

Can't wait to go back!