#8 Thing I Will Miss About Dominica
Being outside. We are outside pretty much all the time. We eat lunch outside, sometimes Jonathan studies outside, our breaks are taken outside...heck I even teach school outside from 1:00-3:00 every day! I was sitting by the seaside the other day while my kindergarteners were working on math centers. I was just looking out across the turquoise water, smelling the salty air, and feeling that ocean breeze whipping through the palm trees. And I thought, "Wow. This is something you only do in Dominica." And it's true...I likely won't be spending much time near the ocean in the coming years. I won't have the option of going for a quick snorkel, or a jungle hike, or just sitting by the ocean with a fresh pina colada in my hand. As tough as it can be to have to walk both uphill and downhill both ways coming from the house to campus or vise versa (and I'm not exaggerating), I rather enjoy the cool morning air and listening to the birds. I like looking out from just about anywhere I am and seeing the ocean. I like living in an apartment that has only the bare minimum separation from the outside. Waking up in the morning to the cheeping of bananaquits and hearing the rain hit our tin roof are sounds we're are unlikely to wake up to in the states. So I will miss being outside as much as we are here. A/C is overrated... ;)
#8 Thing That Will Be Awesome About Living in the States Again
HOT SHOWERS! This semester (and the better part of last semester), for me and Jonathan, has been spent with frigidly cold showers. Our landlord has had lots of trouble getting the right attachment for our shower head and thus we've been taking cold showers. It will likely be perfectly fixed just about the time we leave, but alas...for now piping hot showers are almost foreign to us. As a matter of fact, I'm certain I won't be able to handle as hot a shower as I used to be able to because of this. We walked by a guy the other day and I turned to Jonathan and said, "Yum. That guy smelled like clean clothes and body scrub!" It's a luxury man! Though it is nice to be able to send your laundry out in the mornings and it's on your doorstop that evening freshly washed, dried, and folded...it will be nice to have our clothes (and bodies!) smelling fresh ALL the time. It was one of the things about going home in December that struck me. Everything just smelled so good...so clean! It's not that it stinks in the Caribbean...it just smells like outside. Which sometimes is a really nice thing (hence what I wrote above). But when your shower is freezing cold, you try not to spend more than about 3 minutes in there. Wash your hair and your body and get the heck outta dodge before you get hypothermia. Plus a quick cold shower never leaves you feeling very clean. It will be so nice to have a hot shower every single day and to not sweat off that glorious smell of body scrub the minute you walk outside...
We are under the 60 day mark at this point. We can't believe it! Jonathan took his final for Semester 4 yesterday and should be receiving the scores for that any day now. He feels really good about the test and I feel certain his score will be right in line with that 4.0 he's been hanging on to. I'm so proud of him! He is officially a 3rd year med student now!! Just one more test between now and when we leave, and then the USMLE Step 1, and then he's no strings attached for a whole 12 weeks! Of course he's planning lots of shadowing and surgery observations during that time (you just can't peel the boy away from medicine for too long!), but I'm excited about some nice QUANTITY unadulterated time spent with him over those 12 weeks. We're almost there!
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