Arrived in Dominica

At the Ft. Lauderdale airport in FL: 6:25 am

There wasn’t much of a chance to sleep on the plane, ugh if you’ve ever taken a red eye flight you know what I mean. We are waiting to board the plane which will make it’s way to San Juan and then we’ll make our way to Dominica. Before taking off from LAX I had a wee bit of a problem with my carry on. You know now you can bring liquids in your carry on…but it must be less than 3.5 oz. Needless to say I had some liquids that exceeded the allowable content size, when I went down to the baggage check in area again they wouldn’t let me check another bag (my carry on) in so the woman behind the counter told me to chuck my liquids. Yikes that was my mega expensive facial treatment, my perfume and much loved shampoo… Well, I thought maybe I could just give the stuff to one of the TSA ladies. Sadly I made my back up to the inspection station (because you know I had already gone through when they told me to go down and check in the carry on bag), when I realized I might still be able to make it and stash the stuff into one of my big bags I had already checked in…I rushed down and caught the bag before they took it away to put on the plane and stuffed all my illegal liquids into the bag, so I’ll be able to continue my fight with the wrinkles on my face and smell nice J he he he, what a woman will do huh? I just hope that the bags don’t get lost…keep your fingers crossed! I think we can start to board soon, its light out now…

Here I am on the bus to the plane on the airstrip in Puerto Rico airport.

Waiting for the plane to take off in the 36 or so seater.

Flying over Dominica, soon to land. When we were landing we newbies were so scared because from the window all we could see were mountains..."where's the air strip?! Yikes". We did land, though since it was such a small plane it was really shakey.

Getting off at the Melville airport strip. Can u see the ocean in the background?

This is baggage claim, they just bring out the bags on this cart set it in front and you grab what you can find. They lost both my friend's suitcases and one of mine, not bad-I expected worse :). All part of the adventure.

Hmm, lucked out look at this huh? They ran out of housing so they put me up in the faculty housing at Ross University Housing (RUH) for free. We were supposed to go on a housing tour afterwards but Marcus one of the employees told us that it would be delayed...didn't give a reason why, just said it would be delayed. Once i got into the room i read a letter about some evacuation because of some hurricane...yeah, i thought it's all part of the island med school experience. After walking around a bit and talking with the students finishing up class...uh apparently it's not, they were freaked out! The were leaving the island as soon as they could, some even chartered private planes to leave as soon as possible. There was a little bit of pandemonium on Thursday the last day before flights were canceled. The new students kept coming. One of my friends KW and R fly in just to be driven straight to the hurrican shelter. Welcome to Ross. Here I am before i realized that the hurricane warning was not just another part of the Ross experience.

You can see the menacing clouds in the sky above the hills and the men boarding up the windows on campus.

What do u say about putting this on the welcome packet for Ross huh? ;)

This was the hurrican shelter, Room 6, where we students were imprisoned for 2 1/2 days. Mention room 6 to any of us and we'll shudder at the thought. The room was like an icebox. I never thought that I could dislike watching movie after movie after movie. Our beds were the hard tables, the swivel chairs or the floor, take ur pick. Needless to say i spend most of my time either playing computer games or eating our little snacks or shivering. I may have slept a total of 4 hours those 2 1/2 days. Welp just all part of the residency preparations! You can see of the good people I made friends with in the picture.

Here we all are at Bob's chinese restaraunt off of banana trail. We sure bonded during the Deaner. What a team! Oh speaking of bananas, they are excellent here. Lots of banana farms u see along the road. There are tons of mango trees, almond trees and other fruit trees on campus. The house that I will be living in has a mango tree in the backyard! The shacks sells these excellent smoothies and fruit juices, you wouldn't believe. There's strawberry and passion fruit, very yummy pineapple juice, shall i go on? Anyway one of the students picked some passion fruit, pinapple and some other fruits from his neighbors yard! Ha ha ha.

Here's the group in S's room. See Bruno? He's our mascot, cool dog he's part of the family. We're an interesting eclectic group. 'Course this isn't everyone but a good pic in any case.

Anyway, I had videos of the hurrican from the shelter as it passed through but i can't seem to upload it on here, if you have any suggestions please do write and let me know how to do that.

I have a place to live as u read. There are many different students here, one of my friends is 41 from New Jersey (I know u wanted to know JR so just added that on there :)). So far i've really enjoyed the island, the locals, the students, the beach, the mountains, the food (surprisingly) and so forth. I am not enjoying the darn mosquitos who seem to love me. I must have at least 30 bites by now.

A student, who was visiting from her routations from the states, told me that their classes' average step one scores was 245! Wow, that's really high considering that it's out of 280. One of the students in her class had a 280 which raised the average like crazy. For those of you who are not familiar with the scoring students who have above 240 pretty much have their pick of residencies, so i feel really good about the school. I will just have to work hard and be deligent! Please keep me motivated! Love you all and miss you! Wish you could be here with me. I will need all your encouragement and prayers. If you have anything you would like me to pray to you about please let me know.