Not much has happened since my last post besides my normal daily activities of going to class, doing homework, sending emails, hiking to the rock, and going to Brewers. I did watch a lot of college basketball last weekend, so that was different. Also, on Easter I went to a Mormon church with one of my friends here just to experience what that was like. Today (Friday April 1st) I had plans to go to a beach somewhere but it's super gloomy and spitting rain so that got canceled.

This post is going to be a little different in that I'm not going to tell you what I do every day. Instead, I'm going to tell you about some of the smaller details of living here that I've left out over the past three months.

1- Everyone here greets people with good morning/afternoon/evening/night/day. It's almost rude not to say it immediately. Getting on a safari, walking in class, passing random strangers on the side walk, checking out at Kmart - every time you see someone that's the first thing you say. Also, it's really weird to greet someone with good night. To me good night has an underlying sense of finality behind it. It's always been the last thing I say in the day, but here it's different. When I walk in to my night classes the teachers alway welcome me in with good night to which I awkwardly mumble good night back. I'm still not used to it yet. (Also, still not sure if good night is one or two words.)

St. Thomas terrain

2- St. Thomas is only 32 square miles with 51,000 people. Sitting on a safari, it's not surprising for people to yell out at someone they see on the sidewalk. It seems like everybody knows everybody. The terrain is mountainous with houses scattered up and down the mountain. St. John is maybe a mile away from St. Thomas and it takes 15 minutes to get there in a ferry. 4,000 people live on St. John and it's very rural and very pretty. It seems untouched to me. St. Croix is about 40 miles away with 50,000 people. Their terrain is flat. I'm not sure how you get there, but I've heard it's fairly expensive.

3- The temperature doesn't change much. In the winter it's in the mid 70s and in the summer it's in the lower 80s. The water temperature is about the same as the atmosphere.

The tree where
Iggy lives, and a
cool rainbow all
from my window

4- There are a lot of stray cats around campus. None of them will let you get close enough to pet them which is a bummer, but it's fun to watch them explore. Also, I've seen several mongooses (Why isn't that mongeese?) running around. Apparently they were brought in to control the rats, which I didn't know was a problem. Tarantulas live here, but I haven't seen them quite as frequently. I've heard horror stories of people finding them in their dorms, but I haven't experienced that. Normally I see them dead on the side of the road. A couple times I saw one outside the cafeteria underneath the steps. There also are iguanas. I have one that lives in the tree outside my window and it quite entertaining to watch him play. Sarah named him Iggy. Chickens are really common here and a lot of them run around the city.

5- My meal plan started out good, but now it's tiring. It's not necessarily bad, it's just the same thing over and over. Often times they will literally put out the leftovers from lunch on the dinner line. Breakfast is usually really good. I have no complaints about breakfast. I normally get bacon, eggs, and hash brows. Lunch and dinner are the tough parts. In the beginning I liked it because I thought it was kind of local and they had items that I had never heard of or tried like goat, yucca, salt fish, and fungi. Now it's gotten to just be redundant. This is my summary of every meal. Rice, pasta in some sort of sauce (marinara, pesto, Alfredo, this creamy one, or mac and cheese), mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables (it's always a medley of grenebeens, carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower), another vegetable, and some sort of meat (pork, ground beef, chicken) in some kind of different sauce. They always have a fish and tofu option and a salad bar. Just recently they opened up a grill line which gives us some variety.

Brown stuff in the bowl is cream
of wheat

6- I have a single dorm room with no air conditioning. At night I sleep with the windows open and a fan running. I hate having air blown on me. Normally I can't sleep with a fan on and I stay under the covers, but here I had to change. Now I sleep with just a sheet, if I decide to use it, my bed is positioned right beside the windows, and the fan is always cranking. Mosquitos are the worst and I'm always spraying bug spray on me when I'm in my room. In my building there are 8 single rooms and 1 double room, so 10 guys total. There are two full bathrooms, one upstairs and one downstairs. There also is a lobby with a microwave, water bubbler, ironing board, couches, and a dry erase board.

Outside of my dorm

I just sleep with a sheet,
if that

I had to bring the Kenny flag

I don't have a way to hang
wet clothes so this is what I do

Views of upper camps from
lower campus

7- UVI is an HBCU with about 1,600 students. The campus is kind of spread out at the base of a mountain. At the top of campus is the library, classrooms, dorms, and the cafeteria. Further down the mountain you have the gym, more classrooms, and the administration building. All the way down is the marine science building. Marine science and nursing are the two main degrees they offer here. My biggest class has about 20 kids in it.

View of a cruise ship
from a safari

8- Cruise ships run this island. Sometimes I can hear the horn going off as they are leaving. They normally come in early in the morning and leave right around dinner time. At dusk it's cool to watch them leave because they are all lit up and it looks like a little floating city in the middle of the ocean. A lot of people here plan their days around the cruise ships, meaning they know when to go out and when to stay in and avoid the traffic. Normally there are about 4-6 cruise ships everyday Monday - Thursday with maybe 1-2 Friday and none on the weekends. Its pretty weird to go out on a Saturday night and it be completely dead because all the tourists have left. But, when the tourists leave you can have the beaches all to yourself.