Ok so it's been a while since I last blogged and there's a fair bit to update ya'll on. To start with, the end of last semester was very hectic but went well I think. I have yet to get my final grades, but I feel like I did well on my exams/papers. We shall see though.
Also, I am officially back in Barbados after 14 days at home. Those 14 days represent all the time I am allowed outside of the country (except for the upcoming Fulbright reunion getaway in Jamaica - more on that later), so I cannot go home again until July 1st. This will be the longest I have ever been away from home but thankfully my parents will be coming to visit in early March, and Nora and my brother are also likely to make visits at some point in the next six months. These visits will help break up the time away into more manageable sections of 1-2 months.
My 14 days at home were unbelievably hectic. I spent the first couple of days in Connecticut with my family and Nora celebrating Christmas, which was really nice. Christmas always feels right in the CT house. After that I went to a fraternity brother's house in Monticello, NY for a mini-reunion. I only stayed for one night, which was the exact amount my liver could handle; my tolerance has dropped a lot since I graduated. Still, there will always be a part of me that enjoys tackling a 30-rack of Keystone Light with my fraternity brothers, so in that sense it was good.
Following the fraternity reunion I returned to NYC where I spent day after day running around like a crazed chicken catching up with various people from Hamilton and Horace Mann, meeting family friends about job possibilities, and doing other errands such as getting a hair cut, dentist, etc. It was nice to be back in NYC, but I barely got to enjoy it since I didn't have much spare time. The two things I did get to do were go to a Broadway show (Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson) and finally go to the Rose Planetarium attached to the Museum of Natural History. I owe both of those outings to Nora, who is so good at getting me to go on cultural adventures. They were both a lot of fun.
Thankfully I returned to two more weeks of break in Barbados rather than the immediate resumption of school. This has given me a lot of time to catch up on sleep, read for pleasure, take care of some business, and meet new people. Currently I am in the middle of reading two books: Bill Bryson's The Mother Tongue which is a history of the English language, and Isaac Asimov's second book in the Foundation trilogy Foundation and Empire. On the social front, two days ago I met a nice couple from North Carolina who will be doing a semester of undergraduate work at UWI via study abroad. We went to a sports bar on the South Coast to watch the KC-Baltimore and Packers-Eagles games and had a great time. I hope to hang out with them again.
Unfortunately being back in Barbados means my diet is going to contract again. My consumption of fresh produce and meat will decline while my intake of canned/frozen veggies and soup/beans as well as carbs will increase. I packed half of my suitcase with food from the US, so I have a couple of treats lying about the house (goldfish, beef jerky, chocolate chip pecan cookies, etc) but it will be a test of endurance to see how long I can make them last! Thankfully I can have my parents/brother/Nora bring down some goodies when they come to visit.
That's pretty much all that's going on for now. I am trying to figure out my course load for the coming semester and will post about it as soon as I settle on a schedule. Also, I have been planning to write a reflection on my first four months here, so stay tuned for that.
No comments:
Post a Comment