Beginning of my 3rd Week...

What an interesting few weeks it has been! A quick recap:
-arrived the 29th of August
-spent the weekend at the beach
-started work september 1
-big project-customer satisfaction survey
-staying at a Maison d'Hote in Tamarin
-managed to make a few friends
-my birthday- 9/9/08-age 24
-have not been killed so far while driving on the wrong side of the road
-eaten lots of rice

Some little things:
-there was a drunk australian man in a banana hammock who would yell at every boat that passed us by and scream "aussie, aussie, aussie!!"
-I was the only french speaking english person on the boat and nicolas and his grandparents were the only french people
-I played translator to everyone because the crew spoke very little english
-the crew wanted me to get up and dance-uncharacteristically i said no
-the neighbors dog comes over every night because he is in love with Diva, Audrey's female dog which makes Max, the other dog, extremely jealous
-the dogs do not understand english
-absolutely no one can pronounce my name-i thought i had it bad in the states
-i saw a guy at the beach fall asleep face down in the sand and when he woke up he walked around with sand on his face for a good 20 minutes
-no one understand why and i wash and blow dry my hair every morning
-i got asked by a british person where my accent was from
-nicolas' grandmother cant understand how i can go out 2 nights in a row and why i must get ready beforehand
-i turned down a wrong street trying to find a parking spot and ended up in bad part of town where everyone was staring at me-i promptly turned around and left as fast as i could
-ive never heard so many languages at once in my life as ive heard at the beach- english, french, creole, german, and some others that i had never heard before
-saw an aussie in a cowboy hat with beer gut
-banana hammocks should be prohibited worldwide



As I do not have internet where I live-I will recap my weekend. Here goes...
I left work around 5 pm or so on Friday and went straight home to relax and eat some dinner before going to my new friend Nathalie's party. She only lives about 5 minutes away so I could have walked but since it was night time, I chose to drive instead. I met a lot of her friends and all were amazed that I was an english speaker who can also speak french. I realized how special this was when I met a girl from London at the party who does not speak a word of french. I met another girl from South Africa who has lived here for some years and is equally comfortable in speaking both french and creole. I left relatively early (1 am) as I was getting up early on Saturday morning to spend the day on a catamaran.

I woke up Saturday morning at around 8 am and had a quick breakfast. Nicolas, his grandparents, and I left at around 8:30 so that we could be on the boat by 9. Upon arrival, we had to wait a little while before we could actually board. Once we were able to go, they had to take us in small groups via a smaller boat out to the sail boat since it was too big to dock.

When everybody had boarded the sail boat, we left and first went to the bay of Tamarin to see the dolphins. There were about 10 of them all swimming together. It was hard to get a decent picture as there were too many boats around and whenever anyone got a small glimpse they would chase after it and block the view of everybody else. There were also some swimmers who were trying to chase them and swim with them-but from what I saw, they did not have any luck catching them.

We then rode around for awhile until they took out the snorkel gear. Nicolas and I along with some others were the only ones to take advantage. I saw tons of schools of little black and white striped fish along with huge pieces of coral that you could stand on and only be about waist deep in the water. After about 30 minutes I went back in as I was getting a little bit cold. Nicolas and I both dove off the side of the boat a few times much to the delight of the others.

We had a feast of a lunch with sausage, shrimp, some sort of white fish, chicken, rice, bread, salad, pineapple, coconut, and bananas. We also had a rum punch made with the local stuff. It goes down really smooth and tastes much sweeter than any that I have had before.

After lunch-we were dropped off on a little island for about 30 mins to walk the beach and swim a little bit. There were others there as well either tanning, swimming, or eating lunch.

We returned to the boat and rode the rest of the way back.

I was so exhausted when went back to the house that I took a long nap and woke up in time for dinner. I met up with Nathalie and som others a bit later only for about an hour or so and then went home and went to bed.

I woke up yesterday (Sunday) morning at about 9 am and had breakfast. After being lazy the entire morning, I decided to go to the beach. I brought my book and a towel and found my way to the tourist beach at the southernmost tip-a place called Le Morne. I had an enjoyable solitary afternoon of reading, swimming, and people watching.

After few hours, I went home completely exhausted, relaxed some more, ate dinner, and went to bed.