Fish Friday!

Subtitled: Yes, we attend classes at this medical school, but damned if I'm going to talk much about them in this blog...

Problem being, blogging about classes except for tips, annoyances, study aids, and exam hints, isn't wildly interesting and tends to involve parroting things we've learned in class, which, while pretty gripping (to me, at least) in parasitology, is less so in the current courseload...

Instead? Sporadic events... this is the reality television show of blogs, and just after we chased out the Oxygen network (WTF?) from slinking around the school.

So, I'll just modify this post and all blog posts like this with a disclaimer:

WARNING: Medical school may be FAR less fun than depicted in the blogs, letters from home, and school promotional videos. The people depicted are (not) professionals. Attempts to emulate may wind up in crying jags, sleeplessness, death by reggae bus, anal leakage, and sexual dysfunction. Inappropriate for children under the age where they should keep trying to get into American medical schools. Not legal in Arkansas, Oregon, and the District of Columbia.

But I was talking about Fish Friday...

After an elucidating small group discussion mandatory for the community health class, which in no way showed the same kind of *overwhelming* bias we've come to expect from these sorts of things (though our group leader was really cool), Jay, Laila, David, and I decided to latch onto a group hiring a taxi to Gouyave, which is a fair distance, oh... all right, it's here:



SGU's somewhere down near the airport, and Gouyave is... not. So it's about an hour each way, particularly since the cliff hugging roads are quite windy, making that "22 mile" long island a lot longer.

We arranged with Dexter to pick us up at the upper bus stop at campus where he was picking up some of the other students, and then he was going to swing by to pick up some more. For some reason, I had thought there would be two groups of four for a grand total of 8 people going to Gouyave, an easy load for a taxi van pretty much designed along the same lines as a reggae bus.

18, as I learned, was more of a squeeze. You do get close to your taxi-buddies, including a fellow anthropology UCD Aggie!

18 people in a van looks something like this:



Though technically, this was on the way back from Gouyave, so this is what 18 people at varying degrees of inebriation and fish-stuffed look like.

The trip there was really cool since we got the taxi before sunset, so we were whizzing along the coast (albeit the wrong one) while the sun was setting, the ocean was serene, the lights from St. George's were coming on, and the sky was all sorts of colors. Vacation like... no pictures of that though because when you're in a van with 18 people whizzing along cliff roads, hanging a camera out the window is not recommendable. As we got closer, it got darker, but Gouyave seems to be one side ocean and one side jungle because the houses and businesses got scarcer and the foliage got thicker. Every so often though, there were little Carib roadside banners (don't think they actually had anything to do with Fish Friday though) so we might feel more at home.

When we got to Gouyave, we paid Dexter up front for the ride there and back, which came out to 15 EC a person, less than 6 bucks US for an hour ride there and an hour ride back. Even sharing this discount with 17 other people makes for a sweet deal.

I like Gouyave a lot. I'd been there very briefly before during the school's orientation, but remembered very little about it, but it strikes me as being more... argh... words fail me... Grenadian, maybe? Foreign? Not 75% geared toward students and tourists?

The layout is also something I like. Gouyave is an odd mixture of fairly new or well kept buildings and what look like colonial ruins, and then if you stray off the 'beaten road' of the town (like to find the restroom), it feels like jungle, though granted that might be a side effect of wandering around at night, but some ideas:



This church might be another Ivan casualty, but David astutely pointed out that the windows were bricked up, leaving the question of "why?" Boarding up a door keeps people out due to either unsafe conditions or fear of vandals, but bricking up windows 30 feet in the air seems somewhat pointless... fear of rappelling vandals? Cool looking though...





The actual Fish Friday event was a little smaller than I expected, and took up about two of the streets, but it was a lot of fun, and let us see it all and still get back to True Blue in time for David to catch a flight back to the States this weekend and the rest of us to have a snowball's chance of studying this weekend.





Accept no substitutions.





The angle of this shot should be construed as deliberately artsy, rather than "Ishie's lazy butt forgot to bring her tripod somewhere yet again, so had to use a garbage can to get a street shot".

So we did an initial run of the booths to scope out what was good to eat. We were introduced to fish cakes tucked into "fry bake", which was awesome, by this woman:



whom I thanked by taking a doofy picture of her. This was not a good camera day for me.

I also wanted to tackle some lobster because I love it in the depths of my heart, thought it was out of season, but wait.. what's this?



Score!! Carib was also scored... the bar tent was well staffed and well attended, though there doesn't seem to be ANY shortage of bars in Gouyave.

The highlight for me was the music act, consisting of guys with drums, maracas, and other sorts of things, and they went to town. To clarify, most of what I've been hearing on the island is soca (think Sean Paul) and while initially fine with it, after solid months of it, the consistency of its rotation can make a young medical student want to hang herself, so having a full on drum party was far preferable.

David, Laila, and I were content to dance, but Jay had to get closer to the action (particularly if it involves musical instruments, which apparently he can play all of), started playing the drums with them, which was cool, but in the most impressive moment:



Now where on earth do you take classes for that? Wait...





Okay, so maybe I'm just the only one who doesn't know how to do that. Do conch shells have spit valves?

So the band was playing and everyone was having fun.







Um, all right...

So then it was time to meet Dexter back under the Christmas lights that marked the entrance to Fish Friday and head back. The ride was primarily DARK. Jay climbed out the window at his stop (rather than unloading 18 people), Laila returned to her place on campus, leaving Dave and I to get a nice stroll in back to our respective apartments (he's a couple complexes down from my place).

It was still earlyish, so Little Grr/aka Nina fed me ice cream and tea as we scoured over her MP3s. A great evening overall, until reality bitchslapped me back with physio today. Actually, it wasn't so bad, with Neuroscience planned for Sunday study, but the "Do Not Disturb" sign in on the door and my nose is in the books.

Until next Fish Friday!