A Few More Differences

I learned something interesting this week about Puerto Rico. I think it might be a perfect place for Anna Moeller to move to. Most people here do not use peanut butter. Our Spanish prof told us that peanut butter and pickles are two things that just never caught on here. Apparently we shipped them a whole bunch of peanut butter for the school lunch programs and they didn't know what to do with it. Adriana (my prof.) said that the first time they shipped it to the school she was in elementary school and they used an ice cream scoop and just put a glob of it on everyone's plate. When no one ate it, they then put it in a glass and filled it with milk. Still not a hit. Haha. I like peanut butter, but that is just nasty. I guess that explains why I went through the isles at Sam's four times and couldn't find any. At least they sell it at the normal grocery stores.

Another thing that is different from home is funerals. Our campus is on the top of a hill that overlooks a ginormous cemetery. There are a whole bunch of trees so, unless you live in one of the dorms that faces the cemetery or go on the roof, you can't see it. For the longest time, Cathleen and I would hear music and could never figure out where it was coming from. It always sounded like there were speakers in the dense row of trees behind the school. It was always this upbeat reggaeton that made Cathleen and I wonder what celebration we were missing. When we first got here we tried to figure it out and after a couple of weeks someone told us that it was coming from funerals in the cemetery. At first I thought it was really bizarre music for a funeral, but the more I think about it, it makes it seem like they are celebrating life rather than playing sad stuff, that makes you even more depressed than you are in that kind of situation.

I really wish that Puerto Rico had a better English newspaper. There is only one that I know of and it sucks. http://www.prdailysun.com/ I feel detached from the politics and some of puerto rican culture just because I can't fully understand everything in a Spanish newspaper. Jim, if you get sick of Rice Lake, I know an island that could use your help Hahaha.

Craziness

I haven't posted in a while, because I haven't really done anything worth writing about. Last night was the first time I have left the "compound" in two weeks unless you count when I walked to Sam's Club for milk and bagels. I have been studying my butt off. I'm drained, exhausted and already starting to study for finals. I am so ready to be home.

Yesterday we had an exam in Optics, which is my favorite class. I won't bore you with a ton of details, but part of what we were tested on was labeling optical systems. Our optics tutor does a great job of going over every type of question Dr. Morales could ask us, so I usually go to his reviews before an exam. Our tutor told us a "short cut" for labeling optical systems, and it seemed to make sense. One of my friends asked Dr. Morales about it in class and he said that he wasn't sure if it worked in all cases, but when we used it for all of the examples in our book, they all worked. Our exam was only 25 questions long and questions 7-18 were on this optical system. I did the problem the long way (not using the "shortcut" our tutor gave us) and didn't have any problems. Unfortunately, about 35 of my classmates used the short cut and it didn't work on this optical system. Every single on of those questions were related. If you got the first question wrong, you got them all wrong. It has turned into a fiasco because our tutor (who is a second year student) took the blame for it and now our professor doesn't know what to do. There is going to be a big meeting about it with the Dean of Students, our prof, our class president and the tutor. Basically, if the grades were to stand, 35-40 people in my class would have failed that exam. I'm glad I did it the long way so no matter what happens, it doesn't really effect me.

So this is officially my first holiday without my family. I thought that we were going to do a big Thanksgiving dinner here, but Dr. Cabello who was going to set it up has been gone due to some family issues. My friends and I were so wrapped up in exams and studying that we never had time to get stuff together for it. Last night we decided that we were going to put something together, but our dinner will be on Saturday. Most of my Canadian friends weren't able to go home for Thanksgiving either. Canadian Thanksgiving is in October so this really isn't a holiday for them anyway. It will be nice to have a dinner with all of them, but I would really like to be with my family. A semester is a really long time to be away. Most of the time I am too busy to be homesick, but today is a little harder than most. I really wish I was in Kathy's kitchen right now helping get everything ready while my uncles watch football and my cousins chase each other around the house...and I really want some of Wendy's sweet potatoes and Donna's homemade noodles. Maybe I'll ask for both when I go home. At least it is 78degrees outside and doesn't feel like Thanksgiving, that will make it easier to spend the day studying anatomy.

Food and Culture.

I have been trying really hard to get more in touch with Puerto Rican culture lately. It is easy to hide behind the gates of our school and not ever get a feel for where we are living. I have decided that every trip to the grocery store I am going to buy some food that I have never heard of and try to learn how to cook with it. This week I bought a Chayote. I cooked it and stuffed it with rice, beef, seasoning and cheese (as directed by my Spanish teacher). I really liked it. It is in the squash family, but is located next to the root vegestables at the grocery store. It is almost like a cross between a squash and a potato. I'm sure that some of my foods won't be that exotic to some of you, but to me they are still "mystery food".

The food isn't the only different thing about the grocery store. First off, everything (except alcohol) is way more expensive than home. Seafood is even more expensive. I still haven't figured that one out. The cuts of meat also aren't the same. They aren't unrecognizable, but they aren't like home. They eat a lot of this really thinly cut steak here. (Skirt steak maybe? I'm not really sure.) They also fry everything. It is extremely hard to go out to eat anything authentic and not have it fried in some way. Because it is so humid, most of the fresh produce goes bad really quickly. I think that is why they have so much processed food here. It is hard to eat right here unless you have the ability to go to the grocery store at least once a week (which I do not).

Another interesting fact about Puerto Rican culture is that they are a people who take pride in how they look. Except for the exceedingly poor, everyone is always done up. Women do their hair, dress up, and wear stilettos all the time. I swear 90% of women here don't even know what sensible shoes are. Fat, skinny, young, old...they still are wearing crazy shoes that I would have classified at home as "stripper heels." They dress like this in the grocery store, at work, and when they go out. I could never last 8 hours in the shoes they wear. As a whole, women wear things that are tighter and smaller than at home too. This is true even if you aren't a size two. Our Spanish teacher is a native Puerto Rican and fills us in on things that we may have a hard time picking up on. One of those things is that Puerto Rican men typically do not like skinny women. They don't like really fat women either, but they aren't interested if you don't have curves. The crazy amount of upkeep isn't reserved for women. The younger generation of me wax everything and they pluck their eyebrows. Everyone is incredibly manicured. It is sort of bizarre. Oh and rat-tails are in style on men. Cathleen nicknamed this one popular hair style the mo-rat because it is a cross between a mohawk and a rat-tail. I would take a picture, but I don't know how without being rude. I'll work on that for a future post.

As for school, it is still going well. I had one test that didn't go as well as I would have liked in anatomy, but I will be okay. It was just frustrating because I worked my butt of and panicked a little when I got the exam. She basically had us list every tiny detail she taught us. Ick and some of the nuclei of the brain sound so similar they are really hard to keep straight. Ugh. I'll keep plugging away.

Life outside of school is still great too. I am so lucky to have a great group of friends. We all get along super well and look out for each other. We went for another visit to La Placita for Krista's birthday on Friday. It was a blast. I danced so much that the back of my leg was sore on Saturday. We are also picking up on some Spanish by getting out. La Placita is all locals and a great atmosphere. I am picking up some Latin dance moves too...and no, I won't bust them out at home. We are starting to recognize some of the music too. Reggaeton grows on you pretty quickly. I will put a link to a couple of the songs that we hear all the time. They aren't the best lyrics, but they are catchy.

Danza Kuduro

Pasame la botella

Another good weekend.

This past weekend was pretty awesome. My friend Jason flew in and we visited some places that have been on my list of things to see. First off, we went to El Yunque, which is the sub-tropical rain forest here on the island. We did some hiking in the park and climbed up to El Morro Tower which had a spectacular view. We also did a day trip to Vieques, which is a relatively large island off the Eastern coast of Puerto Rico. My friend Krista and her boyfriend, Colin, also came with us. Vieques was beautiful! We really wanted to go to Culebra, but the ferry tickets sold out before we got there (which was a little frustrating because we left at 6 am to get to the ferry). It ended up being a great day anyway. We spent the day at Sun Bay Beach. There were an alarming number of wild horses running free on the island. There was a large herd of them at the beach and even more along the sides of the road. It is common to see wild dogs all over the island, but this is the first time I have seen loose livestock of any kind. After lots of sun (and layers of sunscreen), we took the ferry back to Fajardo and had some local cuisine.


I had a chicken mofongo. Mofongo is a very common dish here and it is made many different ways. It is mashed plantains (either tostones which are unripe plantains that taste sort of like potatoes or maduros which are ripe plaintains that are sweet) with some sort of meat in the middle. It is served in a large wooden goblet lined with the plantains with the meat in the middle. It is really good. I've had it with mahi mahi and chicken. The restaurant we went to prepared all the meat on the grill first and it was amazing.

Then we went on a night kayaking expedition in Bio Bay. This was my favorite thing that I have done since I have been to Puerto Rico. There are pics of it online, but none of them capture how cool it really was. We kayaked for a few miles through a channel that was completely covered by mangrove trees. It opened up into a large bay. The bay is home to these tiny microorganisms that are bioluminescent. Every time our paddles, hands or feet touched the water, the water would start to glow a pale blue. It was like Avatar when they walked through the forest. Krista and I were splashing each other and it was like throwing tiny drops of light. Unfortunately, they do not allow swimming in the bay anymore. The sunscreen/bug spray/body oils of people were starting to affect the microorganisms. It is something that can't really be described or captured on camera. Puerto Rico has three places on the island that are home to the dioflagellates that produce the glow. There are only 5 places in the world where you can see this. Clearly I hijacked the pic, but we couldn't bring our cameras because we got wet in the kayaks.

Missing home.

So this weekend was really nice. Cathleen's fiance came to visit and it was great finally getting to meet him!! They spent most of the weekend off on their own excursions, but the three of us went to Old San Juan on Friday. I played official photographer for their save the date photos at the beach. We found a new favorite beach too. It is called Escambron and it is beautiful. The tropical storms were causing some decent sized waves, so we even saw surfers for the first time since we have been here. For some reason it is really hard to find a map that shows the beach even though it is run by a branch of the National Parks Service. Oh well, I liked it partially because there weren't that many people there. The pictures turned out really cute!! I think the hard part is going to be choosing which one to use.

We also went to El Castillo de San Cristobol. The pics above are from the visit. It is very similar to El Castillo de Morro that we went to when I first moved to Puerto Rico on our class trip, but just a mile or so down the road. I actually liked El Castillo de San Cristobol more. Both were built in the 1630s and haven't really changed all that much. They were used to protect the harbor and the city. It was crazy how many soldiers lived there. A ton of them died from various diseases that happen when you shove too many people into a small area. One of my favorite things was the dungeon. It was kind of creepy, but not as big or deep into the fort as you might think. It was sort of like a long, narrow holding cell. There were a few drawings of ships on the wall that were thought to be of Spanish ship captains who were awaiting their executions for mutiny. (That is the top pic.)

Although it was a great weekend and Cathleen enjoyed Travis' visit, dropping him off at the airport was still pretty tough for her. I think a little bit of that rubbed off on me today. I'm missing home. Most days I'm just fine, but today I really want to be on a trail ride with Nicole and Wendy just enjoying the pretty colors of fall (I appreciate them more now that I know I won't get to see them.) Or helping Brett with his homework--which is so much easier in person than over the phone. Or at wine night with Nicole and Dani. Or watching Millionaire Matchmaker with Elizabeth (its a guilty pleasure--I know its shallow.) Or Packer Football with either Dad or Dean.Or catching up with Anna and Molly which usually involves cheese curds. Or taking the bikes out and then watching UFC with Wade, Kate and Dillon. Or going to Parfrey's Glen with Geoff. I guess this is the hard part about living on a tropical island. It has its perks, but it will never be home.

Rincon!

We finally have a break in exams. This month only has one exam. It is next week and it is optics. To reward ourselves for studying so hard and not having a weekend, we rented cars and a beach house and went to Rincon, PR on the far West Coast of the island. It was super cheap because it was the off season and the beach house was amazing. We spent most of the time at the beach or just hanging out on our rooftop patio. I wish we could have seen more, but we really needed to relax and that is exactly what we did.

Cathleen's fiance is coming today. He is coming a day early to surprise her and she is going to freak out. It is payback for her surprising him last month. I will be nice to meet him and put a face to all the stories I hear. It should be another good weekend.

Visitors!

Sorry it has once again been far too long since I have updated my blog. For some reason I have not been able to open the blogger website. Every time I have tried it tells me the connection has been reset and the problem seems to only be with this one website.

A ton has happened since my last blog. First off...school is going great. I've had a ton of exams and have gotten really good grades on all of them. On two of them, I beat the class average by more than 20 points. (I think I'm aloud to brag a little because I've been working my butt off.)

This past weekend (thurs-sun) my cousin, Matt came to visit. He is in the army and was home on leave from Iraq. He has been there for the last nine months and will be going back again on the 25th. It has been a year or two since I have seen him and I knew it was going to be a good weekend because he is a character (yeah my family is full of them). I took him to Old San Juan where we walked along the edge of the fortress that was built about 400 years ago. It is beautiful and we had a rip tide warning so the waves were crashing up over the edge of the walking path. We also went to the beach near the Isla Verde area. The waves were crazy big and standing in knee deep water would have knocked me down. The next day we got in the car and just drove. We didn't have any plan or direction, just drove wherever we felt like going. It ended up being a little longer roadtrip than we planned and thanks to Matt's GPS feature on his phone we did make it home (no thanks to the mislabeled map in our car). The whole roadtrip was spent winding around the mountains. The roads were crazy narrow and that didn't motivate people to slow down a bit. Matt started getting a little car sick from trying to read the map as the roads were snaking and his ears were popping. We stopped several times to take pictures out of the car window(see above). We were in pretty rural parts and it was nice to see what Puerto Rico really is, not just the San Juan side of the island. We had a blast until it started raining. Then the water just started pouring and it was like driving through creeks that were rushing across the road. Matt kept telling me that we would be fine, but as soon as we got home, he was telling everyone that he thought that the water was going to move our car sideways. The water wasn't that deep but it was moving pretty quickly. Some of the town we went through were pretty cool. I made Matt roll up his window when we were driving through one of the larger towns. Apparently listening to George Strait with your windows down gives away that you are not a local. Hahaha. We got stared at a lot.

The next night we took him to the El San Juan Hotel. The hotel has a casino (I still have never gambled) and a club and this really awesome open area where they have two bars in the middle and a live salsa band. People go to dance and some of the people are really good. Its fun just watching everyone dance. We have a couple classmates that know how to salsa and they promised to teach the rest of us!!

Overall, Matt had fun which was much deserved. I just wanted him to have a little fun before he had to go back. I was so happy to have him, and sad to see him leave. I'm going to worry about him until he is safely and permanently back in Louisiana. He claims that when he gets back from Iraq, he is gonna visit again.

Lots of Love,
Nik