Phew! Well, that’s all done. Since December 13, life has been a constant flurry of activity. We travelled to Duluth, travelled back to Dom, Jacelyn’s parents came, Jacelyn’s parents left, we got ready for 2nd semester, I went to Minnesota for 19 days, I came back to Dom (bringing two friends with me from Eau Claire), they left, the 20-person mission trip came, they left, our good friend Johnny came, he left, I slept 9 hours and sat down to write this blog. See. Flurry.
Because so much has happened since I blogged in broken sentences about our Christmas break, I’m going to move on. With one exception. I want to explain “The most expensive ham on earth“. For Christmas, I made the trip down to Roseau to purchase a frozen 10-lb turkey, which cost me about $60 U.S. I expected to pay that much. In fact, since the turkey is only native to North American Forrests, basically anywhere you go on earth, besides America’s imminent neighbors (“eh” and “que”, as I like to call them), you will have to pay through the beak to get turkey in any form with which you’re familiar. When we were in China, we had to go to a back alley at the back end of a dark and dingy neighborhood to get turkey from what our friends called an “import store”, but we’d affectionately termed “The Crack House”, both because it looked like somewhere you’d buy crack AND because the walls were structurally un-sound.
Anyway, in Porstmouth (our town) we have an IGA grocery store, where most things are overpriced because, again, they’ve been shipped there on the open seas. While Jacelyn’s parents were here, I made a journey there to pick up a couple of last-minute ingredients and, out of curiosity, I wandered over to the chilled meats section to see what they might offer, at which point I found the most expensive ham on earth. There, in the glass case, lay a maple and brown sugar ham much smaller than THIS one. The major difference between the two was that the one I just showed you is listed as $37.25, whereas the less-than-four-pound turkey I saw was priced at $125 u.s.!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, U.S. dollars. The Eastern Caribbean Dollar price was $333.75. So, needless to say, we stuck with over-priced turkey this year. Maybe someday, when we’re rich missionaries in a third-world country, I’ll be able to afford a ham of that low weight but high quality, but for now, I’m okay with eating things that naturally grow here, like Coca-Cola and KFC.
There are no trips or visitors planned for the next two months, so my goal is to blog on a more regular basis. Life has been busier here than it was in Duluth, believe it or not, and I’ve really struggled to find a routine, what with all the visitors, details, and full moons. However, I have recently been introduced to a time-saving method called The Pomodoro Technique. At first, I thought the same thing you probably just did–that it has something to do with fighting bulls–and dismissed it because bull interaction would just be one more thing on an already-too-long list. But, after a giving it some thought, I looked into it, and let me just say that, as simple as it is, it has changed my time management completely and has drastically increased my productivity. I won’t waste time here telling you about it (that’s one part of the technique, and I only have 15 seconds till my pomodoro is done), but you can click HERE to find out more about it. (Okay, the infomercial is officially over)
The tidbit from Jacelyn this week comes as an addition to last week’s David and Goliath factoid. Turns out, there’s one more possible explanation for the details of what happened on that fateful day. There is a condition known as “Bitemporal Hemianopia”, which is usually referred to as “tunnel vision”; this can be caused by a pituitary adenoma, which is a tumor on the pituitary gland. When someone suffers from this condition, not only is their vision affected, they can grow to unusual heights. The tumor is located in the pic on the right and effects vision as portrayed by the pic on the left:
The reason you can become a giant with a pituitary tumor is because the pituitary gland helps regulate the amount of growth hormone given to your body. The tumor could make it over-stimulate the growth hormone, which brings us to Davey and Goley:
Allow me to draw your attention to the pic on the right. Meet Yao Defen. Please take note of the layout of the picture and the two happy, yet frightened, Chinese doctors hold her hands.
In closing, I’d like to give you a few highlights from the mission trip. They had a great time and we were very thankful that we were able to keep 20 pale Minnesotans safe for 8 days on the island; in fact, I think we used fewer than 10 band-aids the whole time! Below are some of the better pics.
We were able to thoroughly clean about 3 miles of The Road on clean-up day. This is the group when we finished:
This is how much trash we collected and then distributed to the various front porches of people who’ve made me mad since we’ve been down here:
While we were working at the elementary school in Roseau, Kevin and I were able to meet someone whom I at first mistook for one of the many mythical creatures that inhabit this magical island.
Meet Garth Joseph, former player for the NBA and current basketball coach for multiple teams around the Caribbean. This picture was taken as I was counting to five, Kevin was counting to ten, and Garth was in the process of slamming our heads together. T’was a beautiful moment, the paramedics said. (I always say that Kevin is the Asian version of me; well, in the preceding pic of Yao Defen, I think we found the Asian version of both of us!)
Lastly, someone snapped a pic just as we finished letting the 2nd grade health class practice their mandatory body cavity searches:
Actually, we were SUPPOSED to just be helping them with their vegetable garden; the searches were impromptu and apprently initiated by the confident guy on the left, who is aspiring to work for the TSA someday.
Well, that’s enough for today! Thank you all for your patience and your continued readershipness!
If you pray, when you pray, pray for us.
On to the next thing…
Nic and Jacelyn 