Working For The Weekend

Once again I got to bed late last night and once again deiced to get up with the first horn of the morning. This morning I learned that you need to listen to the horn before you actually get up. Almost all the mini-buses around here have very distinctive horns. They start honking them around 7AM. The cars around here have very regular sounding horns that may start honking at a much earlier time. This morning it was a close to 6AM horn that got me up, lol. Still, it was a lesson learned.

One of the wonderful things about living here is that I'm almost never tired once I'm awake and moving around. The sun is up in the bright blue sky before I ever get up and just hours before I go to bed the sun drops down beyond the sea. All day long I'm awake and feel up to working. When it's time for bed the sun has been down long enough that I'm sleepy. The environment here is fairly close to perfect for me. It really helps when I get to bed late and get up early.

Before I continue I have to share some pictures with you that Rachel took last night.


That's three of the boys under the mosquito net Rachel hung up for Ben last night. He decided he had had enough of being bitten in his sleep. So his Mom hooked him up :)

I got a lot of work done this morning before Dilian dropped by to let us know he was going into Roseau. It turned out that I need to go as well, so we decided to go together. Before we left some guys drove by the house selling eggs out of their truck. We got 30 eggs for EC$20.00. That's a bit more than we would have paid back home for plain white eggs, but less than we would have paid for brown organic eggs, which is what these were.


Shortly after we purchased our eggs we hopped the bus and headed into town. On the way I took a picture of the “rock ship” (for lack of a better name) pulled up at the dock beside the quarry in Point Michel. (They have some deep water right of the coast.)


I took a few more pictures while I was in town, but my mind was so filled with buying more electricity and paying my internet bill that I forgot to pull the camera out much. I did, however, end up on the balcony at Mrs. Bass's guest house in down town Roseau. She's a sister in the Church and Dilian had to go by to talk to her for a few minutes. In any event, here are the few photos I thought to snap.


I'm getting a lot more comfortable in town. I can pretty much get wherever I want if you give me time. It's amazing how much more relaxed you are when you know that you can make your own way home if you have to :)

By the time I got home it was time to goof off with Joey and play some D&D. After that the kids wanted to go to the sea of course. I snapped some more shots as we walked down to the beach.


And, of course, took more when we got down there.


Caleb found a shell that I thought was worth a couple of pictures. It's very beautiful and completely undamaged.


It has been a very busy week. I am really looking forward to doing as little as possible tomorrow. However, Rachel wants to go down to one of the locations where they shot one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. I'm not sure how long it will take, but I think it's within walking distance. So, I may be able to share some pictures of that tomorrow.

Anyway, I feel like I've been working for the weekend all week and it's finally here. So, good night from Dominica!

Settling In

I woke up late today. I got to bed late last night. I decided I wasn't going to get out of bed until I heard the first taxi honk. I figured that would mean it was around 7AM. So, as soon as I heard a bus sitting at the stop I got up. Sure enough it was like 7:03. A lot of getting into the groove is figuring out just how the groove works. Now I've got two alarms I can use. If I get up with the sun it'll be around 5:50. If I get up with the taxis it's about 7:00. Now, some of you might wonder why I don't just buy an alarm clock. Well, the answer is simple: I'm too cheap to buy something I don't need. :)

Shortly after I awoke I was met by a sight so beautiful it made me smile (inside at least, it was too early to actually bother smiling with my face). I decided to take a couple of pictures of it.


Yep, that's laundry hanging on the line Rachel has strung throughout the house. It may not look beautiful to you, but after more than three weeks without a washing machine it really moved me to see clean cloths hanging there. No one even had to walk up or down the hill over it. I also snapped a shot of our living room full of kids.


Once I got settled in for work today I got a great deal done. The game development is going very well. The entire team is motivated and working hard. Rachel also got up and started working hard. We had fried turkey ham, grits, and toast for breakfast. (The toast wasn't as toasty as I normally like, but Rachel did a good job considering we don't currently have a toaster.


Around 10 I decided to go for an hour long walk to see what I could see. To begin with I thought I would take a photo of some scaffolding. I had seen something similar before, but didn't get a picture of it.


That's how most of the scaffolding is made around here :) I continued taking pictures as I headed up the hill and decided to take a photo of construction materials blocking the road.


I soon found out that the road led to a dead end. That explained why no one was complaining about it being blocked.


I went back the way I had come and decided to take a road that look less traveled. Let me tell you, that made all the difference. It was rural to say the least, lol. Of course, there was also maintained property everywhere. Around here if you see land that isn't completely covered by plants then you can be sure someone is clearing the land constantly.


I also came up on a house out there that was under construction. I don't know if the area is actually growing, but it sure looks like it is.


Shortly after I came up on a kind of road tunnel through the jungle. I deiced to stop my exploration there for the day. As I headed back I took a few more photos, including one of a sailboat for Uncle Grover.


I spent the rest of the day working and playing Neverwinter with Joey. He and I also talked a little business. It had somehow escaped my notice that Joey had a lot of experience with salt water fish tanks. I knew that was the case, but I never really thought about it. Today it hit me that he would be the perfect candidate to preform my early shrimp farming tests. Lord willing we may be able to get started in the next few weeks. I'm hoping he'll document the process and progress so I can post about it here. Shrimp farming could be a golden opportunity for us here in Dominica. Time will tell.

At around 4:30 the game crashed. I was planning to take the kids somewhere at 5:00 anyway, so I just called it a day. They wanted to go to... you guessed it! The sea!! I took a few pics for the grandparents. The rest of you will have to excuse my filling the blog with pictures of my kids playing at the coast, but the grandparents really can't get enough of it.


Rachel wanted me to end the post as I had opened it. That is to say show you some more pictures of our hanging laundry. It may not look like much to you, but it's beautiful to us.


One other thing: now that we know we're probably going to be staying in this house for two more months Rachel is getting everything put in it's place. Clothes are going into closets and chest of drawers. She's doing what she does that makes a house into a home. I'm looking forward to our up and coming spacious quarters and the large yard that goes with them. For the next few months, however, I think we'll be quite cozy in our little rental house.

I think that's enough for tonight. I want to get to bed earlier tonight and get up earlier tomorrow. So, goodnight from Dominica.