I finally have my own internet!

After 3 weeks, 14 calls, and 12 arguments I finally got someone to come out and hook up my internet. Although they say the people on the island are friendly they can never say they provide good customer service.

Anyway, hopefully I will be able to do a better job of keeping everyone up to date on the happenings. Tangra is doing a lot of studying which we figured she would, but we may have under estimated the actual amount of time it would take. It is a lot of info to know but as usual she is handling it like a champ.

The boys are doing very well, although we had a rough day yesterday because of the internet guy. (We were stuck in the house all day waiting for a tech that never showed up!) Needless to say by night fall we were all in desperate need of a walk!

I will write more later, I just wanted to say hello!

Later,

Matt

One Day of Freedom Left!!

We have been having an awesome time and are enjoying our little vacation. Classes start Thursday morning so I am glad that I have had these 2 weeks to spend time with Matt and the boys. We have also spent quite a bit of time seeing the island on foot and driving to all of the scenic spots - it has been an adventure! We all went coconut hunting yesterday, which basically consisted of driving around to different palm trees and chucking rocks at them. As you can see from the picture, Matt is holding his coconut:)





We have met some great local families that live in the area. A woman in our building who has 1 and 4 year old boys gave us a bouncy seat and a play mat for Nolan - which is GREAT because toys here cost about 2-3x what they do in the states. Every evening we can take the boys down to the beach for "happy hour," where they can play with the dozens of children who congregate there with there parents after work. Noah even got his first "french" kiss from 4 year-old Holly, who leaned over, said "bonjour," and planted one on him!


Exciting first-time parent news, Noah used the big boy potty 3 times today (yes, we even took a picture). He gets fruit snacks every time he goes, and looks at magazines during his time on the pot - Matt is so proud!


We had orientation for the new medical students this morning - it is going to be pretty intense! They gave us study tips and told us what to expect. They said we should plan on studying 1.5-2 hours every day for each subject - so about 6-8 hours a day! I plan to do several hours in the morning before the boys are up and space the rest out during the day. This should leave my evenings free to spend time with Matt and the boys. It is going to be tough but I am so excited.

We should be getting Internet and phone set up next Tuesday so we will be able to video conference and chat more often. We love and miss everyone already and are so grateful for the prayers and support.

Tangra

One Week Down!

Well, our first week is officially over and we are still loving the Caribbean. We have been able to start getting settled in. We rented a car for the week so that we could spend some time exploring the island and we have had a blast! We went for a trip around the island and wow is the driving different (Mike would love it!) There are only 2 stoplights and 3 stop signs on the entire island and we didn't go through any of them. People here go on what we will call the buddy system. Basically how this works is you just drive and hope your buddies don't hit you! If you want to go first you go first, if you want to stop and talk for 20 minutes to your "buddy" you do and everyone else just waits patiently. However, if you venture to the French side it's not always so patiently! (Gotta love the French.)

Anyway enough about the driving now on to the weather. Yes, it is correct that Hurricane Dean went through down here but it was about 250 miles south so all we got was some wind and a lot of rain. Leave it to the great travelers from Indiana to decide to try the 3 mile hike to the school pushing their two small helpless children in a bike trailer just as the worst of it hit the area. Luckly for us there were plenty of spots to take cover however, it seemed that every time we found cover it would stop raining and then everytime we started out again it started raining. I will say though that the islanders are very friendly (at least they are if you have children.) We had about five different people offer to drop what they were doing and drive us home, but seens how we were already soaked we figured we might as well continue on. We're so dedicated!

Other than that we have just been having the vacation of all vacations full of sightseeing, sunbathing, and swimming.

I also thought I would post a picture of our view from the patio at sunset last night so that you could all be jealous.

Later everyone,

Matt

WE MADE IT!!!!!!!

Holy cow we made it! We are finally here and it is fabulous! I will try to post pictures as soon as possible but for right now you will have to take my word for it!

The flights went well. The boys slept most the time (without drugs) and when they were awake were perfect. The only problem we had was that we almost missed both flights! I guess we are why they have last calls for boarding!

We have started to get settled in. We went this morning to Cost-U-Less which is a lot like Sam's club to get some necessities and then to the grocery store. Now we are at another spouses club member's house so we can make a post and send some emails. Hopefully we will get our internet and phone set up soon but we'll see. It may take a while.

I better go for now but will try to post again soon.

Later,

Matt

Only a little while now!

ONE MONTH TILL MY RETIREMENT!!!!!

My official resignation is in with a final date of August 10th!

This last weekend we decided to have our first of many yard sales. We didn't do too bad except that it appears everyone was in the mood to buy little things. The only big stuff we sold was the Crib and changing table and the washing machine. However, we did alright because we sold a lot of little things. Yeah for us! We will probably be having another one this Saturday to see if we can get rid of some more stuff.

We finally ordered our plane tickets to depart on Aug 16th in the AM. We have to be out of our rental home on Aug 1st so it looks like we will be squatters for a couple of weeks. That's ok though because that will give everyone a chance to spend some good quality time with the boys before we leave.

We are all getting a little nervous now because there is a lot to do and just over a month to do it in. Wow, that is fast! Oh well, I guess ready or not we will be leaving on the 16th anyway! Man I can't wait!

Later,

Matt

A lot going on!

I can honestly say we have a lot going on! Over the last couple of weeks we have been swamped. In fact we were so swamped that we both remembered last Sunday (June 24th) that our anniversary was last Thursday (June 21st.) Lucky for me we both forgot because that would not have been pretty.


On Father's Day I got the opportunity to sing at church and it was an awesome experience! I sang the song "Watching You Dad" and it was a hit. I had so much fun although it was a little difficult not to cry. Throughout the song they had my name and the song title displayed on the screens and then when I went into the final chorus they switched to this picture and everyone would say "Awe!" It was so cool!

We have started to sell things to prepare for the big move but it is going very slowly! We are realizing every day that we should have started earlier, but it is me and lord knows I will procrastinate everything! But we're getting there. There is just a lot to do!

Today I was officially granted access to the AUC Spouses club which is a group for spouses of current AUC students. They are going to provide us with a sponsor that will help us find housing, pick us up at the airport when we arive, show us around the island, and answer any questions we have along the way. It will be nice to have someone that can go look at apartments and give us the lowdown that isn't the landlord or the real estate agent. However, it kind of makes me nervous because that is just one more thing that proves this is really going to happen. How cool is that!?

Well, I guess I should go.

Take care for now,

Matt

Everyone Loves To Save Money!

Well, I may have spoken too soon. I guess we are not going to Grenada afterall. Just goes to show you that you can't try to read God's mind. Sometimes you just have to shut-up and listen!

Anyway, we will still be leaving in August for the Caribbean, but we will be headed to sunny St. Martin (sometimes spelled St. Maarten) instead of Grenada. It turns out that St Martin has a somewhat abbreviated Med-school program that will allow Tangra to be a Dr. about a year and 10 months earlier than if she attended in Grenada. Thus saving us time away from family and a whole LOT of jack! We love that! It will also be easier for all of you to come visit because instead of the nearly $1200 per person to fly to Grenada you can get a flight to St Martin for around $500. See, everyone loves that!

Later for now,

Matt