Somewhere over the rainbow...

Do you believe in signs?  

As a child my favourite movie was The Wizard of Oz, I remember watching it over and over again.  I wanted to be just like Dorothy and discover a new brightly coloured world.  So you can imagine how I felt when I looked outside my window and realized that I was ACTUALLY somewhere over the rainbow.  I couldn't contain my smile, that was my god wink.  I knew I had made the right decision. St Lucia was the right choice, it was going to be perfect... 

"Ladies and gentleman, we are beginning our decent into beautiful St Lucia.  The weather in St Lucia is currently ridiculously, like you will need another shower, hot!!! Lucky for you it is raining so you will have zero view of the magnificent Pitons as we land and surprise it appears that only half your luggage has made it here with us.  Please enjoy your stay in Paradise!"  

Ok, so this is not exactly how it happened but I did land during a rainstorm in 38 degree Celsius weather with only one of my suitcases.  But even that couldn't stop me, I was in St Lucia, a place I had been dreaming about for years and I was finally here!  This was my new home!

As we drove from the airport to the North of the island, approximately a 90 minute van ride, I was amazed by everything I saw.  The lush rainforest, the colourful villages and the OCEAN.  I had finally done it, I lived on an island! How lucky was I?

As the van pulled up to our new home, my new roommates and I looked at each other. We were excited, we were finally here!  We rolled our suitcases inside and we were greeted by two of our colleagues. It was time to go shopping... groceries and household basics! Now, I had done my research and I knew food in St Lucia would be expensive but I was not prepared for this.  Broccoli 30$, cauliflower 27$, apples 3$ each, Almond milk 15$, hummus 18$!!!!!!!!! That's it, I am going to starve!  Now these were Eastern Caribbean dollar amounts but still 30 Eastern Caribbean dollars = 15 Canadian dollars.  Ok, don't panic I will just look for local stuff... oh, look Paw paw is cheap...what the heck is paw paw?!? Bananas and plantains are cheap, ok that works.  Sour Sop, five fingers, Bora beans?!? I don't even...Oh look a sale rack...what is that?!?  Smells like death...Meat, lots of meat, and not refrigerated, oh that makes perfect sense... Ok time to PANIC, we are definitely going to starve!!!! 

Needless to say we left the grocery store a little depressed that night but we were looking forward to heading back to our new house and unpacking.  It had been a long trip, I left on the Monday at 3:00 p.m. and arrived the following day at 2:30 p.m.  It was now 6:00 p.m. and already dark here and I just wanted to message my loved ones back home to say I was safe and go to bed.  As we arrived home, it was apparent that neither one of these things were going to happen.  Our internet password was incorrect, so no wifi, no messages, no link to home or to the people I loved and already missed.  The house was filthy, clearly no one had lived here for at least a few weeks and the last family had not done a stellar job of cleaning before leaving.  A bit discouraged, my roommates and I looked at each other and decided sleep and food would have to wait until our kitchen and our rooms were cleaned.  A few dead geckos, a cockroach and a cute little frog later, the major clean-up was done. 

Still no internet and no way of reaching home...time to pick which room would be ours and head to bed.  We decided the only fair way to pick our rooms would be to have a draw.  So we put in the numbers 1, 2 and 3 in our gigantic decorative rock bowl and picked.  In retrospect, we should really have called our rooms by their proper names. Room 1 = the no breeze room (due to the fact that it only has one window), room 2 = the cockroach room (due to the fact that on the first night we had to track, find and kill a cockroach hiding in the dresser) and number 3= the frog room (due to the fact that a small tropical frog was rescued in the shower).  

As luck would have it I picked room number 3, my favourite number. This was a sign...things were going to get better.  How could they not, after all I had picked the frog room and you know how much the French love their frogs ;)

Our house

The view from my bedroom window.

Five fingers or star fruit, yummm!