On moths...

Me: Jared there's a weird tan moth in the bathroom. Can you come get it?
Jared: Don't hurt him! He's my friend. He is good.
Me: Ok, well it's creepy and watches me while I go to the bathroom, so...
Jared: Be nice to my friend! I talked to him last night and he told me he likes you. Let him stay!


On millipedes (we get lots of millipedes in our apartment, so this type of conversation happens probably every other day)...

Me: Jared, I was just in your study room. Did you know there's a gross black millipede on the floor by your desk?
Jared: Yes! He came two days ago. He is my friend.
Me: Ok...
Jared: I told him he can stay. His name is Moses.
Me: Moses?
Jared: Yeah. The other ones were Charlotte, Grey, Weeder, and Steadman. The next one can be yours to name.

*****
Me: Jared, there's a dead little friend (millipede) under the sink.
Jared: Don't hurt him!
Me: But he's already dead...
Jared: No, he's just resting. Maybe he's hiding under there so you won't hurt him.
Me: Jared, I'm not going to hurt him! We get millipedes all the time and I've never hurt any of them.
Jared: Yes, but you hurt their feelings. They know what you say about them.


On earthworms (I've never seen an earthworm here, but this happened all the time when we lived in Utah)...

Me, walking along the sidewalk after a rainstorm: Ewwwww!
Jared: *picks up each worm one by one and puts them in the grass so they'll be safe*


On cockroaches:

Jared: Die! Die! Die! Evil! Bad! Die!
Jared, on Bugs

Why yes, for those of you with suspicions, a good half of these photos were totally posed. ("Work it, work it!" shouted a very entertained Jared between study breaks, egging it on.) AT LEAST I'M HONEST. But no, the bananas were not supposed to be part of that! I legit brought them as a snack and then they somehow wandered into every single picture. I think it's hilarious. If you didn't notice, then I invite you to scroll up and go fruit hunting. The coconut that looks like a small dog is also a fruit.

The pictures were taken at the beautiful and secluded Secret Beach a good, oh, two months ago. Better late than never? I really like this beach and this swimming suit (is there a Swimsuits Anonymous somewhere I can join?), so I couldn't just NOT put these pictures on my blog. We can call this a fashion post if you like labels. I guess that's what you call a blog post with 1,897 pictures of yourself in a swimming suit. Fashion post. Yes. My name is Laura, and I am a fashion blogger with a swimsuit addiction and I use fruit and my husband as props.
Secret Beach

If Jared ever sees this post, I am a dead woman and it (the post) will disappear mysteriously forever. He doesn't like pictures of him where he looks "tired" or his eyes are closed. So basically, all of these pictures. BUT I HAD TO. He's so cute getting ready for the day. And plus, he'll probably never see this post (do any of your husbands actually read your blogs?) so I'm not worried.

As I mentioned yesterday, Jared recently had his first day of visiting Grenada's public hospital to follow a doctor around with his cute little med student group. He's been looking forward to this day since first term, and it was monumental. The first of many many many MANY days spent learning in a hospital, which is what Jared's dreams are made of. He came home wearing his white jacket, which is major attractiveness points in my opinion. I didn't get a picture, buuut I'm sure there will be dozens of white coat pictures in the future.

The trip left him exhausted. Maybe that had something to do with the fact that the public hospital here is not air conditioned, and they cram as many patients as possible into each room. #thirdworldproblems. Apparently the patient that Jared's group was working with was a nice Grenadian woman who lived in England for several years. When they asked her if they could check her heartbeat and some other things she was like, "Ya sure!" And then she unexpectedly tore open her blouse. The doctor came back after that and was like, "Maybe next time let's close the curtains off to give her some privacy when you listen to her heart sounds." No one was phased though. I think it's kind of cool that Jared gets to experience a whole different hospital culture. I asked Jared if he had anything to say about the day that he'd like me to write. This is what he said:

"The nicest person I've met in Grenada is a woman with sickle cell anemia, one lung, and a diaphragmatic hernia. She was the first patient I observed in the St. George's general hospital, and she's the most positive person I've met here. Clinicals can't come soon enough! Sitting down with books all day is taking its toll on me. I want to interact with doctors and patients."

There you have it. The picture at the top of this post is of the hospital. It's on some prime real estate and has a gorgeous view of the ocean and some pretty beaches. Maybe the patients don't get to appreciate the view as much as others might, but the constant breeze there probably makes a world of difference.
First Day of Hospital

^^These booths are part of a popular eating area near SGU campus called "Options." We most commonly visit the smoothie stand, but they also have good ice cream sundaes and middle eastern food, and an asian ramen place just opened. Oh, and before you die of a heart attack, these prices are in eastern caribbean dollars.
^^This jumpsuit is knee-length!! Aka tropical heaven!!!!
Yesterday was Jared's very first day visiting Grenada's public hospital to follow a doctor around. I'll be blogging about that soon . . . probably later today depending on how many work projects I take (the amount of blogging I do is directly proportional to the amount of work I'm procrastinatinghence why I blogged so much when I was going to school full time).

When he got home from the hospital he was pooped. Like, soooo tired. And he had only been there for 4 or 5 hours! I shudder to think about his upcoming residency years, when he will be at the hospital literally 100 hours a week. That's 2 1/2 full-time jobs. Ugh. He will be the walking dead. But the good part about Jared being exhausted is that I can slowly talk him away from his studies to spend a bit of time in the fresh air.

The other day we accidentally discovered that our favorite nearby smoothie stand started selling wings. And they're pretty dern good, and pretty cheap! The buffalo wings are our favorite so far. The jerk wings were good too but so spicy that we both started crying. Yesterday we swung by for 6 buffalo wings and 4 parmesan wings, and we took them to Quarantine Point to check out the massive Disney cruise ship that docked here yesterday. It looked to be the the same size as the city it was parked in front of (St. George'sGrenada's biggest city), and it's not even the biggest ship that's ported here. It's officially cruise season in Grenada from now until May. I like cruise season because it's fun to go see the huge ships, but I also don't like it because all the beaches get crowded and all the locals start thinking I'm a tourist and try to squeeze money out of me.
Wings at Quarantine Point

^^I know this picture was in my last post, but I had to include it again because it's the only picture of me from this day and I want to make note of the swimming suit. I loooove this swimming suit because (a) it's unique, and (b) it's hecka comfy. BUT. This was my first time wearing it, and sand kept collecting in the bottom. At first I thought it was just because the beach was really wavy that day and I spent a lot of time getting pummeled into the ocean floor, but when I got home I realized that the sand was still there and was stuck between the liner and the outer fabric! As it turns out, the sand was so fine and the swimming suit so porous that the sand seeped into the swimsuit little by little until I was strutting around with five pounds of sand sitting in the bottom of my suit. Awkward. I guess I'll be setting this one aside for pool days only.
On Saturday, we headed to La Sagesse beach and met up with a bunch of friends. La Sagesse is our favorite beach for its solitude, beauty, and boogie-boardable waves, but it's three times as far from us as any other beach so we rarely get up there. We spent most of our time passing around my boogie board (it's the red one that our friend Talmage is running over to Jared in that last picture), but there was also a fair bit of giving people mermaid tails in the sand and watching the DeAngelos' dog, Bear, chase a terrified sand crab.

I love waves! The calm beaches near us are beautiful, but I tend to get bored with them within an hour or two (although they are great for snorkeling). I would love if there were a few beaches around us with big waves so I could learn to surf. There's a baby "surf spot" a walking distance from our house, but it's really shallow and crazy urchin-infested. Jared says I need to wait until he takes me to Hawaii someday, and that's the place to learn to surf. I can waitI've picked up some other hobbies here that are keeping me busy and excited. Here's to taking advantage of these winter waves while they last!

See pictures from our trip to La Sagesse beach last January here.


Boogie Board Life

Now that we've reached January, it's dry season in Grenada. Basically it feels like we live in a completely different country than we did two months ago. The wet season (June-December) is hard because it's so hot and humid that you really don't even want to go outside, and meanwhile everyone back home is posting pictures of the perfect autumn weather they've been having. But dry season more than makes up for that. I'm prettttty happy to be living in a breezy 80 degrees Fahrenheit while the rest of you hide from your gray snow and black ice. We'll be right there with you next winter, so I'm enjoying this while I can.

My favorite perk of the nice weather is that it's come during a relatively nice term for Jared. We spent Saturday boogie boarding at La Sagesse beach, and we've gotten out of the house together every evening this week. Monday we read on the veranda, Tuesday we walked to the surf spot around the corner to watch the sunset, Wednesday we had a picnic on a bench overlooking the crab field, and tonight we found a new quiet spot called "quarantine point" where we ate KFC and made friends with a Grenadian man named Sylvan. He just got back from visiting his Swedish girlfriend in, well, Sweden, and he was wearing a "Lake Tahoe" shirt. The people here (including me) seem more friendly in the dry season too. It's good that it's good to be back.
Dry Season is King

Jared and I don't get as much pillow talk in as I'd like. He studies and studies so hard that by the time he's done at night he is flat-out exhausted. When his head hits that pillow, the lights had better be out because he needs darkness to sleep and he's tired enough to be out in 15 seconds flat.

We're in the blessed, reasonable fifth term now though. And classes just started on Monday, so there's a feeling of "we can do this" in the air. An aura of lightness that hasn't been around since, well, before this whole med school biz. It's wonderful. The other night when the lights went out (all except the string of Christmas lights still above our bed, because we're those people), we had a nice chat about silly things--I don't remember what about exactly, but there was lots of giggling. And then as Jared adjusted the temperature down a degree Celsius, he remarked on how our AC remote looks like Bert, as in Bert and Ernie. See!
We laughed about that for forever and then I poured myself half a gulp of NyQuil, because I brought a nasty sleep-ruining cold with me from the States (the stuff also conveniently helped me adjust four hours ahead to the Grenada time zone). It was in this moment that I learned that I can thank NyQuil for our marriage. See, Jared always told me that he knew I was the girl for him because he never felt nervous or anxious around me--everything just came naturally. Come to find out, he actually threw down a swig of NyQuil each morning before our German class in the weeks just before and after we started dating to fend off the nerves (he now knows that that is not a sound medical practice)! That's why you never felt anxious around me, bubs! So I guess I'll be adding NyQuil to my gratitude turkey every Thanksgiving from now on.
Pillow Talk

^^Fresh mini donuts from Pike Place Market in Seattle! Soooo good! I would reccomend this to anyone. Get a half-dozen assorted.
^^This cute little chocolate donut with sprinkles.

On our last day in Washington, Jared took me for a little date in Seattle. Mostly we just walked around and explored, but we also got some amazing clam chowder in bread bowls at Pike Place. Jared also got a tuna fish sandwich that was, like, fresh outta the ocean. Our eyes got all huge after our first bites because never have we ever tasted such sublime tuna in all our lives. Afterward we checked out the fresh new gum wall (the old one was torn down because the sugar from the gum was eating away at the bricks or something), grabbed some mini donuts, and went to explore the Seattle public library. We spent most of our time in the children's books section. I love our dates.
Seattle Lunch Date

All of Jared's siblings went ice skating together one day over the break. Jared and Marie actually took ice skating when they were younger (though Jared lied to all his friends about it because he thought it was embarrassing), so they're actually pretty good. Jared taught me how to ice skate during our first married winter. I'm not as good as he is, but I only fell once this time around! And it was fun to watch everyone rally around their youngest sibling, Will, to teach him how to skate for the first time. He originally didn't want to come, but he wound up loving it. Must be a family thing.
On one of the last days of our break, Jared took his mom and I on a hike he found online to the secluded Moss Lake. The hike was just beautiful and it was nice to get some fresh air, but after we had gone probably three miles (the hike was supposed to be a two-mile loop), we realized that we had probably gone the wrong way. We tried a couple of side trails, but they definitely weren't taking us back toward the parking lot, so we eventually decided to just take the main trail all the way back. We did so and were happy and hungry and tired when the parking lot came into view.

And then Jared realized that he couldn't find the keys to the car. They were gone. We started to panic just a little because it was cold and we were hungry and we had no cell service and even if we could get cell service, Jared's mom was the only one with a phone and it was almost out of battery! Jared was sure that the keys had fallen out of his pocket at some point, so he started jogging along the trail while us ladies walked toward the main road to try to get cell service. We eventually were able to call Marie to come rescue us, but as we walked back toward our car we worried that Marie might not make it (the roads were getting icy) and that Jared would freeze and die on the trail (he left his coat at the car and was really hungry). But just a short time later, we heard Jared shouting our names and he came jogging into view with the keys! He had left them at the very end of the trail, meaning that he must be a really fast runner because that was a loooong hike. On the way home, we called off the search party and got some hot tortilla soup at Ixtapa's. Yay memories!
Ice Skating & Moss Lake

I spy a cut little Jared and a cute little Will.
^^Jared munchin' on snacks in the back of the car.
My favorite day of the break was the day spent driving an hour or two up into the mountains to go sledding. These pictures don't do it a bit of justice. I was going to have Annie send me the pictures she took with her fancy new camera, but if I wait for that then this post will never happen. So these will do. Honestly, the drive was my favorite part. Everywhere we looked were hundred and hundreds of tall, snow-covered evergreens. The sledding was fun too. We went down a hill that had a little tow-line to pull you back up. Unfortunately the line was really long, so we only lasted a couple runs before seeking shelter and hot chocolate in the lodge and then driving home.

On the way home we caught a gorgeous sunset. Everyone else was exhausted and perhaps a bit carsick, but I love long drives and mountains and trees and sunsets, so this was my jam. We stopped at a Mexican place called Ixtapa for dinner. It was amazing. I haven't had Mexican food like that since before Los Hermanos changed up their menu and the quality went down. I got a chimichanga, and Jared's tortilla soup was to die for. In fact, we went back again just a couple days later on the way home from a hike gone awry (more on that in the next post).




Sledding

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