A Day in the Life of an [ex] Full-Time Beach Bum:
8:30 a.m. Wake up naturally to the sun flooding into my bedroom. Consume a banana-strawberry-mango smoothie for breakfast. If the husband is still around, pack him a lunch and smooch him on his way out the door.
9:00 a.m. Check various social medias. Read all the blogs. Figure out an important new braid.
10:30 a.m. Do some more reading (scriptures, World War II books, etc.) and think about life. Some days my thoughts are along the lines of, "What have we done? Two years of sweating and discomfort and loneliness and a culture that I don't understand. I feel ill." But more and more often, my thoughts are along the lines of, "Wow, what a cool thing we are doing here! What other newlywed couple gets to move to a tiny island to pursue their dreams?" and, "Holy cow, I have no idea where we'll be at any point in the future beyond 20 months from now, but there are some pretty exciting options." and, "Hm, should I do Ramen or a Snickers for lunch today?" Turns out when you're a beach bum and your husband's a med-school student, your food budget is hilarious. (Editing job for the win--now I can eat apples and cheese for lunch. Playin' in the big leagues.)
11:00 a.m. Force myself to do dishes and laundry in-between watching shows on Netflix.
12:30 p.m. Scrounge around for some semblance of a lunch, or meet Jared on campus to split a Subway sandwich on a picnic table by the campus beach.
1:30 p.m. Afternoon activity. Common afternoon activities include pool time, beach time, volunteering at the LIMES after school program (Grenadian kids are the cutest!), and grocery shopping.
6:00 p.m. Either make dinner or meet Jared on campus to grab some nearby Greek food or shawarma. The latter option is preferable because, as it turns out, we love lamb and gazing into each other's faces as we wait in a lovely tropical breeze for our dinner. Also, since we tend to split an entree, we've discovered that eating out is comparable in price to making a healthy meal at home. This is less because restaurant food here is cheap and more because groceries here are expensive.
7:30 p.m. Watch a movie or write a blog post while Jared studies (sometimes he's at the library, but sometimes he's at his desk in the same room as me). Pep talk myself into doing the last of the dishes.
7:45 p.m. Bribe Jared with a back massage in exchange for him finishing the dishes.
10:00 p.m. Watch an episode of Regular Show with my cartoon-loving husband.
10:30 p.m. Bed timez.
On beach-bum days when I was feeling ambitious, I would fill in the gaps with a project or YouTube videos of BYU writing lectures so that I could further my education. On days when I was feeling like a slug, I would fill in the gaps with TV shows on Netflix.
Now, I don't want to give anyone any false impressions. As dreamy as the above schedule looks on paper, those days were sometimes extremely mentally taxing. The problem wasn't so much the schedule as it was the every-dayness of the schedule, and the fact that it was done alone in a foreign country and I didn't feel like I was doing anything important (don't get me wrong--I know that being here for my husband is extremely important). I have a lot I could write about that, but I'll save my fingers and link you to a blog post written by another med-school wife who lived in Grenada during the two years before we came here. I don't know this girl personally, but her words about the pros and cons of living in "paradise" as a med-school wife are spot on. Go ahead, read:
http://allisonawayfromhome.blogspot.com/p/the-pros-and-cons-of-life-we-chose.html
(If it starts out a little dry for you, skip to the section titled "The Unparalleled Experiences." Also, bear in mind that I stress a whole lot less than this girl, so don't worry that I'm a basket case over here. I'm not. Nonetheless, I can see where she's coming from throughout the post, and I know that each "pro" and "con" is legitimate.)
So anyway, yes it is an amazing privilege to be here. Yes, it is wonderful to have lovely beaches on all sides and delicious tropical fruits in our backyard (really, I'll do a post on that tomorrow). But in too large of a dose, even a good thing can be challenging. The first term is the hardest here--at least for the wives--but by the end, no one wants to leave. Here's to 19 more months of finding our groove and beach-bummin' in our beautiful Grenada!