We have been caught!

   In the short time that I have been on the island I have noticed that it is really about who and what you know rather then what you have been told. 
   Internet is a big discussion topic here mainly because you can't access wireless internet on campus unless you do so through your computer, which has been registered with the IT department.  The network you can choose on your laptop is STUDENT, which has enough connections for all the students on campus or a majority of them anyway.  I am not sure how all this crap works but I would appreciate a little more flexability.
   Well, not all of us like to bring our computers to campus because we really don't use them during class and they are heavy and cumbersome.  Students do like to bring lighter versions of internet connection such as, blackberry's, iphones and ipads.  These tools are nice because the majority of students on campus make electronic flash cards through a site called Quizlet and then down load the app on the phone and then flip through the electronic flash cards on breaks. Quizlet is a great program that anyone can use for free at a basic level, when you pay you can do more stuff but I don't find it necessary. Upper classmen save their flash card sets and can pass them on to the next semester, which is SWEEEEEEET. Peers can share note cards and such and not have POUNDS of cards to carry around and study.  Again the traveling light factor. 
   The problem is that the network choice is exclusively GUEST, which has a limited number of connections available. If you are not one of the few or in the right location on campus at the right time you can actually connect; if not then you are S.O.L.  I think, no worries I can just make your way to the campus Learning Resource Center (LRC) where there are around 70 computers for student use during the  semester. 
     Oh, wait...policies are changing and the plans for the LRC are to turn it into the testing facility and have all tests on campus computer based.  Ugh, I am not thrilled with this.  Can you imgine taking the GRE every exam....ugh. Anyway, this transition has been in process the last couple of weeks and slowly students are realizing the change and are not liking it.  Do you know how many exams are given every semester! LOTS, which translates to no campus computers.
   Limited use of the LRC is becoming more and more annoying and so some of us have found a few loop holes in the STUDENT network connection and have been able to connect to the internet with our mobile devices.  Mainly these loop holes are freak occurances that occur in certain locations of campus.  Again, I have no idea how these things work but I find when I am in some buildings I get connection to STUDENT network and others I do not.  Well, it has all caught up to us at the begining of this week and all students recieved this email:

Students,

There is a surge in i-Phones, Blackberries and I-Pods  on campus.  This is causing capacity problems with the “Student” wireless network.  Some students have 3 or 4 wireless devices.  The result is that other students are getting bumped off because there are no available IP addresses.

Our first priority is for every student to have one laptop device registered on the student network.  All phones and PDA’s should use the “Guest” network.  Some of you have slipped through the cracks and have “student” wireless on your smart phones. To make room for student laptops, we have to remove this.

This is a necessary move to make sure that all students have access to e-College during class times. We will be making these changes over the next several days.

Paula Randall

Director of Information Technology

WE HAVE BEEN CAUGHT!! I felt like a mouse caught in the cookie jar after I got this email! Well, I never thought it would last forever but it was nice while it did.  I just want ONE convienence...nope..not going to happen. 

Anyway, but to the NOTES!

The Encounter

Okay the moment you all have waited for, the premier of The Encounter!
Directed and Filmed by: Kat Bellew
Editor: Andres Stowell (Thankyou neighbors!)
Staring: Natasha Novik
Supporting Actor: Bill....Guillermo....Bilbo?

A psychological thriller as a young woman sees the infamous centepede for the first time since she has arrived on the tiny island of St. Kitts. The centepede has been known for battling lizards an inch wide and winning. These ellusive insects can be in your covers when you go to bed, in your car as you drive down the street, on the ceiling ready to parachute into your cereal bowl. All of these tales had been told to the young girl but only personal experience could give the girl confidence on the battle ground. This documentary is the first encounter with the nemesis and she can only hope that who ever is watching will....SEND...MORE.... BOP!

A little note from the director: I absolutely love my roommate especially in times like these where all we can do is lean on eachother and FREAK OUT! As you watch the film please pay close attention to her EYES, and listen closely to her remarks, because as she gets more scared she gets quiet but her comments are too good to be missed. I know I can be loud and whiny behind the camera so try listen both of us struggle to get ready for battle.

Please silence your cell phones, children or animals. Thankyou, and enjoy the film.

Part One



At least I have electricity!

  Over the course of the past month I have had to adjust to big and little things such as: the reality that getting any decent red meat on the island is a fantasy or that the Cable guy drives up in his daily driver wearing street clothes and pops his trunk to install the modem and VOIP service at 5:30-7pm.  I will never get used to the inconsistent Internet service on the island.  After a while I got used to the lulls, at 5pm when ALL 700 students are on the Internet talking to family and checking email, and the highs, at 6am when everyone is getting ready for class and no one but ME is sending a "Good Morning" email to their significant other.  I was able to cope with the inconsistencies of the Internet at home knowing that at least I was a five minute walk from campus and they always (so it seemed) had perfect Internet service and plenty of computers to go around (or you just bring your laptop and hook up wirelessly).
  For those of you that I have Skyped and even talked to recently, you know that my home Internet capabilities have been rough because of the consistent wave of rain storms that have since blown through. 

Well....Then I got this message from the IT department in my Ross email box:

Dear Valued Customer

There is a transmission outage which is impacting the Internet services for all islands (except Jamaica, Cayman & Turks).  This is as a result of a failure on the Global Caribbean Network (GCN) fibre system caused by a submarine cable break on the New York end.  Due to this submarine cable break on a fibre system in New York, you would experience slow Internet browsing.

A subsequent update would be  given as we endeavour to restore service as soon as possible.

We sincerely regret the inconvenience caused.

Sincerely

Lime. Better Business Everyday!

  Okay, so now I know ALL the factors that can are involved with getting Internet to this island and how if any of those fail or are disturbed I am F#@*&^%.  Well, my home Internet service isn't through LIME it is through The Cable (original name) but there are very few routes that are possible to retrieve Internet from a hard line and I am guessing that both services are attached to this "submarine cable break" at some point. 

Moral of the story is...I AM stranded on an island...I am a little better off than Gilligan and his crew...

  For all of you that are jealous of me living on an island and getting a tan let this little (but frequent) Internet experience SQUISH your dreams of EVER living on an island.  Unless the point of you coming to the island is to escape the world (VERY POSSIBLE) then by all means I understand why people vacation here.  It takes a certain kind of person to live here for their lives and I have to admit it is not for me.  Thank goodness for breaks!  

  Because I have to cope to island life to make it through the two and a half years that I am here (minus the breaks) I have to laugh and think that at least I have electricity! 

  It just goes to show how fortunate and unaware I was in the states with prompt customer service and the luxury of a big, juicy, grain fed steak straight from the butcher or just being able to walk on a side walk.  Be thankful friends because like the saying goes you don't know what you had until you have lost it. 

Kittitian Cash Cab

Here are some other Mr. RUSVM videos

Enjoy?!  If you want to see better one you can search YouTube for MR. RUSVM 2011 and there are so great ones! If I can find my favorite skitts I will post the links so you can enjoy too!

In the mean time here is my elementry videotaping!

Mr. RUSVM

This is a competition held the first weekend after the begining of class.  It is unfair to the incoming semester class because the other semesters have a whole semester and break to prepare for the next competition.  As a first semester you find out about Mr. RUSVM competition a couple days into class when you pick your class representative.  Never the less because there was only three days to prepare the class picked William/Guillermo (nicknamed Bilbo) to be our representative.  Well....he actually volunteered himself. What I have heard is that he is very vocal in class and not by asking questions but spouting out answers...and not always the right ones, so some of the professors get annoyed with his constant and unwanted participation.  When it came to picking someone he was the first one to sacrafice.

Here are some video's that I took of the show.  Mind you that some of my favorite ones I didn't record because my camera's battery life wasn't that long and I bet video taping uses a lot of energy! In any case here are some selections of mine to give you a taste.  If I can find my favorite skits then I will post them later.

The categories for the contestents were: Favorite Disney princess, Favorite movie, What you would be doing if you weren't at Ross, Rosswear (an outfit made of anything but clothes), and Talent.

Keys Beach Clean Up

 

This weekend I participated in the Keys Beach Clean up because the Leatherback Turtle breeding season is about to begin and Keys beach is a favorite laying site for the females.  The students have to opportunity to be assistants on the watch team, helping take vitals and various measurements of the turtles while they are laying their eggs.  Don't worry, after the turtle has begun laying the eggs in the nest she is in something of a trance and isn't disturbable.  Lets hope I can be in something like a Turtle trance too when it is my time to give birth! 


Anywho, hopeful the next season (next year) I will be adjusted enough that I will be able to participate.  It is long nights (4:30pm-8am) of monitoring and patrolling the beach and taking records but I bet the experience is exhilarating.  Oh yeah I will be cranky but it will be worth all the photos! If we can take any. 

There are a few other species that nest on the beaches of St. Kitts like the Hawksbill and Green I believe, but anyway, there are a few months of nesting that occur so there are plenty of students that are on the teams to schedule patrols and such.  Then there is hatching! Oh, yeah where you get to monitor the hatchlings and make sure they all get to the ocean!  HOW CUTE!  Oh, yeah a site that I can't wait to experience. 
All in good time but for now here are some more pictures to let you know I am alive!
You...would not be surprised at the vast amount of hidden trash the we found on this beach.  When you scanned the beach it just looked like it had some sea debris and dried seaweed and such everywhere.  When you flipped the piles of blown and bundled dried seaweed you got a plethora of plastic. A lot of bottle caps and toothbrushes.  I am not sure where all of this is coming from (what part of the island) but apparently the sea is the dump for toothbrushes.

Lunch after the clean up at home. Yep, these are my lunches these days.  Simple and small. I love PASTA!

Crater Hike Jan 30 2011

As a reward for all my studying on Friday and Saturday I went on a student led Crater Hike that took ALL DAY!  About 20 students and a few dogs met at school and then carpooled 20mins to the trail head.

Background:  The volcano used to be called Mt. Misery and since the end of the sugar cane industry and the rise of the tourist industry the name changed to Mt. Liamuiga (Fertile Land).  From what I was told by this seventh semester student is that the water for the island comes from dams around the edge of the crater that supply water to the locals...ME!  Since there are not a lot of wild life, especially on the volcano, the dammed water stays fairly clean from contaminants.  We even crossed some of the pipes that carry the water down the volcano.  St. Kitts is unique in that it can supply its own water, though I bet some of the water gets desalinated from the ocean too to meet the demand from visitors.  Mt. Liamuiga hasn't erupted in over 2000 years and we hope not to jinx her.  There is an island near by that has a volcano which hadn't erupted in over 2000 years and I believe just recently(the past year or so) it has erupted and leaves plumes of ash and smoke over the island.  Let's all pray that Mt. Liamuiga doesn't erupt for the next three years at the least, it would make for an AWESOME story!  The volcano is on the opposite side of the island in relation to where I live, no worries, I have some time to get out of here before the air quality and such get really bad!

If you care to know more about the geological data of St. Kitts here is a link, but I warn you unless you are Sara Greene it is dense.
http://www.caribbeanvolcanoes.com/stkitts/geology.htm

Here are some pictures of the hike:

Slowly driving threw a goat herd...this is the first time I have seen goats with a herdsman! 

Approaching our destination, as you can see the roads are graded dirt!  We even crossed railroad tracks. Though I don't believe there is an active commercial or public train.  I believe the "Sugar Train" is run as a tourist sight seeing train only.  We saw one on our way to the volcano, the train cars have been modified into Double Decker train cars.  Yeah, it is pretty funny.

This is where the trail head begins, a bit past this sign and up ahead they are building a driving range.

When we approached the guy was trying to point the donkey up hill but as stubborn as he was he kept turning around and going back down the hill.  Eventually the human won and if you look close he has a machete in his hands and the reins in the other.  There are a good portion of the agrarian locals don't like dogs and carry the machetes

We had an impressive caravan to the trail head, and you can see how beautiful of a day it was for a hike!

The view from the parking area

Welcome to the Jungle...that had no fauna just a crap load of flora

As you will notice the trail is narrow and littered with roots and such, oh yeah more flora

Here are the root steps that were a theme on the hike

There were points where I had to climb on hands an knees to get up the root steps, and as you can see we traveled through what would be a creek or water flow or lava flow...whatever.  There was no seeing over the walls of foliage and rock.  These areas were particularly humid.

I am doing all right!

More walls of dirt, roots, flora, and rock. We climbed out of the crack up head in this photo if you can see.

Strangler vine everywhere

The path I have traveled

I forgot to mention the many logs that we climbed over.  One had a medium drop on the other side that required some spotting before taking the leap.

Palms, for shade. 

Laura, the same one that took us on the Bat Cave hike, was showing us the special characteristics of this trees sap.  The sap is white and like thread, if you get enough fresh sap wrapped around a stick you can ignite it.  It actually acts like a sparkler.  It was a cool factoid, with a caution.  See, most white sap trees you shouldn't touch because the sap is caustic (burns), but this trees sap isn't caustic but ignites. Yeah, I am not going to remember this and get burned one of these days trying to show someone else.

Trail, trail, where is the trail?  I frequently looked behind me so that I could get an idea of what this hike was going to be like going down, and I often was worried about keeping on the trail on the way down.  That's why you travel in groups though, right?!

Yeah, you tell me where the trail is.

Don't be fooled this is not some mangrove tree, it is a tree that has been taken over and most likely strangled by......you guessed it! Strangler vine.  At some point the vines have built around enough of the tree to keep it from the sun light and eventually the tree dies.  The cool part is that when the tree decomposes the vine keeps the tree's shape but has spaces through the different vines.  It makes for great photos.

The crater view!

Mt. Liamuiga crater rim. A little metal rod placed in the rock, I guess it is to pitch a flag or something. 

Yes, proof I made it to the crater of Mt. Liamuiga

Other half of the crater.  There wasn't a lot of room to get very good photos because of all the rock and flora that abounded at the top.  There was a rock climb part that would give you a glimpse of the ponds inside the volcano, but it was windy and I was tired.  I will get those pictures another time.  I was actually getting cold at the top, which was nice until my muscles cooled.

This is Devils Tooth or Saw tooth I can't quite remember now, but this is the rock out crop.

A better picture of the Devils tooth...I am pretty sure now that the name is Devil's tooth.

The climb down was nothing but tiring after climbing to the top and resting.  It was beautiful and worth a another trip to get a better picture of the inside of the volcano. See all the wonderful things there are to see on the island.  Don't you want to come visit and go hiking with me! 

A cool picture of where the Caribbean and Atlantic oceans meet. You see the Atlantic white water on the left and the Caribbean white water(longer line of white water) on the right.