Random Tuesday Night thoughts

Hi Everyone!

You're probably amazed that I'm putting up another post so soon after the other one, but my schoolwork and everything is pretty slow this week and I felt like writing you all again!

Right now I'm at home alone, Sam's in lab and won't be home till late. It rained really hard here the past couple hours, the temperature is just about perfect. It was beautiful. However, my calm evening is being interrupted by my crazy cat who is running all over the house, climbing up anything he can get his claws in and even jumping up to catch random spots on the wall. He's a little bit energetic tonight.

We had a nice weekend. Saturday was spent just relaxing from our last few busy weeks, and that evening we had a couple of friends over for dinner, that we hadn't had over before. It was really fun and refreshing to hang out with them. Sunday I was busy babysitting all day, but Sam was able to take it easy and get some studying done. Yesterday I had some nasty stomach flu thing, but today I'm doing a lot better. Hopefully Sam will be able to stay away from it.

The past couple weeks I've been on a committee that is putting together a welcome/orientation packet for all the future new students/spouses/faculty/staff that are coming to Dominica. It's quite the project, a book totaling about 42 pages so far, but will be a huge improvement to the information that we received, which was nothing. But its had me thinking about how much has changed since we first came down here. I was so exciting to move here, I kind of came into it blind, which actually helped me handle the adjustment. I saw it all as positive, new and exciting, but for the people who don't, it can be a really rough time. But as I look back at it, and cannot believe that we are already in 2nd semester, I know that I would not change this for the world. I absolutely love living here in Dominica. I wonder how it will affect the rest of our lives, when we come back to the states and then maybe leave again, many years down the road. I'm excited to see what changes we come up against in the next 10 months we have here, and what changes will happen after we leave Dominica. That's the part that is just a complete blank. Sam and I can honestly say that in January of next year, we have no idea where we will be or where the months after that will take us. We're excited to go new places, but also would enjoy coming back home. Who knows what will happen? Fortunately, there is Someone who knows. And He is the only constant figure through all the changes. What a great God we serve!!

Anyways, enough of my wandering thoughts for the evening. I better go make some dinner for Sam and James when they get out of lab tonight. Love and miss you all so much. Take a look at some more of the pictures I posted of Gramma and Lexie's trip. We had so much fun with them here!

Our landlady owns a bunch of orchards/banana fields around our house, and we get free reign! So the last night they were here, Lexie and I went and picked a huge basket of grapefruit and she squeezed probably 30 of them using our little citrus juicer and made us all fresh grapefruit juice! It tasted really good and I think she was quite proud of the work she put into it.

There's a tree in the Cabrits National Park that has these terrible spikes all the way up the trunk. That's Lexie's hand trying to give perspective to their size.

And maybe she got a little too close...

My beautiful little sister sitting on a bench at Cabrits :) Looking down on Fort Shirley from the East Cabrit. This is the only part of the fort that has been restored.
Gramma & I with Douglas Bay and Morne Aux Diables, on the northernmost part of the island behind us!
Lexie & I, with Portsmouth in the background.

Colorful fishing boats in Scotts Head, the very southernmost village on the island.

This is Scotts head, the very southernmost point on the Island. On the left side you can see the Atlantic Ocean. On the right is the Caribbean Sea. We were amazed at the contrast between them. It was incredibly windy coming off the Atlantic, the waves were huge, it smelled strongly of salt, and was a bit "cold." The Caribbean had no waves, barely any smell, and was nice and warm. It was a cool experience to stand in between them.

The village of Scotts Head, looking back from Scotts Head Point.


Looking up the West Coast towards the main part of Dominica.

This is Lexie in the Atlantic Ocean... ...Now she's in the Caribbean Sea!
My beautiful little sister.
Me standing in the Atlantic Ocean!
My beautiful Valentines Day bouquet from my amazing husband!

These last few pictures are taken by my Gramma! This sign was posted on the passenger side of the car we rented. Definitely an important reminder!!

Here I am driving (well, sitting in the drivers seat) of the awesome car we rented. I love driving here, it was quite the adventure, but I can now say that I have conquered it!! We all got to snorkel at Champagne Bay. It's called Champagne Bay because one of the volcanoes we're on vents in the area, creating tiny little bubbles that come up through the rocks. There is also a ton of sea life to see here. It was so much fun to swim through the bubbles in the crystal clear water and look down on hundreds of colorful fish, sea sponges, sea urchins and tons of things that we had never seen before. It was so amazing!

That's all for now! Hope all is well back home. Bye!!
~Katrina

The Craziness of February

Hi Everyone!

Well, so much for my update every week. :( sorry about that. Better late than never though, right? Things have been pretty exciting for the Campbell family these past few weeks. We'll start at the beginning. Sam's birthday was on the third, and although he had to study for the upcoming mini, he was able to take a little bit of time off and we went out to a nice dinner. We found an awesome little place right on the beach where the visiting sailboats dock. The atmosphere was great, the food was awesome, and we really had a good time.



The view from our table at the restaurant, Big Papa's.

Our other big news is that there's a new addition to the family!! While we were at the restaurant for Sam's birthday, there was a little cat there that had 3 kittens, and they were so incredibly cute that we had to take one home. It was actually Sam's idea, but he had no difficulties convincing me. We took him home and tried not to get too attached for the first few days because we weren't sure if we could have pets in our apartment. But the landlady said it was fine, so he became ours! He had a rough first week. The first couple days we thought he was too little to eat solid food, so we had to force feed him these nasty milk-replacers that I made him, nearly starving him until we figured out that he likes chicken! Then after he started eating his weight in food every day we decided he had worms, so he had to go on medicine for that. He also had to take a couple baths because we wanted to make sure he was clean and bug free. And on top of all that, we thought he was female and called him a "Her" for the first week of his life with us!! He seems to have recovered from all the abuse though, and is now healthy and adjusting to life with us quite well. We named him Waitikubuli, which is the name the Carib's chose for Dominica before it was Dominica, but we call him Kubuli for short (which also just happens to be the name of the local beer here, but that's just coincidence....o:) ).

These pictures were taken his first couple days with us.

Bath time! He wasn't a big fan.



The hightlight of the month was definately the visit of Grandma Lou and my little sister Lexie!! They were here for about 10 days and we had an awesome time. They loved getting away from cold Colorado, spending some time at the beach, and just discovering Dominica. We loved having them here. Unfortunately, they were here the week before Sam's mini, so he wasn't able to do alot with us, but the three of us managed to get around and stay busy. For four of the days, we rented a car! Driving here is quite the experience, and although it took me a little while to adjust to driving on the wrong side of the road AND the wrong side of the car, I quickly picked it up and learned to honk every time I went around a corner, not let my heart jump into my throat every time I passed a roaring truck on the tiny twisty roads, and learned to maneuver on the tight crowded streets in town. I loved having the freedom to just go wherever we wanted whenever we wanted. It was a sad day the day we returned it to the rental agency. It was wonderful seeing Gramma and Lexie though, and it was really hard to see them go. They did say they would recomend that other people come out and see it, so....keep it coming!!

Gramma at Emerald Pool

Gramma and Lexie at Trafalgar Falls.

This is one of the two falls at Trafalgar Falls, which is now one of my favorite places in Dominica. They are sooo beautiful.

Indian River, one of the places Pirates of the Caribbean II was filmed.

Well, our last piece of news is that Sam had his first Mini of the semester. He said it was harder than any other mini he has ever taken, and he didn't do as well as he had hoped for. It still turned out ok, but he wasn't as happy was he wanted to be. We've been told that 2nd semester is one of the hardest, and we're starting to believe it. Just the amount of work that he is expected to do is incredible. I definately don't envy him.

That about wraps up our news. Hope everything is going well with everyone back home. We miss you all lots, and hope that more of you come to visit us! Love you all!

Love,
Katrina







Kubuli likes the computer, unfortunately.