1 November 2008 - Saturday

Happy Halloween!

Another month is over and we're now in the final few days before the historic presidential election. We'll be watching closely, along with a majority of the local Grenadians!

Today we attended our 3rd hash. Since Halloween was yesterday, we were told it was "mandatory" that we come in "fancy dress" (costume). So we both threw together a costume, with items we had in our closets. I found a pair of Scott's camoflaged army pants and a camo "do-rag", so I decided to try to build a costume around that. End result was... I was Rambo-ette and Scott was a lumberjack. The hash started at Grand Anse Beach (the tourist beach) and took us nearly 2 hours to finish! That first hill was so steep... and long... that I thought we were hiking all the way to heaven!!! It was actually a road, but I can't imagine actually trying to drive a car up that hill! The locals don't really celebrate Halloween like we do in the states, so we got quite a few questionable looks as we passed by their homes along the way! Nevertheless, we were greeted with numerous smiles when they realized we were in costume (and not just a bunch of wierdos)! At the end of the evening, they awarded prizes to the best costumes and Scott & I both won a bottle of rum each! It was loads of fun! We also met a few more people that we may spend some more time with in the coming weeks. One girl (Debbie) is from Florida, but has been living on a boat with her boyfriend for the past 5 years! She was dressed as a pirate. I was happy to meet another American... there are so few of them here! Most of the Americans we run into here are students at the medical university.

It looks like the cruise ship season has begun! During the month of October there were only a total of 5 ships that stopped here. But Friday began a run of at least 3 straight days when there was a cruise ship docked at the pier. During the month of November Grenada is expecting nearly 40,000 cruise ship passengers to visit... a very welcome time of year for the locals.

On another note... tonight those of you in the states will be turning your clocks back an hour. Here in the Caribbean, there is no need to use daylight savings time... since we're closer to the equator, we have nearly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness year round. So there is no need to change the clocks. So starting tomorrow, we'll be an hour ahead of the east coast.

That's all for now!