A Double Rainbow Welcome

Houston we have landed!  We have successfully made the hard transition from snowy PA to warm, breezy, 85 degree Caribbean weather.  Steph and Becca travelled from Newark, NJ while Fran and Dr Billek travelled from Pittsburgh and we travelled together from Miami to Vieux Fort, St Lucia.  However, some of us….ahem Dr Billek and Fran…somehow got bumped to 1^st class and had a salmon lunch, homemade cookies, and warmed nuts while Steph and Becca were left with nothing but granola bars and goldfish that we could warm if we sat on them.  Oh the wonderful world of food-less flights these days.  Steph & I sat next to a father who was telling us all about his daughter’s applications to PT school.  We put a plug in for SRU ;-)

As we drew closer to St Lucia, the water was calm and blue and suddenly a gorgeous green mountainous expanse appeared as we flew across the whole island in a matter of 5 minutes.  To top it off, upon turning around to land the run way, we saw the most gorgeous double full circle rainbow across the blue Caribbean sea.  We couldn’t get a picture of the whole circle from the plane window, but as you can imagine it was beautiful!  Upon landing we were immediately met by a splash of warm air and a 1.5 hour wait in an immigration line followed by another wait for our driver to come.  We were met by a volunteer coordinator from HVO who showed us to our apartment then we met up with an orthopedic spine surgeon volunteer for some grocery shopping and our first full meal in 24 hours…for the non-1^st class fliers anyway :-P  

We are quickly settling into our new environment.  We are staying in an apartment amongst a local community.  We took a little walk up and down the dirt streets tonight (don’t worry moms, we were advised it was very safe) and were greeted by many in their traditional “Hello, good night” phrase.  It was strange to hear a greeting and farewell all in the same phrase.  We passed a TON of stray dogs and even a couple of horses.  When we got back to the apartment we discovered a little lizard we named Waldo and have been following him around.  His favorite spot is under the TV but has enjoyed exploring our new medical supply bag as well.  Stayed tuned next time for where’s Waldo?  We even have fans and a TV in our accommodations, but the plugs needed a lil “hankerin”.  Nothing Steph couldn’t fix with a boo-boo sticker to hold all the adaptors together so we wouldn’t have to hold the plug all night and then Fran fixed the TV with some string.  And with that we are off to bed with hopes the fans work all night ;-)  Stay tuned!