Bear mountain

I enjoyed the wine, chips and gummy worms at the top.

From a birthday stroll through a graveyard.

Last seen in Grand Anse

A classmate once described Grand Anse beach as “Peanut butter and jelly” type of beach. Even though it’s the most well-known and most frequented, it’s still my favourite. No other beach I’ve been to can beat it’s clear waters!

I’ve been swimming there since coming to the island, but this last week I saw some pretty cool things.

 

Like a Moray Eel, sticking it’s head out from a hollow rock. It’s jaws were open and it looked freaky. Those eyes! Leah dove down for a closer look and I was scared it would chomp on her. But it just shut it’s mouth and tucked back into the rock.

National Geographic

 

A tiny jellyfish, clear but outlined in purple-pink. I couldn’t find a similar picture so here’s my artists’ rendition. It was jiggling away, the mushroom top part of it fattening and flattening as it squiggled through the water. I looked up to tell Leah but when I looked back down I couldn’t find it.

Caribbean sea cucumber (NOAA PHOTO BY BECKY A. DAYHUFF)

 

When I learned how to scuba dive, my instructor Ricardo picked one of these up off the seafloor to show me. It felt firmer than I expected, and the size and shape of it made me want to throw it like a football through the water. They’re basically just a gut tube!

I knew all along

But I didn’t want to believe it.

The signs were there.  I stepped over it every day, pretending it wasn’t there.  I  even caught a glimpse once in a while, thought I saw something fly up at me; but I just ran my hands over my pants and still I chose to ignore it.

Until.  I run my blue highlighter dry.  While writing notes for Pharm, where blue means a drug, this won’t do.  My now useless highlighter barrel does not fit in my life anymore, and in line with my clawing toward a more organized, structured life, I go to throw it out in the kitchen bin under the sink.  I open the cupboard door and there it is.  It flashes by.  I can’t ignore it anymore.  A cockroach running across the top of the bin.

I shriek.  I slam shut the door.  I back away.  I don’t throw out the dried highlighter. It’s on my desk.

Right outside my door, just down the steps.  For days.  Dead, on it’s back.  A cockroach.  Surrounded by what can only be tiny cockroach babies, one of which I believe flew up at me as I skipped over it with my dirty laundry bag.

In other news: I hate you mosquito, get out of my room and out of my life.

Levera beach and two mother turtles.

 

 

 

On the full moon, a bus of us went 2 hours up to the north point of the island, to Levera Beach.  Under red lights we watched a leatherback turtle carefully dig out a hole with her hind flippers and in a trance, she laid 100 eggs, yolk and yolkless.  She covered them up with sand, and whipped sand back behind her with her front flippers.  Exhausting, she rested once in a while.  Sand whipped at our ankles as she adjusted position again and again.  Swinging her hind flippers side to side, then stamping down on the sand with them.  Again and again.

Further down the beach another turtle had finished her camouflage.  She flopped and slid slowly and awkwardly forward in the sand, making a large arc toward us, then past us toward the water.  She rested.  She continued, and the waves lapped up onto her.  They hit her face and flew up around her.  She continued to head home toward the water and the moonlight shining off the waves.  The waves flew at her again and again, and she must have known she was almost there.  Finally the beach bottom gave way and she was floating.  We saw the top of  her leathery shell bob at the surface, and another wave crashed over her.  She slid peacefully through the wave, smooth and graceful, then she was gone.

Maybe we’ll see her again in West Africa, maybe in Newfoundland.

 

Stop The Tar Sands

Not surprising but still ultimately sad. The guardian’s take here, which nicely sums up the (non)-repercussions of backing out of Kyoto at this point, and what it would have taken to meet Kyoto (it’s true that by now it was way too late).

From PostNoBills:

The Canadian government currently lead by Prime-Minister Stephen Harper is not gambling with our future, gambling implies that we are unsure of the result, Stephen Harper, his governement and the governemnt of Alberta lead by current premier Alison Redford as well as the various vested buisness interests are plainly and simply destroying our environment. Here are a couple of quick facts: About 90% of the water used to process the Tar Sands ends up in acutely toxic tailing ponds that line the Athabaska River and threaten the health of the whole river basin. For every barrel of oil extracted, six barrels of tailings are produced.  [Steph: For every 1 barrel of oil extracted, 3 barrels of water are used.] According to a recent Environmental Defense report, the ponds are already leaking over 11 million litres a day of contaminated water into the environment. Should proposed projects proceed on schedule, 2012 would see a five-fold increase, to over 25 billion litres a year.

For such a vast and beautiful country, full of boreal forrests and fresh water it is quite sickening that we are also responsible for one of the largest projects that is causing such catastrophic environmental damage to the entire planet. It comes as no surprise that Canada’s current political leaders would be withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocal. When you’re running one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emisions it makes no business sense to have to pay for it, does it? The fight is not about Kyoto now, it is about stopping the tar sands. How much more of the future are we willing to forsake to run the present day. We should be talking about sustainability not profitabilty.

postnobillz

“It’s in the way we live our lives exactly like the double-edge of a cold familiar knife and supremacy weighs heavy on the day it’s never really what you own but what you threw away and how much did you pay?”
Greg Graffin

Today it was announced that Canada will be withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol. It’s not too hard to see why, all one has to do is look towards Alberta and the Oil Sands. “The Alberta Oil Sands Operation are the largest single point source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada” Source, desmogblog.com If current development plans proceed, by 2020 the Tar Sands will release twice as many greenhouse gases as are currently produced by all the cars and trucks in Canada.

The Canadian government currently lead by Prime-Minister Stephen Harper is not gambling with our future, gambling implies that we are unsure of the result, Stephen…

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Just amblin’

Finished the micro exam today! Just 1 more to go on Monday, Clinical Skills and Physical Diagnosis.

Yesterday there was a “Grenadian traffic jam” when a car was walking down the middle of the road.  It ran off to the side, the cars passed, then it stuck to the sidewalk and passed by.  Then it started running (galloping?), crossed the street and jumped up onto the other sidewalk.  Moo Mad Cow!

I love when cows stop traffic.

Term 3 road trip memories

Beach sprout.

The beach sprout's beach view

Cloud beam / Sun beam

Sun rays from my front porch.