A weekend well spent

Monday October 19, 2009 10:30 am

Now that is what I call a weekend. Seriously. Srsly.

So, Friday afternoon, I went to the step Aerobics class I take with Sebastien (because I am definitely that cool…) and during the class, all of a sudden the sky darkened and it started dumping. It was like the entire Mississippi river emptied itself on Schœlcher for about 20 minutes.
Side note: one of the cats just caught a bird outside the sliding glass door and sauntered past with it, feathers ruffled, in her mouth. The cats here are hilarious. I spend soooo much time in the morning just watching the kittens play. Sadly, they’re getting rid of them and all we’ll be left with are two puppies barking at midnight and 5 in the morning, biting my ankles as I stumble outside in the morning. That is, until they get the leash/chain to attach them to a tree in the side yard where their motion will be left… potentially for the rest of their lives…
Back to my glorious weekend: Gilbert picked me up and, along with 3 English assistants (who teach a few days a week at the not-university schools (primary and secondary? I’ve started forgetting how to articulate some things in English… gah!) and we drove, through the on and off rain to the southern part of the island (Marin) to check out a Catamaran for the Créole World Music Festival in Dominica we’ve been talking about going to for over a month, now. After a visit to an office (where I struggled to listen to Gilbert and the woman discuss the situation while the 3 English assistants bavarded (bavarder= to chat/talk and sort of just blah blah blah) loudly in English which I found super rude and obnoxious) and a little walk on the pier, I was beyond hungry and Gilbert offered to take us out so we checked out a nice little restaurant near the boardwalk where we ordered a bunch of food. We each got a Créole sangria (Créole because of the rum) and split for the not vegetarians: foie gras raviolis (grosssssss) and Haitian fish (which I tried and felt ambivalent about, like most fish) and for everyone: roasted red pepper/chevre salad and an amazing vegetarian pizza with mushrooms and artichoke hearts and onion and I don’t remember what else. It was delicious. Then we split a couple of desert and I got a coffee. When I got back, I went out on an awkward dinner with Kristen and her friend (it totally would have been way more awkward for her without me… the things you do for friends…) and got home super exhausted. However, I was feeling stressed and anxious but after a much necessary really long late night phone call with a close friend, I decided that this weekend I needed to do absolutely nothing. And I did.
No alarms all weekend, no stressing about things, relaxation and self-allowed freedom to bum around. To start off, I slept in. I haven’t slept in since who knows when and, hilariously, I woke up at 8:45 of my own account. Saturday morning/day involved my usual breakfast and coffee on the balcony, watching distant boats drift across the Caribbean stretching into the infinite horizon, watching kittens fight and play and snuggle and all the cute things kittens do, feeding my favorite kitten my cereal (which I do every morning because it is the smallest and ugliest) and writing an obscenely long letter… which took all day to write. I also received the greatest birthday package OF MY LIFE with organic almond butter and peanut butter and my favorite cereals and my beautiful green birks and Red Rose tea, the smell of which will always mean home. So, I enjoyed an amazing peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich and in the evening, Kristen and I ran laundry and I watched a silly movie with Youma and Jobi and just enjoyed myself and just sort of did things for the sake of doing them. It was absolutely necessary and I feel 100 million percent better after just relaxing my mind and my body and being okay with doing nothing… call it assimilation, if you want. Martiniquais love doing nothing. Let’s hope this doesn’t kill me when I get back to WU. Shoot.
ALSO ON SATURDAY: a carpenter/builder was downstairs ALL DAY and the kitchen is almost ready! We have a working convection oven (anyone know anything about them? I have NO idea how they work) and cupboards and a sink with running water and hopefully the stovetop will have gas hooked up today and we have a beautiful wooden peninsula and a wooden counter (aka gigantic cutting board?).
!!!!!!!!!!!
Sunday was a glorious continuation of Saturday. Again, no alarm but after nearly 2 months of waking up around 6 (and definitely at least before 8), I was up at 6:45. Strange business. Around 10, Florence picked me up and we headed back to their house where I got my other package from Mme Mitrail- I finally have a book for a class and my dictionary! We packed up the car and a cooler and drove to the southern coast, near Marin, Cap Macré to a super beautiful beach where we met up with 3 other families with kids around the same age as Paul and Lucas and everyone in the group was from the Metropole (France).The water was cooler than up here and the waves vicious and ferocious. They repeatedly tried to kill me but I resisted and usually just ended up with sand in my suit. I played with the kids and we all had lunch together. I had a gin and tonic and Florence made a rice salad with tomato, corn, carrot and tuna (“there’s no meat in it!”), and everyone shared. I brought grapes and guavas and was also smart enough to bring my Leatherman (thanks dad!) which turned out to be the only knife anyone brought. There was lots of cake, too. I did some reading for school on the beach, took lots of pictures and walked the length of the beach with all the ladies.
I even arranged some baby sitting deals, starting this Friday! All in days work. When I got home, I ate dinner, hung out with Kristen and did some more studying. I successfully did not get sunburned, but a day in the sun is always exhausting and I did not wake up to my alarm at all this morning. Oh well. Another relaxing morning is nothing to complain about. I have a lot of studying to do this evening but feel alright about it. I think tomorrow I am going to present in my Masters course on Iconography and Myth in the Art and Literature of the Anglophone Caribbean (seeing as we only have 2 courses left). Hopefully the kitchen is ready when I get back tonight.
It’ll be interesting to see whether my professor shows up for class today (seeing as on Friday she decided not to have class after sitting in front of us for 10 or 15 minutes on her laptop while we waited) and I sort of hope she doesn’t. It will give me more time to study and work for my other classes in which the professor is invested in the course, shows up every time and comes prepared with a written out lecture plan, a firm idea in their head of what we’re going to do and the book. If I’m expected to have the book with me, you should too, Mme Maignan. Oh well.