Being back in Grenada for the weekend was a surreal experience; seeing all the people and places I thought I wouldn't see for a while, if ever again. Actually, it wasn't too bad, mostly because I knew I was just visiting and would be leaving again. And best of all, it was all free. The trip started out on Thursday evening when I boarded a [1] Dash-8 turboprop at the E.T. Joshua Airport in St. Vincent. The 25-minute flight ended up being over an hour, since we had to circle the Point Salines International Airport repeatedly while we waited for some rain to clear up. My first thought was, "Rain? At least it's not snow, why don't they just land already?" When we finally did land, I understood the pilots wise decision to delay touching down, since even with the rain abating the plane ended up slightly off the center line and skidding. When I tried to get off the plane, it was another half an hour of waiting while the flight attendant passed out rain ponchos and everyone had to put them on one-by-one. Really people, you won't melt from a little bit of water. I doubt Grenada has enough polluting industries to cause significant amounts of acid rain.

After getting picked up from the airport, my "co-coordinator" and I headed over to the Instructor's Meeting. He disappeared somewhere, and it was really too bad for him, since after the meeting the CPR course director suggested we go to the University Club for dinner. Now most students are never allowed in the University Club, since a Faculty/Staff member must accompany them and agree to pay with their personal account. I had been twice before for end-of-term RA dinners, where we were served excellent buffets, but I was excited because this was the first time I would be able to order off of the menu. I chose a nice Fillet Mignon, and it had to be one of the best cuts of meat that I have ever had in Grenada, or anywhere else in recent memory. Best of all, it was yet again "free," since we had to have a CPR dinner meeting.

After dinner, I was dropped off at the [2] Cinnamon Hill Hotel, where the school had reserved two two-bedroom villas for all of the St. Vincent instructors. It was a nice hotel, (even if some of the decor and appliances were stuck in the 70's), and there was plenty of space.

On Friday, I did a little bit more prep work, including copying, etc. in the afternoon. I also managed to get a hold of the RA van for transportation for the weekend. The supervisor on-duty is a really cool guy and just gave it to me without even asking me why I needed it. He probably thought I was still an RA. (Last term I did manage to drive all the RA's to the end-of-term dinner in the brand new Supervisor van without "bouncing" it, so I guess he trusted me, plus I did have official permission from a faculty member to check out whatever vehicle I could get my hands on to drive the instructors back and forth to the hotel.) In the evening, I gave a lecture/demonstration on CPR to over 200 first-term students. I think I did a relatively ok job, balancing the need to get them to learn something, and their desire to get out of there. I did it last term as well, so it wasn't really too stressful.

The next two days were spent doing CPR sessions 16 hours a day, so that we could train 389 students and random other people in a single weekend. Occasionally I ended up teaching some of the more specialized stations, i.e. AED or Airway, but most of my time was spent with paperwork and dealing with primadonna CPR instructors that only wanted the easiest stations, or didn't bother to show up at all. Well, that and eating. Each CPR session is theoretically catered, but this year they seemed to get a bit more stingy than last, having significantly less food. Luckily for the SVG instructors, we were given 250EC (~$90US) in "chits" (food coupons) that we could use at the on-campus restaurants. Most of us had enough left over that we went on a shopping spree in the on-campus convenience store.

Saturday night was spent with a few friends in a local bar over some beers. Unfortunately, they had an exam on Monday, so we couldn't keep them out too late.

On Sunday evening, it was time to head back to St. Vincent. We managed to make it to the airport on time, despite some people's best efforts to delay us by having luggage so heavy they could not carry it (for a whole 3 days!). The flight back was a little rough with turbulence. I actually got a little nauseous on the plane for the first time that I can remember. Probably not helping the situation was the guy sitting in front of me — he reeked just like some of the routine "urban outdoorsmen" drunks that EMS pulls off the street and dumps into the ED. On a side note, he also had some of the most pronounced finger clubbing that I had ever seen.

After making it off the plane, we headed back home, and I promptly went to sleep, exhausted from the weekend.