St. Vincent’s

ARRIVING

              Before you arrive, you need to have everything settled.  This means getting your friends together to rent a house or an apartment, sending one of them over to St. Vincent on a plane ($160, 30 minutes), talking to Landlords and Car Rental places, and handing over a deposit.  Third term with its easier schedule should give you plenty of time to accomplish this and will make the time leading up to your final term in the islands much less stressful.  The laziest way (which I recommend) is to keep in touch with someone in the term ahead of you, have them send you pictures and contact information, and then just take over their home and vehicle when it is time.

WHAT TO SHIP

The day after you take your Pathology final in Fourth Term, SGA will organize a day or two when you can conveniently ship the essentials to St. Vincent.  Keep in mind that anything you ship there has to get home somehow.  The things you will definitely need are few.  St. Vincent is a simpler term, and the things you could not live without in Grenada will not be missed once you get caught up in the busy schedule of St. Vincent. 

The grocery stores in St. Vincent have a fewer toiletries than the IGA in Grenada, so you may want to go to the trouble of shipping your half used pack of q-tips instead of just throwing them out.  While I am on the subject, some things are better in St. Vincent and some things will make you long for the “selection” at IGA.  The amount of available produce in St. Vincent is much better than Grenada.  It is not like Grenada where you pray for tomatoes to be available at the Grocery store.  In St. Vincent, fruits and vegetables are plentiful and inexpensive.

BOOKS

Let me preface this by saying the Library on the St. Vincent campus is very complete.  Space wise, it is not very large, in fact most would call it tiny at best.  If you enjoy studying on the lap of the person next to you, you will find it very cozy.  However, what it lacks in room, it makes up for in content.  The book collection is extensive and you can check out books for a full week.  They have Robbins, all the BRS books, First Aid for the USMLE, and enough copies of Netter for each student to plaster their walls with his artwork.  The point being you do not need to ship any books to St. Vincent.  The ones that you will need to reference are readily available from the library. 

However, if you are not a library person, or if you need to highlight every sentence you read, you may want to consider bringing your Robbins and your Physio book of choice.  I often need to reference my Costanzo book in order to remember the physiology behind a particular Pathophys topic.  You do not need to bring your Big Bates.  You most likely will never look at it, and if you get the urge to read up on the proper way to conduct an abdominal exam, the library has tons of copies for your reference. 

La SOUFRIERE

            The class, under the direction of Hans Baer, makes a trip to St. Vincent’s volcano.  It is a three-mile hike up to the lip, through three grueling stages including “Stairway to Heaven.”  On the way, you will see a river carved by lava flow, shacks, and huge bamboo chutes.  However, the rewards are on the lip and this is where people make mistakes.  Most people spend the 45 minutes hiking up, look into the lip, catch their breath, and eat some peanut butter before heading back down.  If you instead hike around the lip (bring a machete) you will find a lake for swimming, the marijuana fields, and enjoy scenery that most people glaze past.  For the intrepid, there is a rope ladder for descending into the crater.  Do not just go for the afternoon; make a day of it.