If home is where the heart is, then ours is Tennessee.

Hello again! You have probably given up on me! After all this time it's hard to know where to start! Our last few weeks in Dominica flew by and were very bittersweet. We said goodbye to a place that is filled with memories and adventures and that will always be very special to us. We said goodbye to friends who we may not see again until graduation in 2011. We also said goodbye to a lifestyle that was very simple (which I found refreshing most of the time). When we are in Tennessee Ryan and I kind of feel like our life in Dominica is a secret world that doesn't exist to anybody but us. I know that sounds weird, but I bet other Ross friends know what I mean by that. God blessed our time in Dominica more that we could have hoped or imagined. Don't get me wrong, we are very excited to be living back in America! Our last semester in Dominica was Ryan's best semester yet! I'm so proud of how hard he studied and how disciplined he was the whole time we were in Dominica. Ryan and I ran around the island during our last few days and tried to take a bunch of pictures. There is a new hotel/restaurant called De Champs. It's really nice...Dominica really improved a lot while we were there! Here are some pictures of the view. We also went there our 2nd to last night and sang karaoke with a bunch of our friends (Ryan didn't sing, of course)!

A view of campus from De Champ.

This is the only Texaco in Portsmouth.






Here is the National Bank of Dominica in Portsmouth.

This is from Hurricane Omar. This boat will probably sit right here for years.

This is a typical house for a Dominican local. Some houses are nicer, but it is not unusual for someone to have a home this size.

This is the "auto shop" where we took our car to get worked on. No matter what we needed done, Dwayne was able to fix it in about 20 min and for about $10. Now why can't that be the case in the U.S.??

Ryan and Dwayne. Dwayne was married to the lady that did our laundry, so in addition to being our mechanic, he came to our apartment every Monday to pick up and drop off our laundry.









Silver Lining (with Adam in front).

The river by our apartment.

This picture somehow worked its way into the middle of this blog, but I decided to leave it! This year for Christmas we decided to exercise our right to bear arms. Santa brought my brother and my husband a handgun (38 special). I chose handbags instead! One day I went with Ryan to practice shooting the gun. I've shot his shotguns (hunting guns) before, but I was more nervous shooting the handgun. This is my target...I'm a pretty good shot! I named our gun The Enforcer.
And now it's time for what I like to call the "Coming Home" story... (deep breath) Theo picked us up early Saturday morning, Dec 20th. I didn't sleep much the night before because I was excited about coming home and trying to clean our apartment and be sure we had everything packed and that our bags were not going to be too heavy. I took my Dramamine, but still got carsick. When we got to the airport we were very nervous because the day before one of our friends got on and off of 2 planes and ended up having to go back to her apartment. We got our bags checked in (they were over their weight limit but we were able to pay and didn't have to throw anything away). We hung around outside the airport and visited with Pastor Ed and Cindee. It was very sad telling them goodbye! We appreciate them so much and can't tell you how much they impacted our time on Dominica. We went through security and into this small room (see pic). We got to the airport over 3 hours before our flight was supposed to leave and our flight left 2.5 hours late. We were stuck in this tiny, overly crowded room for about 5 hours with nothing to eat or drink. Nobody made an announcement about our flight so we had no idea where it was, if it was coming, or if we were going to have to go back to Portsmouth. Everyone was very stressed and was calling Liat, parents, etc. Rumor was that air traffic control in Antigua was on strike (we had to go to Antigua to catch our next flight). After an extremely frustrating 5 hours, we boarded our flight for the very short trip to Antigua (about 30 min). When we got to Antigua...this is SO stupid...we had to go through customs and immigration. The line was very long and as we were standing in it final calls for flights that some of our friends were on were being announced over the loud speaker. They were stuck in Antigua overnight. Ryan and I rushed as fast as possible to fill out the customs forms (purpose of visit - to catch a flight, length of stay - 20 min?). Again, stupid. We had to find our bags and run outside the airport to the American Airlines counter to check in for our next flight. We were heading towards the gate when the lady was saying "final call to check in for flight 1906 to Miami". Ryan said "yes, that's us" and she hung up the phone, pushed a button on her computer and said "I'm sorry, sir, but that flight just closed". WHAT?!?! Now this is the first time in my life when I actually wanted to cause a scene. I didn't say a word and Ryan remained very calm (you have to remember that we spent the past 5 hours herded in a locked room like cattle in a train car, so we weren't cheery). Our flight was not scheduled to leave for 43 minutes! And we were in a small airport where we easily could have been on the plane in 10 minutes. We stood at the AA counter as the remaining people from our Dominica flight hurried to the counter and we told them what was happening. People lost it. They were throwing luggage and cussing and just having hissy fits. Nobody was helping us or telling us anything. That flight was the last AA flight of the day. So, here we are, just a few days before Christmas stuck in Antigua where we don't have a cell phone that works and we don't have any money for that country either. I stayed at the AA counter and waited for someone to come talk to us while Ryan went to every single airline counter to try to figure something out. He called his dad and brother collect and we managed to get on a flight with U.S. Airways to Charlotte. We had to repurchase a plane ticket, which brought the cost of getting home that day to about $4,000. LIAT from Dom to Antigua was about $475, AA from Antigua to Nashville was about $1750 and the new US Airways tickets from Antigua to Nashville were $1400. You may wonder why we didn't make AA help us rather than repurchasing tickets, well, as I mentioned it was just a few days before Christmas and they were saying that it was not their fault that we missed the plane (because LIAT was late). We ended up running through security and making the flight to Charlotte. We were starving and spent about $20 buying food on the plane. We didn't care we were just so happy to be in a plane that was landing in America. We ended up leaving Antigua late and getting to Charlotte late. We rushed off the plane (there was a lot of rushing going on) and when we got to customs we just relaxed because we knew we weren't making our flight to Nashville. There were probably 400 people in line. The airline ended up paying for us to stay in a hotel. The transport to take us to the hotel was full so I had to ride in Ryan's lap (with my head ducked down to keep from hitting the top of the van). When we pulled up to our hotel there were about 5 police cars out front and an arrest was being made. I asked our driver what was going on and he held his hand up and said "See how my hand's swole? That's from knocking that fool out 2 days ago." Not really an answer to my question, but whatever. We checked into the hotel and got a wake up call for about 4 hours later. When we got in the room we were as exhausted as 2 people can be. Ryan got on the phone to order pizza and I headed straight for the bathroom. When I lifted up the back of the toilet I almost threw up...it was full of poop...and brown water. I ran out of the bathroom flew the door shut and announced that we would be holding it until we got back to the airport in 4 hours. Under any other circumstances we would have changed rooms, but with the day we had had, the fact that the hotel was free (and full), and the fact that we only had 4 hours made me just crawl in bed and try not to think about it. We finally made it home Sunday morning. When I saw myself in the mirror I looked like I had been beaten up and left out in the rain. It was a long, long trip home, but we were HOME!!! I took the best shower of my life and that was the beginning of an amazing Christmas! American Airlines ended up refunding us the full amount for our tickets! Christmas was just wonderful and we are now preparing for our life in Miami. Ryan is there now studying for the Comp and I just returned from visiting Andrea and Kyle in Chicago! I had SO much fun and didn't want to leave! Ok, back to the pictures. One of the pictures is of Theo and Me. I think he took me to/from the airport 17 times (I think my first trip from the airport was the only time he didn't drive me). These are the sisters from our favorite restaurant, Sisters. There is more to write about, but I'll save it for another day. I need to come up with a new name for our blog since we will be living in Miami and not the Nature Isle. Any suggestions?