Welcome to Kirani Country! (8.8.12)

As soon as we landed in Grenada, we walked off the plane to a live band playing Caribbean music, as well as being offered the authentic spiced rum and Grenadian pastries. Unfortunately, our hands were full of heavy bags so we had to decline. We stood in line for a little while to turn in our out of the country paper work and then went to get our bags. Our first purchase in Grenada- luggage carts! There was no way we were going to be able to carry or roll all of our bags, unless we wanted to take 5 trips to get them all out of the airport. But after a few minutes, we had located most of our bags. It started to get very chaotic because airport workers came in and started piling bags in lines off of the belt right where we were standing to make it less jammed on the belt (it really just made it more confusing). Not long after, we realized that we could not find one of our bags. I must have gone back and worth through those lines of bags that the workers had pulled off the belt 8 times, thinking that our last bag would just miraculously appear...but it didn't. So we stood in another line- the missing bag line. The weird thing was that there were about 50 people in line who had missing bags and about 30 unclaimed bags that had been left from our flight. Hmm...

About an hour had gone back and we were finally able to report our bag. At first I thought that it was my bag of clothes which would have been a disaster when they told us that it would most likely be 3 days since the next flight wasn't coming until Friday night. (I would not have been a happy camper in my exercise PANTS and t-shirt in this hot weather for the next three days) I then looked in another pocket and realized that we had my clothes bag and the only bag that was missing had toiletries and other miscellaneous items in it. Praise Jesus! A cool thing that happened though was Ashkon met one of his BioChem professors who was standing in line behind us because yes they has lost her bag too...Gotta love Grenada (more stories like this to come)...But it was really neat that they got to chat for a while, she gave him some advice and told him to email her anytime, and she was able to put a face to a name before class had even started! (One good thing out of a seemingly frustrating situation)

Then we were off to customs aka another line. After starting the day at 3AM, delays like we were having got old really quickly. But another praise yet again- we thought that we had to be taxed on both of our computers (don't ask me why), however, when it got to be our turn we were told that only Ashkon's would be taxed because he was a student! So that saved us a couple bucks! Unfortunately, our next event did not...

As soon as we walked out the door of the airport, we were somewhat bombarded with being asked if we needed a taxi. We gladly accepted one of the first who asked us (We think, it was kind of hard to see who asked first when 5 guys are asking at the same time). Anyways, a gentleman nicely helped us with our luggage (not the first to comment on how much we had). We didn't really know where we were staying that night but we did have the name and the reservation papers of the hotel which was a start (And the driver knew where it was which was an added plus)! We were pleasantly surprised when we had reached our destination in less than 3 minutes. We were very unpleasantly surprised when we were told the price of our taxi- $10 US!! Really?? We tried not to dwell on it even thought we were completely ripped off. We had made it and in the morning we would get to see our new home! And that was the thought we went to sleep on...