New Drivers Licenses and other random stuff

By Scott:

Now that both our passports are stamped with work permits the time had come to get drivers licenses. So this morning, Katie and I went down to the Cayman Department of Licensing to put in the paperwork and turn in our Texas licenses. We borrowed the van and headed to George Town. The office was in a building above a Wendy's. We spent about an hour getting everything done and then had to go to a second office a few blocks away to get our licenses since the machine that creates them at the first office was down. Interestingly, they did not take our Texas licenses but returned them. We asked if they needed them and they said no. We are checking back with TXDOT to find out what we need to do, the last thing we want is to get called for jury duty based on our Texas licenses not show up and then when we do eventually return have an outstanding warrant for failure to appear, so we are checking whether we need to send them back, put them on some abated status like my law license or what?

We made a brief stop in the Wendy's for my first fast food in months (Katie was not happy but did steal some of my fries and a bite of my hamburger). After a run over to the University College to pick up a textbook order that had inadvertently been shipped to the wrong college we headed back to Newlands. On the way back to the college we stopped off at a bookstore and put in a pre-order for the final Harry Potter book. On the morning of the 21'st we plan to bike to the store pick up the book and then head to a beach to do some reading.

Today might be a holiday back in the States but it was just another work day here on the Island. I had a meeting late in the day with the Cayman Islands Society of Professional Accountants looking for new faculty, grants and partnership possibilities. That also meant another experience with 5 O'clock George Town traffic though I now know to take South Sound road out, its a longer route but less traffic. We thought the pace of work might slow with registration over but if anything it has gotten even crazier. We are now dealing with a wide variety of issues from academic audits, institutional reports and our accreditation status to budgets and even textbook orders. It is overwhelming at times and everything seems like it is in emergency status. The days seem to fly by.

Katie is fully recovered from last Sunday's episode. On Tuesday we biked down to the Savannah post office to check for a package from my Mom and also to get some groceries at Fosters which is about a block and a half from the post office and everything went fine. We will probably do an early morning ride tomorrow to check again on the package and get more groceries and if that goes well will do something a little longer this weekend. Of course we will be taking into account all the lessons we learned last weekend. We bike down at least twice a week for groceries because we cant carry much and also because with no refrigerator except the small faculty one in the admin building we cant store much so there is no point in a big shopping trip for food. It is good exercise and also gives us an excuse to leave the college during the week. We are still holding off on getting a car and so long as the rainy season continues to be mild we are sticking with bikes as the preferred mode of transportation (sorry Texas you seem to be getting all our rain).

Katie is trying to keep up with birthday cards so if you were a June birthday and haven't yet gotten a card keep an eye out the mail here is pretty slow, it is on the way.