Grocery Run

Grocery shopping in St. Vincent is always an experience.  You never quite know what to expect.
Every Saturday and Sunday, the school sends the vans to the various apartments to take people on the grocery run. Thankfully for us, there is also a small grocery store a short walk away, so if we run out of something midweek, we can possibly get it.
Since we ride the van to the grocery store,  it's important to bring bags to help carry the groceries. Some students even bring a small suitcase.
The school takes us to two grocery stores. The first of these is called Sunrise Supermarket, and it is located in Arnos Vale across from the airport. It is always busy on Saturday when we go. Since the prices are generally lower at Sunrise, we do most of our shopping there. 

Luke and I usually start at the back of the store where we find our bread and meat. The bread here is very fresh and comes in tied off plastic bags.

 Next, we look for eggs, which are not always available. Our favorite meat to buy is the boneless chicken breast, product of USA, but Sunrise hasn't had any of that for two weeks. You quickly learn that if a store has something you want, purchase it right away and buy more than you would normally because you don't know if it will be there again. Thankfully flour, sugar, and rice seem to be readily available and inexpensive. They also come in tied off plastic bags in 1, 3, or 5 pound quantities.

Normal sticks of butter I have yet to see, so we buy HollyBush brand butter which comes more in a square shape.

Butter isn't always available. There was no real butter at Sunrise this week, but thankfully we found it at another store.
We buy our cheese in a large block. Shredded cheese is available, but more expensive than the block. We usually buy gala apples, potatoes, carrots, and lettuce. This week they even had asparagus. You just never know what you'll find. Olive oil is extremely pricey,  so we purchased vegetable oil instead. Our milk comes in 1 liter boxes, but it tastes pretty good and isn't too expensive.

I always get excited when I recognize an American brand. Shur Fine, Post, Wishbone, Hunts, Healthy Choice, and Philadelphia are all brands we've purchased. We've even found our favorite Doritos here.
At Sunrise, Trinity students get a discount, so that is a blessing. It always throws me off seeing the prices of everything. We use the Eastern Caribbean Dollar, which is much weaker than the US dollar. The exchange rate is about 2.6, so I usually divide the price by three to get an idea of what I'm actually spending in US money as opposed to EC.
After everyone loads back into the van, we drive up the road to the Massy Store. Massy tends to have more frozen foods and meat available. This week we found frozen pizza. We usually try to purchase everything on our list that we couldn't find at Sunrise, but sometimes it isn't available at Massy either.
Grocery shopping here is always an experience, and you never know what you'll find. They have chicken feet and cow hooves.

Some areas of the store don't smell so great. I walked up the road to Randy' s Supermarket with my neighbor today, and they had some sort of meat and fish that smelled terrible. The prices aren't always clearly marked either. I can usually find raisins pretty reasonably priced at Randy' s, which is nice since they've been very expensive anywhere else.
I don't think I'll ever take Wal-Mart for granted again. Instead of planning meals ahead and shopping for ingredients, you have to see what you can find and make meals from what you have. Grocery shopping definitely an experience, one that can't be completely explained, but I hope I've given you a little idea of our crazy adventure.