Slippers – Sandles
Pass by – Come by my house
E-Twee - pencil case
Sweet Biscuit - Cookie
Twinkies - the hair that sticks up on the back of your head
Plats - braids
Todd is doing really well in school. I his average in all of his classes right now a High Pass (HP) or Honours (H). I’m very proud of how well he’s doing, he is really a very smart guy and he works extremely hard. The other night he pulled an all nighter which caught me off guard in the morning – I slept right through him being gone. And oddly enough I had an awesome sleep – hehe. But he did really good on the exam that he was studying for 91.7% – a subject he was a little worried about. It was the organic chemistry.
Todd school had a mini basketball tournament for the students a while back and we all went to watch him and cheer him on. It was entertaining to watch and the kids had fun running around. Unfortunately it got a little too competitive in one of Todds games – I actually ran home and missed that one. Todd said it was a good thing because this one guy just got way out of control. Worse than your worst Southern Albertan b-ball player! Hehe That’s bad!
The kids shooting around with Daddy at a break time.
The kids are doing good in school, every time the girls come home from school they say it was AWESOME! Which is wonderful to hear compared to their first reactions when we first go to the island, it just took some adjustments and they are having a wonderful time. I am a little worried as to whether they are at the same level of curriculum at home, I think I’m going to have to look at that a little closer. Jase is doing well, his Calvert curriculum is very demanding and we spend hours doing homework after school, as late as 9 or 10 some nights. Sometimes his concentration level isn’t quite constant but it is a lot of work and I am looking forward to the end, I guess that’s grade 5 for you.
Every month the girls school has a theme they follow and the theme for February was Black History Month. They had an activity where the went on excursions to various backyards gardens and learned about gardening on the Island. But the fun part was the closing activity at the end of the month. It was called ‘Remembering Food of the Past.” They had on display various ways in which they prepared the local dishes back in the aweful days of slavery. And they had them on for a small fee to try them. They had:
Parching peanuts in a pot with sand
Baked Johnny cake on a plate
Potato John
Baked potato in cow dung
Pumpkin fritters cooked on coal pot
Yam and salt fish
Lemon and lime fish
Potato pudding
We tried pretty much everything we missed the Pumpkin fritters, and the lemon lime fish but we tried it all. It was all really good.
Uncle Ishmeal welcoming everyone out to the celebration.
This is how they would parch their peanuts, in hot sand and mix it around to keep them from burning. The kids got a chance to stir the peanuts. They can grow peanuts on the island and you can buy lots of raw peanuts in the shell at the local grocery stores.
Making Johnny cake on a hot skillet over hot coals. The cast iron cookery in these pictures are antiques used from Uncle Ishmaels museum he has – from his parents.
I love this picture of Courtney! This is a sample of some of the food we bought to try.
The leaf has a story also. Court and I came to pick Katie up from afternoon school to find out that she went home on the bus. Uncle Ismael was trying to set everything up so we helped with getting the cast iron cookery, hulled dung, and potatoes helped with little odds and ends. And then Uncle Ishmael wanted to have plates like they did in the olds days. So we went to his Sea Grape tree and picked leaves, washed and dried them for the gathering. It turned out that no one really wanted to use them – just the regular store bought plates, so in some of the pictures you can see a dish drying rack with a cloth over the leaves we washed. But I wanted to get a picture of food on the plate – hence the pic of Court!
Last Uncle Ishmael stirring the dung coals and baked potatoes.
The potatoes were actually a kind of sweet potatoes or Yam. They were actually really very good! When would you ever get to experience something like that in your life! And the kids really liked them too, I even told them what it was cooked in and they didn’t even flinch – it was just yummy. Amazing what people were able to do to make the best of their circumstances. It was a really nice afternoon.
There is always family coming to visit a student on the island and not long ago the husband of a friend we made here came to visit with their super cute little girl. Marlin, Hansel and Molly. They are a really sweet family from NY and have been so kind to the kids and us. We had them over a couple of times and had their little girl, Molly, over to play. There have been a few time when Courtney has asked to have Molly over or “I miss Molly” so we know they had a lot of fun together. Until next time!
Hansel was so kind enough to bring the kids some kites from NY to fly, he even brought Todd and I each a pair of sandals!
Well we have found ballet on the island – or well Ballet has been brought to us! A friend of mine named Jacintha works as a teacher in the schools and works with the youth has brought a gentleman from St. Maarten to work with the students in movement and Ballet. His name is Jerry. He was living, dancing and teaching in Chicago for 18 years before he came back so St. Maarten to try and help the local communities of the islands. Well there has been some success with the students and she asked him to do a ballet class for kids and have an adult class as well. To make a long story short it all worked out and the girls and I are taking classes from Jerry. I think the dance company he works for is called Motion Dance or something like that in St. Maarten. I was concerned about the consistency of the program in getting the girls to be accurate in their movements and body position, I felt dumb asking him but he was completely on the same page and said he totally understood where I was coming from and anyway I am quite happy with him and his ability to teach the girls proper. Its fun to watch the girls dance and then right after I enjoy having my butt kicked during my workout/dance exercise class. I have never been sorer after a workout in years – I love it! And I love the price too! Only $60 per month for all three of us and our hour long classes once a week. Its a great deal because the teacher has to fly in every week for the class. I can say all us girls look forward to our Thursday late afternoons with Jerry! (Looks like I need to get a picture of Jerry! I only have a cut off part of him!)
The kids had a week off for spring break in March with Todd in school I decided to take them on a hike up the Quill. We had our snacks and water and made it up there having lots of fun, and the kids decided that they wanted to keep going down into the crater of the volcano. So off we went down. It was a little tricky at first I had to put Courtney on my back for a while until she was comfortable. They really wanted to go down so we kept on going. It was definitely harder going down then coming back up with all the big boulders you bad to climb down, and wholes you needed to dodge but it was really worth it. (I took these pictures with our little camera so they are not as good).
On the way down we ran into one of Jase and Katies Junior Ranger leaders and she was down there counting different butterfly species.
It is like a rain forest, I think it is technically call a rainforest down in there. You could hear all the birds chirping, the trees were amazingly beautiful and huge, it was so green and lush. I loved it in there and I think the kids loved it too.
For the picture above if you can see these huge trees weren’t sitting on the ground, it looked like the trees were suspended by their roots going into the ground, it was something else.
Todd and I went snorkeling together the other day, and we went to this one area where a couple of turtles have made it their area to live for a while. We were trying to move slow as to not scare them, one wasn’t interested in us but the other one was. It was circling and going back and forth around us checking us out just like we were to him/her. It was getting really close so close that Todd reached out and rubbed her back, and she let him, and she kept swimming around us. It was my turn and I touched her back. It was so neat and the turtle just kept swimming around checking us out. So the next day Todd decided to go and see her again and she was still there doing the same thing checking Todd out and he touched her and got some really nice pictures of her. I’m not saying it a good idea to be touching wild turtles because they could bite your finger off, but it was an awesome experience!
Katie and her friends, Emily and Salwa made a little shop on the beach. They had collected a bunch of Conch, sea glass and different little shells to try and have a beach version of a Lemonade Stand. Thanks to some very kind people who bought some of the girls’ beach items, where they could have found their own for free on the beach themselves, the girls were very happy with their hard work and $3.00 of proceeds! It was pretty cute to watch how excited they were to show their inventory to prospective shoppers.
Just a note – the brick building in this picture is over 300 years old like a lot of the buildings around!
Katie and Courtney went to a birthday party the other day for a little girl turning ten from their school. We actually use to live right across the street from them and every once and a while we see them when we pass by and visit for a minute. So this was Jasharia’s birthday party and pretty much every kids in the neighborhood was invited! The girls said they had an awesome time with the loud music and all the rambunctious play! They sang happy birthday but it is a little different than at home. While singing – the same tune – they don’t put a name in they just keep singing happy birthday to you, then the next verse is ‘how old are you?’ with the same tune, and the next verse is, depending on how old you are Jasharia turned 10 so it ’10 candles for you’ with the same tune, and I thought there was one more verse but I’m not sure what it was. The girls had a lot of fun!
We took the kids and the dogs for a walk on Zeelandia beach the other Sunday. It was really nice to get out as a family to just enjoy some time together with all the business of Todd’s school and just life. We were writing in the hardened sand on the side of the cliff, it’s not a big deal to carve in it because the hard sand will erode away in not long, depending on how deep you carve in the sand I suppose. Jase was climbing and jumping into the soft sand, we took some nice pictures, and just enjoyed being together!
On the walk back to the car we ran into a local fisherman who I think he said was getting bate for a big fishing trip on Monday. I asked if I could take his picture then had Katie go in the picture with him, and he had her hold the net with him! It was cute, then he said to check out his catch so far with a 5 gallon pail half full of little fish.
Some random shots
Young came over for a hair cut!
Half banana half plantains that our sweet neighbours gave to us. They were really good. They didn’t get old tasting like bananas do when they seam to be over ripe.
Cleaning up the yard – One massive coconut palm! Add another 2 feet for the broken part at the tip that is dangling at the top!
Last story of the post. We were helping Tony and Leontein take down the chain-link fence hugely overgrown with coralina because they are building a new one, and umunst the cockroaches climbing up my legs while raking I saw this funny colored rock. I cleared the leaves and there was this huge land crab lying there. He did his funny but slow sideways claws ready walk toward the holes in the side of the now dirt wall. I had the kids run and get your dad to try and get it out. To no avail Tony and Charlie – a local man helping Tony - came back from the dump and Charlie said “smoke’em out!” So here were are trying to smoke him out, and can’t get him to come and so Tony said use the water to drown him out and so we did, and out he came! He was fairly large guy, could have eaten him size, and that was our original plan – to eat him. So we put him in the big storage box ready to cook that night. Well he was pretty cool looking, and could grow a little more. Jase never wanted to eat him Katie didn’t want to eat him after all, but Courtney was smacking her lips for land crab. Jase fed him a piece of lunchmeat and he was eating it with his claw! Funny hey! And they have really weird looking poops. They are the shape of long thin Hickory Sticks (you know the kind of potato chip things) but really dark, almost black, and a whole bunch of then in a pile.
Well Todd let him go without telling anyone and mixed emotions of not being able to keep the pet, say goodbye, and eating him arose but perhaps we shall see him again in our many more island adventures yet to come!
