If you are someone interested in attending the Sint Eustatius School of Medicine and have been reading our blog for information about the school and island use the link below to apply.
https://www.applyweb.com/apply/eumed/
Please use my husband, Todd Erickson, as a reference.
We get a credit credit for every person who decides to attend using us as a reference.
Thank you. :)
Thank you. :)
One of our friendly neighborhood spider friends! This guys was stranded on the floaty in the pool, much like a lot of out spider furry friends so I rescued him. Not that I really enjoy having them around but I feel bad for them when they are stranded in the water or I find them floating dead/sinking in the water. They are just big and creepy looking. I wouldn’t want one on me but I really have been trying to get the courage up to hold one and take a picture. This guy is on the smaller scale of what we have seen.
*Late entry – Yesterday (July 25, 2012) Katie went to go
roller blading around the house. She put
her foot in her skate and felt something in there, she then reached her hand in
to pull out what ever it was, and it was a tarantula and it bit her. They aren’t poisonous, and I called STENAPA
just to make sure I was doing the right things for a bit – just ice and keep
her calm – and she was just fine. The
spider was just scared and so was Katie.
However it has somewhat deterred me from the idea of holding on for a
picture. Hmmmm we’ll see.
Dr. Katie! Todd was
doing some sort of class or something using hospital masks and hats he brought
some home for the kids to try on. I do
have to say that Todd seams to be a master skin stitcher. Not that he would say master but compared to
a lot of the other students taking the Hyperbaric course – that’s where they
did the stitching, the teacher was telling him to do some different stitches
that he really had no problem doing. Dr.
Berkel said, “Look people, we have a surgeon amongst us.” Todd’s going to hate that I wrote that but I
think that’s pretty cool! A proud wife!
Pig anyone!!! Debbie
is always so good to us, and invited us to a big pig roast in honor of Matt
graduating from High School! Yay
Matt!
Here is the big pig!
I missed most of the de-meating of the carcass, but I was able to help a bit
by getting in for a little bit of the last part of the fun!! Pig leg anyone??!! The dogs got one!
It was a really nice get together for Matt, and we had
another wonderful good time – of course!
This is Cashew Fruit.
Last year we ate one of these fruits and it was unreal good! But these
one I found were not so tasty – bummer, but they are sure neat looking with the
actual cashew seed growing outside of the fruit on the bottom. You can’t eat these though; they are
poisonous and have to be prepared properly in order to eat the nut – like the
ones you buy from the store!
After Todd’s first block exams we really needed some family
time together and find our own little private paradise on the island, and we
found that on Zeelandia Beach. The ocean
was perfect for swimming that day, and the beach was awesome! You could walk out into the water forever
with the level of the water at your knees.
It was a long awaited just us time!
I think it has been our best beach day in a long time!
The boys were spending some time skim boarding.
It was pretty awesome watching these huge pelicans dive into
the ocean after fish in the waves – they are really big birds!
Waiting out in the shallow water, having some fun in the
waves. A lot of people don’t go swimming
at Zeelandia beach because of the currents and pull that can be on that side of
the island – the Atlantic side. You just
have to be careful and feel the water as you go, and just use some common sense
if you are going out there. There are
definitely many days on this beach that we wouldn’t dare go in the water, but
today was perfect!
STUARTS BAPTISM
Here is the young man of the day, June 16th,
2012, Stuart Beckett! And his Family,
Stephen, Megan & Emelia!
It was our pleasure, and the Group of St. Eustatius and
friends pleasure to see Stuart get baptized in the ocean that day. It brought back a lot of wonderful memories
from Katie’s special baptism day in December 2010 on the beach right next
door!
What a beautiful morning as we gathered together to be there
for Stuart! Stuart’s aunt and cousin
were able to come from Canada for him! The Group has sure grown from back in
August 2010 from 8 kids & 8 adults to 12 kids & 13 adults and growing - and I have heard rumors we are
getting more this September.
All the cute primary kids!
We finished off the morning at the Becketts house with
Stuart’s confirmation visiting and fantastic treats! I know I keep saying it was wonderful, but it
just was!!
(I’d like to thank Iman Haroun for taking and sharing all of
her pictures!!)
After the baptism we were the lucky ones to be able to show
the missionary couple – the Wrights – around the island a little bit. It was so much fun! We kept telling them it was like having our
parents come and visit us!!! We loved
every minute of it, and so did the kids!
We could really just call them Grandma and Grandpa J! We took them up to the house first to look
around a bit, have some lunch and a fresh mango smoothie! They were making
funny faces with the orange peels!
WE then went out to the fort and took some pictures of them
with their camera and this is the only picture I got – but its super cute!
On our way to the Botanical Garden we stopped off at a
Tamarind tree because the Wrights have never tasted a Tamarind. So Todd got up on the car to get some good
ones because we are pretty much at the end of the season! The tamarinds here are quite sour, but there
is sweet tamarind tree in town that Jan (pronounced Yun) showed us and we
picked a bunch a while back. Tamarinds
are really yummy dipped in brown sugar, I also made green tamarind juice with
the kids that I really liked, but I was the only one. So anyway we all tried some tamarinds on the
way to the garden.
We are some Passion fruit from off the tree, it wasn’t quite
ripe, it was tart, but it was fun to taste the passion fruit flavor and pick
them off the tree!
Of course the garden is beautiful and I took some pictures
of some flowers I haven’t before.
The last picture the kids took us on what we thought was a
trail to no where land, and at the end of this ‘trail to nowhere’ was this fun
magical looking grove – a miniature of what you can find in the quill! It was a really neat find!
The following day – Sunday – we had a nice dinner at our
house while everyone visited and said our goodbyes to the Wright as they headed
back to St. Maarten. It was actually sad
to see them go. Hopefully we will see
them again!
We’ve been lucky enough to have made some great friends
while here on the island and some of those friends are three young ladies named
Sherifah Mohammed, Nikki Reddy, and Anjali Mohan. Two of them cook some mean awesome Indian
food, which Todd just dies for every time.
He gets well treated to some lovely curries and pickled curries, and all
sorts of nice things. They have has us
over on a few occasions and this in particular was for the celebration of
Anjali’s engagement surprise party. It
was a lot of fun with anticipation as we waiting, and the kids waited for Todd
to arrive with her from the airport.
During the wait there were thumb wars, mp3’s, waiting, hiding (with Saad
and Harry), and more waiting.
And then she came!
Left to right – Sherifah, Nikki, Anjali.
It was a very nice evening, and a very nice dinner – They
always spoil Todd, “the old white man who loves hot Indian curry”! J
And more parties! We
were invited to the opening ceremonies to the new dive shop that Scubaqua had
renovated and restored for their new location!
This is the dive shop we attained our Open water, Advanced Open water
and Nitrox courses from. So it was kind of fun being able to be a part of
that. Todd actually helped a little bit
on the building with the over hang, over the patio. Todd was at the beach and they were trying to
put up the new tin for the roof and no one could get up there to get the tin
on. So Todd obviously having a lot of experience ding this sort f stuff back
home, jumped up there and help them get the roof on
the over hang. Anyway
it was nice to see the finished product and to be there for the opening.
Maike – our dive instructor – cutting the ribbon to open the
shop.
Todd and BJ Queen
At the beach with some awesome friends! Lyndsey Tolman, Hannah Farrell and super cute
kids – Beckam, Maddox & Fay, Eden!!! And of course Katie & Sarah!
