Three Years On Statia: More Summer and University News

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. :)

To start off - on July 4th Anguilla had a short few second earthquake of 5.1 'Hypocenter or focal depth was luckily at an intermediate depth, which makes the earthquake less dangerous.' - excerpt from the 'Earthquake Report' website.

Short blurb about the earthquake

At the time of the earthquake I had left the kids at home to take Todd his dinner. We were in the classroom where Todd usually studies. He was sitting in the desk and I was standing with my hand on the back of his chair leaning over to see something on the desk. All of a sudden we felt dizzy and looked up to see the walls of the classroom waving side to side like waves in water, like the walls were doing the worm. It was crazy. I've never felt anything like that before. Now I don't know the magnitude of the quake on Statia, but Anguilla is just a hop skip and a jump from here so it must have been pretty close to what was felt there. The kids at home said they were a little freaked out because the TV was shaking, the lamp was shaking and everything was just rocking in that huge house. I told them next time run out of there! The last earthquake on the island was in the middle of the night which all the girls slept through but the boys woke up. Todd said the bed was shaking like crazy.

Statia is a place where a variety of people come and go all the time – very transient. For work, school, play, vacation homes, a stint for a Caribbean life experience, of course there are other reasons also.

We have met some amazing people who we will never forget and two of those people are Monique Balelo (Nikki), and her Dad Manuel Balelo (Manny). Manny is the man who Todd traded his round bead to, to get three 5 sided Statia beads for the kids. The girls talked about Nikki often and were lucky enough to see her at some get together, and around the Island. Manny was part owner of Smoke Alley (The Pirate Place) the kids’ most favorite restaurant! Manny and his Daughter have moved on to try life out in California after being on the Island for about 10 years – I think he said. It was sad to see them go even though we really didn’t see them all the time but it was enough that they made a wonderful impression on us. We wish them all the happiness they deserve!

Courtney absolutely LOVES this dog! She is so good with him. If there is a bur stuck in his fur she is the one to get it out, and she has figured out her own system with brushes and combs to get them out! Dusty also love to play in the big dogs water bowl. He gets all dirty, jumps in the bowl, runs around in circles, splashes, then jumps out to find more dirt. Crazy dog. We think its hilarious to watch.

Fun Time at the park with some friends! We met at the park one Sunday after Church to enjoy the outdoors and friends for a little while. I’m not the most motivated person to make plans and get out and do things – I somehow get really anxious over it – so It’s great to have others make plans for me! With Katie Bridge and her kids Stella, Payton and Lucy. Lyndsey and Beckam, and Madox!

Courtney and her bestest buddy Mae-Rubya! She LOVES to come and play with Courtney! She often says that she wishes she was Courtney’s sister and has, sometimes for fun, called me Mom. She is a sweet girl and Courtney LOVES her to death! Sometimes Mae-Rubya says she wishes she was white – her Daddy is from the Netherland and is white – but we say we love her how she is, she is gorgeous and how lucky she is to have beautiful brown skin and bilingual!

Jase’s good friend Beau, at the time of the photo, was soon to be leaving the Island and returning to the Netherlands. Beau and Jase have known each other for 2 years now and have become very good friends. A lot of the time when we would call to have Beau over we would find him running down the road, on our way to pick him up, so he could see Jase faster! He’s a very sweet boy and very thoughtful! He and his Mom, Judith, made this amazing gift for Jase before Beau left the Island. It is a memory box full of pictures of friends, and Statia to play the game memory – where you make matches with pictures. It is a beautiful gift that Jase loves! We plan to meet them at the airport when they are to leave. It will be a sad day.

Cleaning the yard Todd cut out a young Cotton tree growing where it shouldn’t be from the yard and made it into his ‘attitude adjuster’ stick! Funny!

This is a lionfish – terrible fish that I have talked about before. Todd got a few from a fisherman but I asked him to get rid of them because they are poisonous and if you don’t take care while cutting it you can get very ill and I didn’t want to risk that. Todd has shot some of these in the ocean and chopped them up in the water because they are out to destroy the ecosystem and there are more and more of them all the time.

LAZY dog! Coco is the laziest dog I think I have ever met. This is how she eats her food a lot of the time. They do – Coco and Patches – gang up on rats and lizards though and kill them for us. Although I’d rather just the rats – we like the lizards to eat the cockroaches and bugs. I do need to find them a home for this coming April if anyone is interested in two sweet dogs who are great with kids, spayed, catch rats, and will keep your home safe. My kids dress them up, sit on them, and lay on the ground with them!

Sharique, one of Jase’s best buddies came over a few times this summer to come and play with Jase! They just get along so well, playing and just hanging out! Of course I prefer when they are not playing on they game systems all the time! Peace!

It birthday time for Madox! The Tolmans were so kind as to invite a bunch of friends to help celebrate their youngest 2^nd birthday!

Yummy cake, treats, games, play and just a good’ol time! Thanks Tolmans!

Sometimes it can get a little, shall I dare to say, boring just going doing the same old beach things all the time so we try to be a little creative. To add to the variety of things to do on the island we sometimes go jumping off of the peer doing princess style jumps/dives, super hero style, flips and going snorkeling together. There is always something to see here. Today it was a friendly turtle letting the kids snorkel with him for a while!

What do you do with your expired pop? Or do you ever have expired pop? Well on a hot afternoon the kids took our expired diet Coke shook them up, and in a variety of creative ways exploded them! They had so much fun, and can’t wait for the next round of expired pop! And yes they are in their under ware because it was so stink’in hot that day!

This is a gnip commonly miss known on the island as a knip. It’s a yummy fruit with a huge seed in the middle with the texture kind of like a leech nut but stickier and the flesh is not a dense.

Grandma and Grandpa Erickson sent us a fabulous box full of all sort of goodies! Crafts for the kids, treats, yummy snacks, clothes, anything you could want! The girls especially loved the crafts. Here there are doing some of them.

This is a tarantula hawk it is rated the insect with the 2^nd worst sting – next to the bullet aunt - in the world and within a week we had 7 in our house! (They sting tarantulas and plant their eggs on them and when the eggs hatch they eat the tarantula.) We just finished an intense tarantula season so there were a lot of these guys around! The nice thing is that they just don’t sting you like a wasp or a bee. They bump you around a bit, as a warning, to let you know that they are there, so get away. My friend Mia had this happen to her and her friend twice – very interesting. They still scare the crap out of me so I killed this one and 2 others. The other 4 were found dead in the house. One I sprayed with bop and as it was dying the stinger was sticking out and it was quarter of an inch long!

Jase, Katie, and Luis were sooooooooo excited for this day. They had received a free discover scuba dive, through graduating from Junior Rangers 2, from one of the two dive centers on the Island – Golden Rock Dive Center. They learned the basic skills of breathing, a leaky mask, buoyancy, equipment knowledge, and a bunch of other things I can’t remember. But they had the most fantastic time ever! They both want to get their Junior diving certificate and go diving with Todd and I sometime!

Here they are in the water with Kaylee one of the dive instructors doing some basics in the shallow ocean water.

Pic 41

Going down! You can see them deflating their BCD’s.

Here they are!

Climbing into and riding the boat with dive instructors Kaylee and Ray to go to a REAL dive site.

This is what Katie thinks about her day diving: “I think diving was fun. At first I was scared but it turned out to be AWESOME. When I got under water it was amazing because I could breath. The tanks underwater are really light. After the practice dive we went on a boat to Kruks castle and I was even more scaredI was so amazed of all the things that are under the ocean. It was just Awesome!”

Jase: “It was awesome. I felt as light as a feather in the water. My body was saying that this isn’t natural and I shouldn’t be doing this. My brain is telling me that I am fine because I am breathing air from the tanks. It’s the best feeling in the world! I saw many fish, and I saw all the coral. Its just Awesome!”

Muddy’s pride in the harbor – the boat that ships a lot of the food is brought to the island on.

Sharique came again and this time we had his sister Chiani with us as well! You can just see all the fun that they had!! Love these kids! Chiani was in Katie’s class at the SDA School.

We are famous at the school for are amazing coal BBQ and our BBQ Skills – well okay it’s pretty much Todd but I help out with him when I can. The school has been using the BBQ for different beach parties for the students/families, and Todd as the dedicated BBQ master. Not a bad set-up!

So one Sunday we were sitting in Sunday School at church, the picnic benches by the cantina at the Swarez building, and these 3 people come up and start talking with us! Low and behold it is none other than Ilene Weinstein the - director of enrolment at the University of St. Eustatius, Henry Zgorski - staffing and recruiting consultant and contractor for the University, and Charlie Dahan the entrepreneur financially supporting the building and investment of the new campus. The moment we met them and were able to visit with them we knew these people had no other desire than to find out how we were doing on the island, what we though of the island, the University, changes or ideas we had about the University. They were concerned about how the kids and spouses of students of the University faired, our over all wellbeing and they had nothing but a desire for the success of everyone’s dreams and goals. It was a privilege to be asked to join them for dinner, just to visit and talk a little bit about the school and some of the great ideas for the future.

Todd has actually designed the new Anatomy lab. Mia, being the Student Councilor and Biological Sciences Lab Director, originally asked for Todd’s help because she knew he had done some design for different homes and buildings before medical school. Mia had great ideas of course with working in the Anatomy Lab and knowing what she need. I was able to throw in a few ideas but Todd laid it all out, organized our ideas, put in his huge ideas and made an amazing ‘blue print’ for the new Anatomy Lab. Which should be absolutely fantastic! And they have asked for his help with other buildings. They are building a kids area for students with children, student housing, student housing with families, a non-denominational place of worship, a brand spank’in new campus - EVERYTHING! It will be amazing to be a student during that time. I’ve taken some pictures of the land where everything is starting. Here is basically where they have started some student housing, which should hopefully be ready October/November. They have a 5-year plan to finish everything on 23 acres of land! This is what they have cleared so far.

In this next picture you can see how far the land goes – almost to that pink building where we first lived on the island.

And they were all so sweet with the kids! Here Charlie was showing the girls some pictures of what his dreams are for the kids center, family housing and pictures of his kids!

We had the opportunity to do an interview with Ilene and Henry to try and give people, especially those with children, a little bit of an idea of what the University, and Island life would be like for them. Who knows maybe some of you reading this blog right now might have seen it – or will see it. I know one of the worries they had were that some people might think that us, or others being interviewed, were being paid for what we – or they – had said. I can assure you we weren’t unless you can consider finding some new and wonderful friends a payment. Then I can say we were happily paid more than we could have expected!

Here the kids are waiting for our family interview to start.

Henry and especially Ilene loved the kids. How smart Jase is and how fun it was to be around some little girls! “A girl can’t have enough sparkles,” Ilene would say to the girls and they LOVED it! The girls have found a new Auntie! Ilene was so sweet in giving the girls each a little gift from her – a super cute ring, and lip-gloss. Oh my goodness they, Ilene & Henry, are both so sweet and kind!

During their stay on the island Todd invited them up to the house for breakfast and a fresh mango smoothies, which is Ilene’s favorite.

In an earlier blog I had mentioned that my main camera lens was on the fritz – which it was for all of these pictures so I was working with my portrait lens which takes awesome pictures but for tight places it doesn’t work as well– so Ilene offered to take my lens to New York with her and get it a good cleaning and maintenance at the camera store she uses. The humidity is terrible on equipment here. It turned out that it would cost just about as much for a cleaning as it would have for a brand new better lens so she arranged for me to get an amazing new lens and shipped it to the Island! I can’t tell you how in awe I was!

During this time was also the graduation for 5^th term graduates of the University! We were honored with an invitation from Pallav to his graduation. He is a dear friend of ours and the kids still call him Uncle. His wife Kristy was able to join him for his special day. It was fun to have Kristy around too because we were able to do a few things together while she was here. – A baby shower I helped throw with Hannah Farrell for Lyndsey Tolman (which I forgot my camera) school beach parties, and the Carnival Parade – which I will put on the next blog.

Pallav graduated with what I would call extremely high honors – I can’t remember what they called it, but he did very well!

In that last picture we are sitting with the Alexander’s. A wonderful couple who teach premed classes! They love Todd and I guess Mrs. Alexander is still mentioning Todd’s name in her classes, and what a wonderful person he is.

It was also Marlin’s graduation too! She is also a good friend of our family so it was wonderful to see her finish as well! Marlin’s husband Hanzel came and a special treat for Courtney is that their daughter Molly came back to the Island, after a year and a half, to see her Mommy graduate. I will be mentioning some of the fun in a bit!

As a farewell Ilene and Henry threw a big beach party for the students and families who had come for the graduation! There was a bigger turn out then there had ever been at one of these get togethers! They were constantly running back to the store for more food! All in all it turned out wonderful, I think everyone had a good time and again thanks to Todd for the BBQ skills, Kristy for helping up cut and organize food and garbage (*wink, wink*) at the BBQ site, and Kristy King and Ian for getting food, ect. and organizing it all. Oh and Josh helped when he could between helping his wife with the twins!

I didn’t do very well with the pictures – too much work to be done J

Courtney and Molly starting off the beginning of as many play dates as possible in just 10 days.

And roasting marshmallows on hot charcoals! The kids though it was amazing – we do it at home too over our gas stove! The kids with a friend Daniel.

Here are some pictures of Molly time! We love her little New York accent and slang. There were a few times where I said to Courtney, “What did she say?” And Court would reply, “I have no idea.” LOL!! They have so much fun together!