King, Queens, Bee’s and Parties
Back in February Todd and I were invited to Join with
Erlyn, her son Tino, family and friends to celebrate her 60th
birthday party! When we first came to
the island Tino was the main person who took Todd under his wing and showed
some tricks of the trade for local spear
fishing. He made sure to invited Todd out when he went spearfishing to show
Todd what to do, where to go, and when it was a good time to go out in the
water and when it wasn’t. Tino and Erlyn have always been so sweet and
kind to us and to everyone they have contact with. They are a very special family. We were very
honored to have been invited to celebrate with her. She threw a fantastic party! There were very cute decorations, great food
and entertainment.
Having some fun at white wall.
Shooting out of the Cannon!
I failed to mention before that sometime in March Todd had
his 4th and 5th kidney stone here on the island. We aren’t sure what is causing them but he’s
drinking a lot of water hoping that will help!
Jase’a friend Sharique came to church with us one Sunday,
and here they are looking dapper in their church duds!! Handsome young men!
It was another goodbye to two of Todd’s classmates Nikila
and Harry. Todd studied a bit with
Nikila in different semesters and eating her yummy Indian food! She was also so sweet to the kids.
Talking with Kermit – a local friend. – you’ve got to
remember these sorts of things.
Katie and Niz after dancing up a storm! Court was dancing too she just isn't in these pics.
Mrs. Humming bird – with eggs about the size of your pinky
fingernail.
Bee’s – spelling bee that is. Here we are at the final round of the school
spelling bee! First I really needed to
get a picture of us with Mrs. Vilma Rivers.
When we very first came to the island we stayed at Ms. Rivers house for
almost 2 weeks. We stayed in her two
bedrooms to the south of her house and shared a kitchen with her, and even some
meals. She was my first Statia Mom where
she taught me a few things I needed to learn here on the island like how to do
your laundry Statia style conserving water.
She showed me to wash my clothes in the same water as many time as I
could before the water was to gross. I
could get my whites and then some colors done in one load and the rest in the
next. With a cistern you need to be
smart with your water. Then I would
rinse them all in fresh water, one after the other, and then hang them to
dry. There she had an American washer
but the way that she taught me to wash prepared me for the ringer washer I had
in our apartment above the Chinese store in Golden Rock. So here we are with Ms. Rivers.
So on to the spelling bee.
With more weeks under our belt memorizing new sets of words we were
prepared as best as we could to win this thing!
It was fun and exciting and nerve-wracking all at once!
Here was Courtney group of top spellers:
Shamille, Courtney, Nicole, and Mae-Rubya.
It was so cute watching them cheer each other on when they
got the word right, and looks of, “that’s okay.
Don’t worry about it.” When they got it wrong. Courtney was spelling everything perfect and
then it came to this one word – Pudding – however to her and a fair amount of
people in the audience sitting by us it sounded like Putting. The sound system wasn’t really great, but
good enough, its just that sometimes echo, hollow sound you get and different
accents, but being new to spelling bee’s and Court not really listening to the
word used in a sentence spelt – putting.
And when the teacher asked her to spell it again she spelt – puting –
with a very confused look. And then
realizing too late her mistake, she had spelled pudding at home during practice
all the time as one of the easy ones, she was so sad and was trying not to cry on
the stage. We felt so bad for her! But she did so well only missing that one
word and tying for second place with Nicole and Mae-Rubya placing first. Courtney is such a good speller and gets the
top mark in class for spelling almost all the time!
After watching other children participate in their class
Bee’s, it was Jase’s turn, the 6th graders! We had Re-Elle, Jase, and Sharique.
It was a good race and the spellers did fantastic. With two best buds going for 1st
together. Under the table between words
you could see them giving each other boops whether they got a word right or
wrong, giving encouragement to keep going on!
Wow they did fantastic, and it came down to the round of bonus word,
which they didn’t get to take home to study.
It was all on their understanding of phonics and word structure. It was a tricky round and they all did well
but Jase pulled ahead with spelling the word carnivorous in the final bonus
round. And became the finest speller in
the school! We were so proud of him and
all of his hard work!
The winners from the spelling bee group 3 – 8. (grade 1 – 6)
D’mitry, Mae-Rubya,
Oswaldo, Jaziel, Kadiesha, and Jase.
And now on to the most embarrassing part! They had some adults come up to participate
in a spell one word spelling bee! Lets just say I didn’t get my word right and
I was the only one that didn’t! I did
however warn everyone before I attempted to spell my word that my kids got
their brains from their Dad! I got my own taste at how nerve racking it is
sitting in front of a bunch of people trying to spell a word. I was even more impressed with Jae and
Courtney!
Jase and Todd went out on a man fishing outing
together! It was nice to have them go
out together because it doesn’t happen very often.
This excerpt from the following website explains the next
batch of pictures!
http://expatsincebirth.com/2013/04/26/koningsspelen-how-dutch-children-start-to-celebrate-their-new-king/
“In occasion of the royal proceedings
(from the Queen Beatrix‘s
abdication to Willem-Alexander‘s
swearing-in ceremony) on Tuesday the 30th of April 2013, today (April 26,
2013), more than 1.3 million children from 6,500 primary schools (basisonderwijs)
are celebrating Koningsspelen.
The ministry of Education, Culture
and Science
(Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap (OCW)) gave the approval to organize this
event and it was organized by a special committee under the direction of Richard Krajicek. The Johan Cruyff
Foundation and
the Richard Krajicek
Foundation are
responsible for the whole coordination.
All the primary schools in the Netherlands
and the Caribbean part of the kingdom are participating. The Koningsspelen is a very gezellig day for all the children in the Dutch
primary schools. The whole week was Sportweek,
where several sport events and competitions for children took place and today
the children will have sport competitions, play several Dutch games, dance
Dutch dances, sing Dutch songs, and also have a very special and healthy
breakfast, the Koningsontbijt.
Every school is free to choose how to
celebrate the Koningsspelen, but they are asked to do this in a very creative
manner. And those schools who have the most creative setup may have the chance
to meet King Willem-Alexander and Maxima after the 30th of April…
Here is our koningsspelen!
The Netherlands had t-shirts shipped over for all the kids. Orange is
their national color! Some got foam
crowns to wear too.
They separated the kids into groups with their peers from
around the island and rotated through a wide variety of Dutch games. It was a little chaotic. But I managed to get a few shots of some of
the different events the kids went to. I ended up helping a little bit with Courtney's group because their group leader wasn't really feeling up to it so I was running back and forth some. I also noticed that no one was at the breakfast area to give the kids their breakfast - they went up on rotations. So I handed out some apples, milk or bush tea. But unfortunately there wasn't enough breakfast sacks for the kids! I'm not sure how because it would have been easy to submit the numbers of students from each school to the Netherlands in order to get the right amount of sacks - but it didn't work out that way for some reason. However the kids were given the choice of a Nutella sandwich or peanut butter to make up for it and so no one went hungry.
The kids trying to figure out the game...
They got it now.
Throwing the ball to hit the blocks.
I thought this was so cute with Maike and her little group of kids! Playing follow the leader!
Mini golf
These hand holding running games were hilarious. Jase had a great group; leader for all of these older kids and kept them motivated to participate.
Boxes of food from the Netherlands.
Courtney tug-of-war.
It was so unbelievably hot that day. Haft the kids were asked to go into the sports complex and the rest huddled under the tent covers to stay out of the sun as best as possible until it was over. Because I was there to take my kids home we went home about 45 min early - with permission of course.
After Koningsspelen
I found this picture of Courtney’s – Its Zwart Pete (Black
Pete) Sinterklaas’ helper.
Some guys asked Todd to hook them up with going on a deep
sea dive with one of the few fisher men on the island that will take guys out
for a fee to try and catch something good.
So Todd called a guy Gadget who couldn’t and then called Biscuit who
couldn’t do it on Monday (One of the days the guys said they could do it – that
or Wednesday) because he had a bunch of lines that he needed to bring in. So Todd offered to go and help him get his
lines out on Monday and scheduled the deep-sea fishing for Wednesday. So bright and early Monday morning at 5:45
Todd went off with Biscuit. He was pulling out nets, traps and working in the
boat all day. They caught some really
nice fish including some King Fish and Dolphin – hold on its also called Mahi
Mahi. I think Todd had a fantastic day
out there and wasn’t looking to get paid for his work or anything; it was just
for the fun of it. But Biscuit paid him
with some really nice expensive fish! He
gave Todd a really nice Mahi Mahi worth over $100.00 and a bunch of barracuda,
Lion fish, an eel - not sure how that would taste. It was a lot of fish and no
body really likes the barracuda so it has a tendency to go to waste but Todd
doesn’t like that to happen. So he
fillet the barracuda and gave some away to people who would eat it and the rest
we took home to our freezer.
That night we had planned on having the Hunter family over
for the last dinner on Statia. It was a
nice meal and great company. They ended
up having a short stay on Statia but they definitely made the most of their stay. Our plan was to go to the airport to say
goodbye but Courtney and I didn’t make it.
She had been really sick with an ENT infection and ended up sleeping in
the next morning.
Another event she missed that morning was singing at the celebration
of Queens Beatrix inauguration back in 1980 on April 30th. Court was selected with a bunch of other kids
from school to sing for the celebration.
Her throat was just too sore to sing.
It was kind of sad for her because it was the last time the Netherlands
would be celebrating the Queens birthday, they call it her birthday here,
because that afternoon she would be abdicating the thrown to her son Prince
Williem-Alexander. But on the brighter
side the same group of kids plus a choir and bells were singing a song just for
that ceremony! So after the worst part
of Courtney’s soreness in the morning was passed, she was able to go down to
the fort and participate in singing for the inauguration of the new King of the
Netherlands. The same Dutch song was
sung through out all the parts of the Netherlands Kingdom at the same time to
celebrate his crowning. Het Koningslied (The Kings Song) was sung with a choir,
and on our Island, bells and children. It
was fantastic!! The first Dutch King in 123 years.
If you listen to the link it has a rap part in it, but they
took it out for Courts performance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_lRn6oBwWY
The next day, Wednesday, was the day Todd arranged for the guys to go fishing! It ended up being a cool, rainy, and cloudy day. Good for not getting sunburnt and hot, bad for the rocky water and a shorter fishing trip, but I think they had an over all pretty awesome time!
Monty Sala, Andy Bridge & Josh Farrell.
The Catch: King Fish (I think thats the name) and a Mahi Mahi.
We ended up having everyone and their families over for some awesome Ginger glazed Mahi, Mahi stakes, and King fish stakes. It was an awesome meal and everybody brought something to share!
