Thursday, June 6, 2013

Kings, Queens, Bee's and Parties


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…
Both, Willem-Alexander and Maxima are visiting several schools today to meet the children.”

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.


However Todd, Jase and Katie made it to say goodbye!





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!