Saint Martin Episode 3: Revenge of the Shrimp

Haldo, and welcome!

Today is Friday, and this will be my last free weekend before I embark on a 20 month brain-murder fest commonly known as medical school. I use 'free' loosely, since I'm actually going to take a tour of the school in about a half hour, and have to go to registration on Sunday morning.

But I'm still mostly free. So how have I chosen to utilize the last free moments of my life? By updating my blog of course! My family doesn't appreciate me, so this'll learn them.

Just kidding.

They won't learn anything.

But I think we should start with the real reason most people read this blog: More adorable pictures of Autry. You may notice a theme in our parenting style.

Autry has her own cupboard for toys.
She only wants to open the other cupboards.

Autry watches Princess and the Frog after getting her hair done.
Those pigtails keep her from getting der uber sweaty.

Autry watches Princess and the Frog on our bed/her pillow fortress.

Autry watches...
Ok that's just embarassing.

It's been a nice, fairly relaxed week. We've spent another small fortune on other household necessities ($17 for a plunger, anyone?) but I did discover that I was off on the price of gas, much to my pleasure!

The prices listed are in Guilder, so it was 2.69 NAF (or whatever the odd abbreviation is) per liter, which in money that isn't named after a country from Princess Bride, is actually about $1.50 per liter, which is still like $5.67 per gallon, but that beats the eight dollars I thought it was before. Slightly. I guess.

A few days into coming to the island, we had the windows open, and they blew the curtains very fiercely (that kind of looks like one of those sentences you'd get in those scam emails that are trying to make it past your spam filters). So fiercely, in fact, that the curtains grabbed a lamp and threw it to the ground. Luckily, it basically broke into two large pieces and two smaller pieces, so with the help of the Kragle, we got that all back together. 

This is what that lamp looks like, for those who really like details:

Ahh, such a nice lamp.
And look how clean this small section of our house is!

The world's most helpful small baby decided that those lamps were very nice to look at as well. She really wanted to see one.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Now, if you want to get very technical, this is actually a different lamp. It's the one on *ahem* Jes' side of the bed. My lamp still very much looks like that other picture. And even more technical, this was taken after Autry tipped the lamp off the table a second time. The first time she tipped it, the top half of the lamp stayed attached. 

But that was not enough for our baby. She leaves no stone unturned, no lamp unbroken.

Some other news, which everyone who plans on visiting us will be glad to here, there are ample locations to buy ice cream on the island. 

Well, so far I've only seen or been to two, but one of them is very very close to our apartment (like, 2 minute walk distance), and the other one is shockingly nice. It's on the waterfront of the lagoon, and it's called Carousel. Everything on the island has kind of an...island feel to it. Not run down and decaying, but definitely weathered. Carousel spits on that image. Marble floors, ample parking, and everything is clean to like...Disney standards. 

Keep in mind, this is an ice cream store.

Why is it called Carousel?

I'm thrilled.
Autry is, as always, nonplussed.

There is a carousel out back, and it is built over the waters of the lagoon.

The Queen surveys Her court.
Accompanied by her jester.

The ice cream was delicious, and only mildly heart-attack inducing in price (they really copied the Disney model well). Jes got a medium, which seemed like a perfect amount. I got a large, because I was concerned about only having a $50 bill that they wouldn't be able to break. It was delicious.

As we left, there were pictures along the outside wall showing (sometimes) famous people eating ice cream.

Most of them were just randoms though. Like this little girl:

What a cute little girl, right?

Now, please go read the caption, if you haven't already.

Here's a funny brand name at the grocery store to entertain those who already read the caption and are waiting for everyone else.

We are the Bjorg. Lower your jaws and surrender your diets.
Resistance is futile.

SHE WAS IN AN INTERNMENT CAMP!

Well, sort of. It was like a forced labor camp, that they volunteered to go to to avoid incarceration. But there was still a curfew and they weren't allowed to leave without escort. So basically, unwalled prison.

Jes and I thought it was pretty funny though. It sealed the deal on my purchase of ice cream. 

Jes took a trip with a bunch of the other spouses up to Fort Saint-Louis on the French side of the island. I stayed home because 1) walking involved, and 2) Autry was napping. 

Marigot, capital of French Saint Martin

OPEN FIRE!

AND THEN REMIND ME TO PUT IN A
REQUEST WITH THE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE!

Direct hit sir!
(Yes, that is a sunken vessel, apparently a popular diving spot)

I'm not sure why this picture is here.
But Jes sent it to me, so it's on the blog.

A good time was had by all. But especially me.

Let's see, a couple more random things:

There was a baptism a few days ago. She's a spouse of a medical student and was actually leaving the island this week (I think she left today?) and wanted to get baptized before she left. The baptismal font had just been refurbished, and was ready for use, but she elected to get baptized in the sea, so that was pretty neat. Last night we had a going away party type thing at Trey Wah (I think I spelled that right?), a delicious Chinese restaurant. It was really nice to support her, and we had delicious food too!

We also saw the greatest invention of all time, in use, at church during the baptism, and we went out and bought one right away.

Can you feel its power?

It is exactly what it looks like. An electrified badminton racket. And it LIVES to destroy mosquitoes. 

See the mosquitoes here, they're smart. Much smarter than American mosquitoes. These are Ivy League graduate mosquitoes. Not those rich legacy ones, the actual, got in on their own ones. They can not be killed by hands, towels, or anything else.

But these rackets, see, you just lazily wave them towards them, and when it gets close (I'm not sure how close, and maybe you have to touch them, but it's super easy with these), a massive arc of electrified death hits them.

And it lets you know with a satisfying, and ear splitting CRACK.

That bug, it's dead.

I kinda want to run around in the streets waving that, and hearing a symphony of bug zaps.

We had a great morning at the beach today too. We drove over to Mullet Bay (look it up, it's incredible) at about 8:00, and for the first 10 minutes, we were the only ones there. By the time we left, there were only a couple other families, but it was so serene. We were on a world class beach, all by ourselves.

I think Jes might've posted a few pictures on Facebook.

And that's enough out of me. I've got one more picture for Julia though.

It's the Paopu fruit! Or star fruit. Whatever.

We love you all, and miss you so much!

Saint Martin Episode 2: Attack of the Colons

I alternatively considered Attack of the Crohn's for the title, since Crohn's rhymes better with Clones, but Colons is probably a little more accurate.

I'll get to that in a minute.

So we've been on the island for almost a week now, and holy crud is it expensive to get set up. Right when we decided to rent this apartment, we had to pay for what we thought was first and last month's rent. It turned out instead to be a security deposit, so we had to scramble to get our first month's rent, as well as our utilities deposit, key deposit, internet, and gas for our stove (our stove uses a propane style tank that's hidden in a cupboard in the kitchen).

The real issue behind all of that, is that almost everything on the island is cash only. If you're not buying something from the big grocery stores, or ACE hardware (which has a surprising amount of home decorating goods, as well as an elevator), you're going to be paying cash.

$1600 a month in rent?

Better break out the cash.

$3200 for a car? (We just bought a 2007 Toyota Corolla which looks and sounds like it has seen better days)

Cash only.

That was one of the more harrowing experiences I've had in recent years. There's a couple of facebook pages that have people who are selling things on the island. Jes saw a guy selling the car, and we set up a meeting. We live on a hill the overlooking the ocean and Maho, and at the bottom of that hill is the Casino Royale. I have yet to see Daniel Craig fly through the air while simultaneous killing 38 terrorists.

I'm as disappointed as you are.

So we met there at about 6, we drove the car around for a little while, and other than a bit of a rattle when you rev to engine too high, a bit of rear bumper damage, a clutch that engages 3 millimeters off the ground, and a hideous speaker job, it seemed pretty good.

So we agreed on the price, and told him that we'd have the cash for him in a couple of days.

One of the main issues with cash only, is that you can only take so much cash out of an ATM at a time. Luckily both Jes and I can take the maximum amount of cash out each, so we can effectively halve the time it takes to amass cash.

But when the agreed upon day arrived to pay the seller, he messaged Jes to let her know that he wouldn't be able to make it until 10 pm instead of the agreed upon 6 pm.

Since I'd be standing around waiting for this guy outside a casino with $3200 in cash in my pocket, I was slightly concerned.

Now, Saint Martin's not exactly a giant den of thieves, but the minimum wage is like $2 an hour, and when it's not tourist season (November through April), a lot of people don't have jobs. And I have essentially a year's worth of wages in my pocket. IN NON SEQUENTIAL BILLS. (That's what the terrorists/kidnappers always want, I guess?)

Luckily, the head of AUC security, Mike lives in our building, and his wife has been very friendly to Jes, so she asked if he'd walk me down to the Casino and make sure things didn't look like they were going to go south. So we waited until the guy showed up, and he asked me to get in the car so that we could get out of the way of the casino driveway, and Mike basically said, "Yeah, this looks OK, I'm going to head back home now."

So I got in the car, and we drove off to a deserted part of the island, and I was pretty sure I was about to get mugged. He was Indian, and he answered his phone as we were driving and said some things in what I assume is Hindi, and I was pretty sure the ambush was complete. 3 guys were going to jump me, I'd be out most of our money, and best case scenario I'd still be alive.

Luckily, he just pulled over, had me drive, and counted the money. We drove to where his sister and girlfriend were waiting, we signed a few papers, and he told me where to go to get the car registered and legalized.

But man. Totally thought I was going to die for a second there.

Sooooo, there's been a slight interlude since I finished typing up there. I walked to the bedroom to change my shorts (I had grease stained them earlier putting together a paper towel holder, of all things), and as I passed the bathroom, I was suddenly tromping through water. I guess our washing machine decided that functionality is for losers. So I called our landlord, and hopefully that gets all figured out.

Anywho, some random tidbits that people might find exciting about life on Saint Martin:

There's no sales tax, and prices are usually listed with two currencies, the Netherlands Antilles Guilder, (confusingly labeled FLs) and US dollars. Euro are also accepted, but there's no standard for how much they decide the Euro is worth. I've seen anywhere from 1 Euro = $1.25 to 1 Euro = $1.40. Apparently it's whatever they decide, which seems right on par with everything else we've experienced this week haha.

Islanders will notice something you're doing wrong as a parent and let you know. Immediately, and directly. If your child is holding a straw, they're going to blind themselves, if the sun is hitting them, they're going to burn and die of cancer.

People drive according to the dictates of their own conscience, which is far more Christian sounding than their actual driving. If they want to turn in left in front of you, and you aren't going to immediately hit them, they'll go for it.

The internet here is shockingly good. I was anticipating very poor, very inconsistent service, and it's actually probably better than Mom and Dad's house (no offence, but your internet is pretty terrible). Granted, we just came from Google Fiber enhanced Provo, so it's not loading internet pages before I actually click on them, but it's totally fast enough to run Netflix, download pictures, all that jazz. It's also only $60, so it's cheaper than the US was for us too.

Speaking of Netflix, they have almost everything here. It's kind of incredible. We've got basically the entire Disney catalog (at least, Jes saw Frozen, Princess and the Frog, all the Toy Stories, and probably a bunch of other ones), Friends, Modern Family, all that stuff. The one catch for the Disney movies is that there's mandatory Dutch subtitles. All the other shows have a part of the credits in Dutch. It makes for an interesting experience, especially with Toy Story haha.

Gasoline is VERY expensive on the island and they don't actually post the price. I've heard it's somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.30 per liter, which comes out to... holy jeeze $8.70 a gallon. That's only slightly worse than the $7.50 we pay for a gallon of milk (side note, I'm trying shelf stable milk because you can buy it in 6 1-liter boxes for a slight savings).

Apparently electricity is also very expensive, but we haven't gotten our first bill yet, so I don't know how bad. We get a pretty good cross breeze from the tradewinds, so we try to keep the windows open and stay in the breeze during the day, and then run the AC as we go to sleep. There's an AC unit in each room, so we can put the AC on for just Autry during her naps, which is handy.

The people who bag our groceries aren't employees of the grocery store, and they work solely for tips. It's kinda weird.

OH!

Attack of the Colons, I almost forgot.

So I'm sitting on the couch, and I'm watching Autry. By that I mean, Autry is playing and running around and making noises, and I'm sitting on the couch reading a book for school and occasionally make sure that she hasn't somehow gotten hold of, like scissors or something. So Autry comes running up to me, and I pull her up on the couch next to me, and we're sitting and chatting. Then she sticks her hand out at me, and I nibble on it a little bit, and she giggles and pulls it back. This repeats several times.

Then she sticks her foot at me, and I nibble her leg a little bit. Repeat.

Then she sticks her finger at me, and I nibble it and it's got poop on it.

She had stuck her finger into her diaper, and allowed me to sample it.

I was displeased.

Welps, that's enough from me, here's a couple of pictures. They're mostly of Autry.

We love you all and miss you so much!

Autry, during one of the brief moments on the flight
where she wasn't very upset about the situation.

The view from our front balcony.
Plus the screen. I was too lazy to open the door.

Some things never change.
Like dependence on Winnie the Pooh.

Autry loves helping with the laundry.

Autry + Sunset = Dawwwwwwwwww

Thank goodness for YouTube's
selection of additional Pooh stories.

We went to the Blue Mall shopping center,
and Autry decided to taker up piracy.

Saint Martin Episode 1: The Phantom Luggage

(For everyone who got the email, this is identical. There are some people who read the blog and aren't on my email list. All future updates will happen on the blog.)

*Cue yellow scrolling text*

Hello from Sint Maarten (the Dutch spell it that way, because… they're Dutch, I guess)! It has been an interesting trip thus far, and we're just finishing up day two on this incredibly humid paradise. I thought I'd let everyone know how the trip went, and then I'm going to crawl into bed and bask in the warm glow of the internet that I spilled so much blood for. Well, I just kinda sat at the table.

But I get ahead of myself!

Our story begins in Lancaster, at 3:00 am. It is very early, and Jes gets out of bed to finish getting our last suitcase packed. I bravely stay in bed for another half hour.

Dad drove us to LAX just after 4:00, and we made it sometime after 5:15ish? It was early. My mind was groggy.

We tried to check in using the helpful kiosks, and they were not helpful. Not at all. So we got in line to speak with one of the two representatives helping all 480 million people trying to fly American Airlines, and surprisingly quickly we got our tickets, checked 4 bags, a stroller, a car seat for Autry, and the pack-n-play. Dad, the chivalric gentleman that he is, took us to security, but had to leave us there, even though the lady that helped us was SUPER nice and gave him a ticket that would've let him come to the gate with us. He said he had to “work”.

Psh.  

Autry was very happy to see the people around us, and gleefully ran to the bookstore to peruse (remove forcefully) everything on the bottom shelf she could get her hands on. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 8:30, and at about 8:00 they told us that the flight was booked solid, and if we wanted to check any bags, we could do so for free. Jes happily took our two carry on bags for them to schlep. They then announced that our plane wasn’t there (or something), and they'd have to pull one out of the hangar. Then they changed our gate. It wasn't very far away, but it was cutting it kind of close, and I worried a little about all the luggage making it, but I had faith.

We ended up leaving a little late, and by that I mean about an hour late. It was a 6 hour flight, and Autry only napped for about 40 minutes somewhere in the middle. Without going into too much detail, it was a pretty hellish flight, but Autry was quiet and manageable for probably about half of it. We had a two hour layover, so I wasn't super worried about it. Then we couldn't fly straight into Miami as originally planned, we instead flew  past Miami, and came up at it from the south to avoid some inclement weather. We were down to about 40 minutes to make our connection. Jes and I (again) worried about our bags, but I held fast hope.

We landed successfully, and I've got to give American credit, they hire some pretty incredible pilots. I didn't even feel the tires hit. We taxied for a few minutes, and then the pilot told us to look at all the incredible lightning strikes outside the windows.

I thought to myself,  “That was an interesting thing for him to say.”

He followed it up with, “And because of that lightning, no one can leave, so there's a plane at our gate.”

So we sat for about 30 minutes, looking at our gate.

They let us off at about 6:50, and our flight for Saint Martin was supposed to leave at 7:00. We had to ride the skytrain monorail thing over to a different terminal, sprinted with the baby in hand (as well as the diaper bag, purse, and backpack containing our laptops etch), and made it just in time for them to re-open the gate and let us on. We were incredibly tired by this point, and neither of us had anything to eat on the flight from Miami (apparently complimentary peanuts would've been too much for the 6 hour flight).

And we sat at the gate for about 20 minutes. So we didn't have to sprint, and it kindled the slightest of hopes that our luggage would be able to make it. Once we taxied out, we had to wait in line, since they had stopped all outgoing flights during the lightning storm. We were (I think) 23rd in line, or something like that.

So right as we take off, Jes lets our ride (two women whose husbands work/are students here) know that we're probably going to be late.

And we were.

We arrived, and instantly began exuding copious amounts of fluids from our bodies at about 11:30 pm (instead of 9:55). 

We were the last plane to arrive, shockingly enough, and the customs people really wanted to be home. They didn't ask what we were doing here, how long we were staying, anything at all. The 60 or so people from our flight eagerly collected their luggage, and disappeared into the night. Jes, Autry and I, along with one other family stared sadly at the luggage circling the carousel.

None of our luggage made it. No pack n play, no baby seat, no stroller, no bag full of diapers, no changes of clothes.

Jes had very cleverly packed our carry ons to have everything we'd need in case we lost our luggage. But they lost our gate-checked carry ons too.

To add insult to injury, there was no one at the lost luggage counter. I asked one of the customs officials and she told me that the agent had to (something something something something in a loose Caribbean type accent) then would be there after that.

She literally could've said that he needed to cure cancer first, and I wouldn't have had any idea.

Turns out, it took him so long because someone on our flight had had a stroke, and another woman was too inebriated to walk, so they had to get an ambulance and someone to drive the lady to her hotel.

But, after describing our 9 missing pieces of luggage, we walked to the car of the very patient girl who was picking us up. She's super friendly, has two kids, so she had a car seat to put Autry into on our way back. About 2 minutes into the drive, her car died.

So at 12:30 am, day two of our Caribbean adventure, we were in a powerless car next to the airport. The girl, who I will now refer to as Natalie, since that's her name, called the other lady (who had left about an hour earlier since we didn't have 9 pieces of luggage), and we got our car jumped and we made it to our apartment. It's pretty nice, and we're very happy with it. I'll put some pictures on the blog some time this week.

Today another one of the ladies (we'll call her Alicia, since again, her name) took us to burger king for some breakfast. The croissant sandwich was $7.00, and they didn't take cards. Between the 3 of us, we had 10 euro, 6 dollars in ones, and a $100 bill. Thankfully I noticed that it was the MEAL that cost $7.00, and the sandwich itself only cost like $2.85. Apparently coke syrup is worth more than gold here.

Jes’ sponsor in the Spouses organization took her to the Costco equivalent to load up on all the things we'll need. They list all the prices in Netherlands Antilles guilders as well as US dollars. When Jes got the total, it was like $680. Which was pretty shocking. But that was guilders! It's 1.8 guilders per dollar, so it was far more reasonable for the amount of stuff Jes got.

Our luggage got here at about 5:00, and after jumping Natalie’s car again (she should probably get that looked at), we got back with all our suitcases. Which was good, since we were on Autry’s last diaper.

Jes also got a router, and internet was already available (in the sense that we have to pay for it regardless), so that's why I got to email everyone!

I kinda skipped over most of today, but in essence I was sitting at home sweating while Jes ran around with the people from the Spouse’s organization doing errands. Autry is (shocker) nonplussed by the heat, but it's a little sad to see her be so sweaty all the time.

It's pretty late now (ok it's only 10:30, but we've had some late nights), so I'm going to head to bed.

I’m trying to figure out Google voice for phone calls and all that jazz, but so far I've managed to get WhatsApp installed (it's a free (for a year) international text app, so it works a lot like iMessage, but you can use it to message non apple phones too), Jes has Facebook messenger, and we can facetime if we're in our apartment as well.

We love you and miss you all so much!