An exciting event!

Apologies!  hubby is off work on holiday and so we are taking the time to explore and relax with the kids! I will have lots of lovely things to blog about the island over the next few days or weeks (hubby only goes back to work on Friday)!

The most exciting thing happened a week ago on the island!  Telephones buzzed!  E-mails were sent and if you had a boat or a yacht or something that floated you were on it!  For my part it started with a telephone call from hubby at work:  "Guess what?"  me "uh no, what?"  him "there is a boat on fire" me "no way!? seriously!?  where?!" him "out on the water!  there is a thick plume of black smoke!"  You should come down and see"  me "well I am busy making pancakes but hey, we'll go take a look"!  Of course human nature being what it is, I downed pancake making tools, grabbed the kids and the camera and went straight to our neighbour to tell her of the excitment!  Of course she too downed tools, in her case make up tools as she was on her way out, and grabbed her camera!  We got down to the beach and lo and behold there on the horizon was the black smoke. 

Of course we couldn't help but speculate what it was.  Suggestions from people on the beach ranged from yachts to container ships!  Of course a container ship would have been far more exciting for me as I remembered the sinking of the MSC Napoli in 2007, the containers washed on shore and people's scavenger instincts kicked in.  They were grabbing what ever they could, including BMW Motorbikes and no that wasn't me!  By the time we went to investigate the police were everywhere and no one was allowed near the beach where the Napoli's containers had started to wash up on!

Later that afternoon we heard it was a "super yacht" or perhaps I heard million dollar boat and added to the speculation of it being a "super yacht" we have a few that moore here including the largest in the world.  THAT would be disastrous for someone but still not as exciting as a container ship in my opinion!

Of course being on an island a third of the size of Cape Town everyone knows everyone and it turns out someone or actually quite a few someones we knew were on a yacht when they heard the mayday.  They dashed off as fast as their yacht could take them as the owner of the yacht's son was the captain on the boat that was going down!  Turns out there was an explosion on the million dollar deep sea fishing boat and all 8 people were successfully rescued!

People are still talking a week later of this and it  has been great excitement for all those on the island!  Praise the Lord no one was seriously injured!

Visitor's to our garden

Recently we had some visitor's to our car park garden (I call it that because we currently live in the middle of the staff car park!  Have I told you that before?) !  The kids were excited and Jess come running in yelling "there are monkeys in the garden"!  I was upstairs at the time, I can't remember now what I was doing, was I cleaning?  no... brushing my teeth?  no.... OH yes, ensuring I grab all the coins on my new Ice Age game on my Ipad! 

Green Monkeys were brought from West Africa aprox. 350 years ago.  They can be found over all of the island but tend to stick to the parishes (ie county, province, etc.) where there is more vegetation.   However we have a good  few troops in St. James and you can often see them playing on the golf course.  No matter how old you are or where you come from it is so entertaining to watch them bound around the golf course and pounce like children onto one another and then run as fast as you can so that you are not caught.  Then get distracted by a bit of twig while your buddy takes a running leap at you! Kids and adults alike stop and watch.  The only annoying thing that really irritates me are the hoards of tourists in the tour cars which take them around on a tour of the island.  These cars stop and encourage the tourists to take photo's while they entice the monkeys to them with food.  This is something I completely disagree with and has been known to create problems with little old ladies walking home with her grocery bags!  Yes I know you want to laugh, you've got an image in your head now havn't you?  Poor old lady walking along and her bags are grabbed and raided by the monkeys!   

Anyway, back to the monkeys.  They have incredibly long tales which are a yellow / olivy green colour and the girls constantly comment on their tails.  Our encounter in our garden caused great excitement as 4 monkeys scouraged through the trees.  They look for birds nests and raid the eggs.  We watched and snapped a few pics of them at one stage I thought one was going to jump to us but then they were gone! 

Monkey's tail

Checking out our neighbour's balcony!

Is he or isn't he going to jump?

What?

So what did we do today?  Not a good day!  Joys of being an expat in paradise is not easy.  Days go up and down, emotions can run high and with that a good dose of frustration too.  Right now there are quite a few that come to mind but one of the best has to be this:

We have showered every day for nearly 5 months.  I would love to take a leisurely bath, I actually can't remember when I last had one of those.  However when we moved into the house the bath was not working.  How?  the lever that is supposed to stop the water from going out was corroded and needed to be replaced.  No big deal they would order them for us and fix it!  Yay!  4 1/2 months later the problem has finally been resolved.  Our lovely maintenace man looking after the house arrived on Tuesday morning and voila.... a rubber plug was stuck in and tied to the handle of the lever!  Wow, words fail me. 

Ahh well, at least I learnt how to make an awesome crusty loaf of bread.  Pop a pan of water in the bottom of the oven when you are heating the oven up.  This creates steam so when you pop your bread in to bake and is ready, it will come out with a nice crusty top!  Wait 5 minutes, slice up and slap on a dollop of strawberry jam.  Delicious!

4 1/2 months in the making

Crusty home-made bread.  (I don't use a bread pan anymore)



The Search is on.

So what did we do today?  School has started again and I am and the girls are taking it gently this week!  Today Daddy is off and after school (short school day!) we are once again house hunting. 

So I will come back later and tell you all about it! 

Moving and then not

So what did we do today?  Should be more like what did we do during the week?  Sorry I have not blogged but what a roller coaster week.

I won't go through all the details but in short we moved and then moved back again.  Long story but now we are house hunting again.  This is interesting in Barbados as security is a huge thing out here.  For instance the house we liked and moved in and out of had the kitchen knives in the drawer next to the bed!  Personally having grown up in South Africa this made me laugh out loud!  Crime is not at the level it is in SA but Bajans take this very seriously! 

During house hunting you must ensure that there are adequate security bars on the windows and doors, given this was one of my pet hates in SA and one of my many "excuses" for leaving a beautiful country, here I am again having to face bars blocking my view.  This however does not seem so bad when the weather is always good and the sun is shining 99% of the time!  You are more outside than in!

The other thing that Bajans love to do is have a "LIME"!  No I am not talking about green citrus fruit that we use in our Mojito's!  But here the term "LIME" is to party!  On the bad day of moving twice we went out for a lovely dinner at Zacchio's which is on the beach to forget the stress of it all!  Yummy crispy and tender calamari to start with Aioli for hubby and the girls, crispy coconut chicken strips for me followed by kids food of burger and chicken goujons and for the grownups veal with a marsala mushroom sauce (me) and ribs (him)!  We came home after dinner to face what we left - a house of grocery packets stuffed with food and other things, suitcases of clothes and boxes of books.  Closing a blind eye we put the kids to bed and sat outside for a night cap!  Off to bed to face the lot the next day and try to make the house a bit more liveable!  2.15am the LIME kicked off.  It was so loud it sounded as if it were in the staff car park next to (and around) the house!  Hubby in undies and shirt bolted outside to find out what was going on.  Only we discovered that there was a street party down the road in Holetown and it was so loud we could hear it!  And of course the police did nothing about it as the story going around is that the DJ is well connected!  The kids, of course, woke up and do you know they are so resilient!  They were also very quick to point out that the DJ kept stopping the songs in the middle and talking as loud as he could!

I would say that this experience gave us a great excuse yesterday to do nothing and nothing is exactly what we did! 

Okay that is all for today!

Buona Pasqua!

Very belated Easter Greetings to you all!

So what did we do today?  I love Easter, even though my other half is working hard Easter alwasy reminds me that I am blessed to be here!  I trust you all had a fabulous weekend too! 

A Bajan tradition at Easter time is to go kite flying after church on Easter Sunday.  I was soo excited for this and pictured thousands of kites flying in the deep blue sky from the white sandy beaches!  Kites are sold all over the island, on the side of the road and in the shops!  Beautiful hand made kites from paper with gorgeous patterns and a long pieces of fabric for the tail!  Tempted as I was to purchasing one of these I remembered that learning to fly a kite with young children means that the beautiful paper kite would more than likely be destroyed on it's first attempt! 

I can picture running on the beach (me) to get the kite in the air.  Hmm not a pretty image given the exclusivity on the beach!  Still I thought as we are celebrating Easter in a new country let us try to enjoy their traditions.  Two plastic kites were bought, this way I could be sure that if they were to hit the ground, a rock or in this case large pieces of coral.  A torn plastic kite would not be a big deal. 

We headed off mid morning for a swim on our local beach before heading off to do the kite flying.  Prior we had heard of all the warnings to those who wanted to fly kites in the no fly zone - being near the airport.  Okay so I thought I would ask a Bajan where does everyone go to fly their kites?  The answer I am afraid was a bit disappointing - everyone heads to The Garrison.  Don't get me wrong I know where The Garrison is but my image of thousands of kites being flown from all the white sandy beaches popped like a bubble!  Still we thought we would give it a go. 

Down on the beach we watched rain out at sea and prayed that this would not come our way.  It is great when it rains as everything is cooled down but those clouds were quite dark and gloomy out there.  We swam, we sat, we bumped into friends, sand castles were built, large holes were dug, kids were burried and before we knew it 6 hours on the beach had past.  Not one kite to be seen (ours were still in the car).  So as Easter Sunday came to a close I thought perhaps next year we'll get those kites out and fly them on The Garrison but it was a very relaxing day in the sun and enjoyment was still had by all!

Blog endings.

So what did we do today?  Apologies, yesterday was a "time out" day.  A day spent with the family, snuggling in bed before bouncing up and heading off to ... the Dept. of Education!  Well that was me anyway, hubby stayed snugged in bed and the girls took to the laptop downstairs!  Well the Dept. of  Education and I are good friends now and as I stroll down those cold grey corridors  and open the door I am greeted with "today is not your lucky day"  Guess I'll be back there on Tuesday!

It has taken me a while to think of what to blog about as certain personal challenges have arisen and I sat here with the guilty feeling of promising myself to blog every day (not always going to happen) and just not really feeling up to it.  I sat here a bit heavy hearted and decided to read other peoples blogs to give me a bit of inspiration.  What I discovered was a world of peoples stories with no ending.  How could that be?  Bloggers enthusiastically stroking the keys day by day taking their readers on journeys into their world (in this case I was looking up all the blogs I could on Italy) and then there was nothing.  No more entries.  No more news no more recipes no more pictures.  These blogs sit there sad with no ending.  It's like going to the movies and half way through it stops.  A blank screen.  What happened?  What caused them to stop writing?  Was it all too much?  Well peeps that got me thinking what if someone was reading my story  would I want them to think I had just stopped?  So whilst today I don't have any of my story to write about and only because my head is not in i.  My heart still is. Tomorrow I will tell you about the great Chicken recipe I made and the awsome big waves at the beach today. 

Come back tomorrow and I promise I will still be here.

Tired...

So what did we do today?  Hung around waiting for the Dept. of Education to call. Called Dept. of Education. Waited some more.  Went and paid bills.  Went to Dept of Education.  1 hour later and I have to go back tomorrow.  Nothing more to say today. 
P.S.  Dinner was yummy, pork schwarmas - stir fried pork with yummy spices, stuffed into a pita with Hummous, Lettuce, Toms, Cheese & Tzatziki!  Night!

PPS - this photo has no relation to paradise island but is in fact in Sulmona, Abruzzo, Italy where we would go and do our shopping... sigh.... they have so much nicer vegetables than paradise island!

Easter Bonnets & Sausage Rolls

Hot. HOt. HOT.  After being away from the heat for 3 1/2 years I never thought I would want a bit of snow!  So while it is gently snowing in Northern Ireland and Scotland I am melting ... melting .... melting.....

Heat aside so what did we do today?  Easter bonnets & baskets,  crinkly soft tissue paper flowers, stickers, glitter, glue and painted eggs!  Easter Tree - Done!  Baskets just waiting to be filled with Easter Treats and all the colours of the rainbow and filling my house amongst the boxes still waiting
p a t i e n t l y to be moved to their new home!

So now on to dinner, yes home made sausage rolls!  Pork mince flavoured with salt, pepper & sage (no onion my daughter yells!) wrapped in puff pastry, squished gently on the side with a fork and there goes the oven alarm... sorry dinner is ready ... go to go!

JUST WHEN I THOUGHT GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS WERE OKAY

So what did we do today?  Let me start at the beginning....  When we decided to move to an island in the Carribean almost 1/6 th the size of Cape Town I had the idea to home school our girls.  As I would not be allowed to work I thought I would take the kids education into my own hands!  Best idea ever!  I would sit and plan each week with extra worksheets ensuring that the girls were given sufficient practise and I have been bursting with pride when they remember what they have learnt or use their knowledge!  However I always knew that there was one little challenge to overcome.... the official application to the Dept. of Education to home school.  I had time.  I couldn't apply until the work permit for my hubby had been approved and so I continued.  Then the work permit was ready and I put my application in and waited for a call.  Nothing. I called and left messages.  Nothing.  I called again and again until one day early in the morning I received a call!  Yippee!  I need to meet with the permanent secretary to discuss the application.  Great! The day arrived and off I went, ensuring I was wearing the appropriate clothing to a government department (no stringy shirts, sleeves and long trousers).  What a lovely meeting and yes they will approve my application!  They could see I had a good schedule and that I had activites (ballet, swimming & violin) for the girls and extra tutoring once a week for English & Maths!  Praise the Lord.  How easy was that!  I would receive my letter and apply for the visa - everything was on track!

Today I still don't have the letter and our visas expire on Thursday.  I thought I would go ahead and I headed off the Dept. of Education  to get the girls visa forms stamped, I thought well surely they can check and see that the letter is on its way....... no.....sigh........  I have to now go back on Wednesday!  They don't have a record of a letter or my interview taking place and sorry the permanent secretary is in a meeting and they will have to come back to me! Or I can get back to them tomorrow afternoon if I have not heard from them.  Guess it is to be continued....

Oh yes and don't even get me started on when we are supposed to be moving..... that is for another day!

Hi Peeps

Another hot day on sunny Barbados!  Too hot, I never thought I would say that but it is literally melting out there! 

Took the kids to the park at Folkestone Park & Marine Reserve they raced around on the see-saw, double slide and anything else for their size!  Gives me a moment of peace to sit on the bench and read my latest library book - Extra Virgin by Annie Hawes, amongst the olive groves of liguria.  Yeah it was published way back in 2001 (which was the same year the Giant African Snail was introduced in Barbados and is now such a pest apparently the government pays 50c for every pound you collect).  Any hoos we took a stroll on the beach to get the feet wet and cool and was heading for the park when I said we need to wash the sand off our feet.  My youngest daughter then proceeded to wet her entire body to cool down!  Ah well, wish I could have done the same thing!

My oldest on the other hand is way upset today.  Why?  Well this is part of the "expat" frustrations of  living in a developing country - the wifi not working properly.  Probably because the Green Monkeys are swinging on a wire somewhere and this has caused our wifi to go to pot for the past 4 days.  Also we are supposed to be moving house and the excitment is too much as we are about to have our very own swimming pool!  This way when the waves are too big at the beach we can still cool off in the clear waters of the pool.  Hopefully we won't need to share the pool with the many toads & singing frogs we hear at night!