The Carousel

It may seem lame, actually, yes, it is lame that I'm going to create a post designated only for an ice cream shop, but seriously, this place was insane. Like the Daddy Warbucks of ice cream stores. It makes any DQ or Coldstone look like a secondhand store that got bombed.


This is the main entrance to "Carousel" the funniest thing about this place is that it's located in the middle of a totally dump street. Definitely not what you'd expect to find considering its surroundings.
When you walk in you see this giant chandelier, giant white pillars, and marble everything, it was insane.
They had a little store off to the right when you first come in, and its filled with homemade dishes and different carousels, which I of course took pictures of...


I love the garbage cans, and the awesome floor with stars all over it.


Their selection of ice cream was overwhelming, and it all looked so pretty. The big hits were "Nutella" which is just as it sounds. That awesome hazelnut mocha spread made into an ice cream, it was so good.

Then when you walk out back there's a carousel, hence the name! Casey and I were laughing at the sign next to it that's pictured here. Basically their eloquent way of saying that retarded people and little kids needed to be accompanied, that was kind of interesting.

The carousel itself is kind of like a dome, encircling the entire thing on the outside wall are pictures of people eating ice cream. I took a couple pictures of them, but there were literally hundreds.

I feel like a loser for posting about ice cream, but I just thought this was such a cute place, and I've never seen anything quite like it. I'm excited to explore more of the island and find more cute places like this. Everyone come visit, i'll buy you an ice cream!

The island is starting to feel like home.

I can't believe I've already been in St. Maarten for almost a month, the weeks are just cruising by so quickly. I'm already wishing it would slow down, I don't want my eight months here to pass too quickly. The slower paced life, and friendly people, and beautiful weather and views are definitely starting to grow on me.

This week was a lot of fun! We went without water for the beginning part of the week, as the days went on we slowly sat further and further apart from each other as to not offend anyone with our smelliness from lack of showering ;) Apparently a water mane burst and they turned the water off as a precaution to avoid flooding. Tenants in our building were threatening to go into the pool with a bar of soap to bathe if our water wasn't turned on soon. It's a bummer when you forget your water's off when you go work out and then realize there's no way to take a shower--thank goodness for pools! We've made sure to store a bunch of water in the cupboards as emergency drinking water, as well as putting a giant tub on the porch to collect rain water to use to fill the toilets so that we can still go to the bathroom. You know you're adjusting to a new way of life when being able to flush a toilet seems like a highlight to the day.

After the water got turned on I spent the rest of my week anxious about the talk I was asked to give in church on Sunday. Public speaking both does and doesn't freak me out. I enjoy being able to talk and introduce myself to those who don't know me, like my church here, but I also get really nervous and red in the face and I talk too fast, and I forget things I was going to say, or say things out of order, etc. My dad is an AMAZING public speaker, every time I watch him do his training for work, or talk in church, or in other meetings, I always get really jealous. But the talk went well! I wasn't too nervous this time, I was praying for my nerves to ease so I could just get out what I wanted to say. This week I also was asked to be an instructor in the Primary at church which means that I'll be teaching/helping all of the 2-12 year olds at church. I was in Primary for the first time this last Sunday, and I was quite intimidated. The kids are really cute, and really innocent and sweet, but man do they get hyper. I'm excited about this calling, though. I think it'll be fun to be around the little kids, growing up with so many siblings, being around little kids is second nature.

Other highlights of the week included boogie boarding at Mullet Beach (we renamed the beach "Jared Allen Beach" since we all know how much I love Jared, and Jared had a mullet) which is a five minute walk from the apartment. The sand is so soft and the water is crystal clear, it was amazing. Andi and Tanner are slowly getting more acquainted with the ocean, and they're more confident in swimming and playing in it, whereas before it was a "I'm going to wear my clothes to the beach, and just get my feet wet" type of thing.

Carina had her first round of tests this morning, they're called "blocks." They're almost like mid terms, or unit tests, but they account for 12% of your grade, so they're pretty stinking important. This entire weekend she had her face in her laptop, or in a textbook, so we tried to steer clear of her. The med school campus plays a movie in one of the lecture halls on a projector for free every Friday and Saturday night. So Saturday night Andi and I went and saw "The Help." We both love that movie, we've seen it before, and we own it. But we love free activities so we decided to go anyways. The lecture hall was FREEZING. It's such a weird sensation here to be cold even after only three weeks of being gone from Minnesota. It's so hot all the time that to feel cold kind of seems alien. We walked in and saw people cuddled up with blankets and sweatshirts and Andi and I looked at them dumb like, "uhh...we're in the Caribbean, have fun sweating your face off back here in your blanket." Half an hour into the movie I swear mine and Andi's teeth were chattering.

There's a shuttle service at Carina's school that will take you from campus to your apt, or to the grocery store, or the airport, it's awesome. It's not safe here to walk after dark, and it gets dark at 630 or so, so we rely on the shuttle quite a bit. The drivers name is Michael, and he's awesome. Every time he drives us we get a history lesson about the island, or the newest gossip about upcoming stores to open, or scandals with rental managers of different rental units, he's pretty much our eyes and ears to the island, we love him. He also repeats everything a couple of times, which I've found is fairly common for islanders to do. Shuttle drivers can't take tips, but Michael took us to the grocery store last week, so we bought him a thing of Rolo's and asked if he liked Rolo's and he says, "Yes I do, Yes I do, Yes I do." Then later on in the car ride he was talking about a mall here called "Blue Mall," which always seems under construction and it's never going to finish and we commented that was very weird and he says, "Very weird, very weird, very weird." Love it.

I don't know if I've mentioned before that the gym in our apt building costs about 50 dollars a month per person, so we've scrapped that idea and we just use the gym for free at Carina's school, and it's really nice and heavily air conditioned which is awesome because the air conditioning in the gym in our apt is only on three or four hours a day, and even when it's on it's super hot in there, and it smells a bit funky. There's this guy named Marcus who works out in the same gym and he's such a fine specimen of man, so I always work out extra hard or extra long when he's there, just to soak up our time together ;) This is going to be awkward once Marcus and I actually start talking more consistently, and then get married and he reads this blog! Ha! Today when I was walking back to the apt from the gym I took this shortcut that was slightly more shady than the regular way home, and this creepy guy started walking behind me and gradually kept getting closer and closer to me so I decided to just run home. I probably looked ridiculous going from a walk to a full on sprint to escape a guy who hasn't done anything to me, but you hear horror stories, and I decided you can't ever be too careful.

After Carina's blocks were done today we decided to celebrate by going out to dinner and ice cream and a movie and I took SO many pictures. I'm literally going to post a separate blog about the ice cream place we went to, because it was so pretty in there, I couldn't believe it. The movies here are American which is awesome so I can keep up on 'em. I'd have flown back to the US just to see "Hunger Games" if they hadn't have had that here, so dodged a bullet on that one. The theater is a lot more strict here than back home. Employees walked into the theater tonight while we were watching "We bought a Zoo" which was my second time seeing it, and they asked us to put our feet down off the chair, and told us Piper had to be sitting in a chair, it was funny. It was definitely a fun night. The woman who owned the restaurant we went to offered Andi and I a job serving there on Wednesday nights for their all you can eat ribs when they're super swamped, so that's something we'll look into as a fun thing for her and I to do together. We're meeting a lot of cool people who live right by us, and the island network of friends is getting better, it's starting to feel like a home. Tomorrow Piper and I have a play group so we can get her some baby friends, so that'll be nice.

Life is good here, I'm loving all of the family time, and all the laughs. Kids are so easily amused. Piper has this baby doll that makes possessed sounding noises every so often randomly when people accidentally step on it or something, and the doll drives us all nuts! I decided it'd be fun to launch the baby doll off of our porch and into the pool, I told Piper that "baby was going to go swimming." At first she seemed thrilled with the idea, Piper loves swimming, and so will her "baby kate." My first attempt at throwing it into the pool, the doll hit a retaining wall and bounced back about twenty feet. When I went down to get it its eye had fallen out, it was so funny. The second attempt we got baby kate into the pool, and Piper started screaming, she didn't like this idea anymore. All's well that ends well, though. Thanks to "Baby Kate's" swim, her sound box is broken, and her creepy laugh doesn't work anymore. So we're keeping ourselves heavily amused at home. Here's some miscellaneous pictures of the restaurant/us at dinner...

Oh, I don't know you? It's okay, we'll be best friends anyways.

So I've already mentioned before that native islanders are EXTREMELY friendly, and they love kids. Every time I walk while holding my two year old nieces hand, people stop us, ask if she's my daughter, and then say how cute she is, and they all say "hi" to her, and she often times says "hi" to them without them even saying anything to her yet. Piper is loving all of her new friends.

I went to the grocery store with my family a couple of days ago and my niece Andi and I were in the produce section picking up a bunch of vegetables. I was over by the avocados feeling it in my hand, making sure its firm, and its not going to go bad soon (everything here is shipped on a boat from somewhere else, so food goes bad a lot faster, ice cream is often freezer burned, chips are sometimes stale before you even open the bag, so it's always smart to be overly cautious about produce) and all of a sudden this guy who works in the grocery store and is stocking up bins of fruits walks over to me while I'm checking this avocado and says, "Ah very nice! You know how to correctly check the avocado to make sure it's good!" I just stand there kind of awkward, i'm not exactly sure what to say, i've never before been complimented on my producing freshness checking skills, I give my niece a "is this real life?" look and just smile at the worker whose just complimented me. He grabs an avocado himself and squeezes it and says, "Yes, you were exactly right. Good job checking!" Then the guy puts his fist up for a fist bump, I smile and bump his fist and start to walk away. A couple of minutes later I walk back through the produce section to get some bread, I'm purposely walking in a way that will avoid the worker, he didn't offend me or anything, I just wasn't feeling another awkward encounter, even though my entire life is one giant awkward encounter, and I'm actually amazing at being awkward. Ask ANYONE who knows me. I grab a couple loaves of bread and hear the worker again and I think "Crap! He's spotted me!" He walks over to me and says, "You need to try the platanoes, they're giant bananas, and they're so sweet. You want me to grab you some?" I told him we were good and walked away, and I hear him yell back that if I ever change my mind and want to try some sweet bananas that he's always working. I got in the car after the grocery store and just started laughing.

On the car ride home we saw a lady balancing an entire basket of fruit on her head with no strap attached under her chin, I told my family that it'd be really funny if somebody pushed the basket off, or if she fell, and they said that was a messed up thought. That's when I realize I have the weirdest thought processes ever, and I told them all that they'd be terrified to be inside my mind for even an hour. I always think about the weirdest, most un-obvious (pretty sure that's a made up word)things.

Today my nephew wanted to go snorkeling with some of our friends, so my nieces and I walked him to the med school campus where they were all going to meet up. On our walk back, this man walks past us and says, "I like you" I recognize the man, he works in the resort we're staying in, they're doing construction on the unit RIGHT next door, and we see him all the time. He always says hi to Piper and smiles at us, and that's pretty much it. So his random stopping us on the street was pretty out of the blue. I told him I liked him too, I figured, hey, he's an islander, they're all really nice, we're just talking about liking each other as friens, right? Wrong. He then asks me how old I am, asks if I have a boyfriend, not gonna lie, I lied... I told him I had a boyfriend. This always seems like the smartest reply to when I'm asked out by someone I'm not comfortable saying yes to, it seems less like straight up denial, and the simplest scapegoat I can always think up...I start to walk away when he asks me where my boyfriend is, I tell him he's home in Minnesota (at this point I'm totally ready to spew all these imaginary details of my made up boyfriend. I have tons of guy friends and I'm seconds away from being prepared to answer all his questions about my made up boyfriend, as to not show that I'm lying), then the man asks if he can see me tomorrow, I told him I had a boyfriend. The man goes on and on about how it doesn't matter if I have a boyfriend because my boyfriend isn't here. Now I'm starting to get annoyed, my 13 year old niece, and two year old niece are both just standing in front of me awkwardly, waiting to keep walking. After explaining to him that even though my "boyfriend" doesn't live here, it wouldn't be honest to go on a date with him, he tells me I'm sweet, and finally we're walking away. Now I sit in my apartment afraid to go outside because I know the man is working in the unit right next door, always there doing construction, and I'm not quite ready for another awkward encounter quite yet. Besides, there's this gorgeous man who works out in the same gym as me, and I'm pretty sure I'm staying available for him ;)

The island is so fun this way, I already have had so many funny conversations with people, and culture differences, my mom laughs hysterically at me every time I call home and tell her about it. Love the island, 'mon.

My full time job: Piper Joli

As most of you know, I moved to Caribbean with my sisters family mostly to take care of their two year old, my niece, Piper. She's so much fun, and she makes me laugh all the time, she always says the cutest things. These are a couple of pictures of her that I wanted to post, pretty much sums up her personality.


Until we find her a toddler bed here on the island, Piper has been sleeping with me, and she sleeps like a Starfish, the tiny toddler somehow manages to occupy an entire King size bed. Not to mention I've already woken up with a bloody nose from a nice kick to my face since she insists on sleeping with her head at the foot of the bed, and feet right by my face :p

Every time I whip out my camera (which around her is ALWAYS, since she's always doing something picture worthy) she stares at me, I think she likes having her picture taken.


This is what your hair looks like after you've slept with it in double pig tails, I love her bed head.





Piper is turning into a little beach bum, she absolutely loves the ocean and going swimming, or as she calls it, "wimming," literally ALL day she walks around the apartment saying "let's go wimming." If you aren't ready to go, she'll walk into your room and get your swimsuit and bring it to you like a dog playing fetch, it's so cute. She also loves the sand which is good, we just tried our first round of boogie boarding and such and absolutely loved it, so I'm sure there will be MUCH time spent by the ocean.

As per everyone's request, here are some pictures.

These are pictures of the pools on the resort we're staying at, as well as some pics from the rooftop, too. The view of the island from on top of the roof is my favorite. I'll have more pictures of the island outside of our resort very soon! Page 1 of 2.

Reality check

So I've concluded since moving here, that when describing the Caribbean Islands, people leave a lot of things out. Don't get me wrong, the beaches are gorgeous, the people are all extremely friendly, to the point where "Minnesota nice" seems like "Minnesota mean" everyone is always smiling, asking you how you're doing, coming up to shake your hand and find out your name, the native Islanders here are just genuinely nice people as a whole. BUT, what people don't tell you is that these islands are basically a third world country.

It's completely poverty stricken, a lot of areas are essentially desolate, there is hurricane devestation remnants scattered around the entire island, to quote my sister, it's like "Google" chooses which images it wants to show of the islands. I came to this island thinking it was going to be completely white sand beaches, clear water, and gorgeous buildings, the nicest architecture, perfect brick/cement roads, and you get here to realize it's quite the opposite.

When I first came here, that was a harsh reality check, I was actually quite depressed. Where was this "Paradise" I'd been told that i'm moving to? I need to mention here, that i'm not living in a gutter, or an alley somewhere, and i'm not waking up to a homeless person taking a pee right next to me, or anything drastic like that. Our resort itself is amazing, everyone who hears we live at "Rainbow Beach" says how jealous they are of all of our pools, and our beautifully furnished apartments, the fact we live right on the ocean, and we have amazing views of the boats, and the waves. But if you take a step outside of our door, and walk down the street, it's so sad. There's litter everywhere, destroyed buildings, stray animals, funny smells, and it's not quite what you'd imagined.

Now that i'm on day nine of being here, i'm realizing something, and that is that i'm here for a reason other than a blissful vacation. Being here is already teaching me that I take so much for granted. On this island it isn't uncommon for the power to go out, which means blistering heat with no A/C, and no refridgeration, so all of your food goes bad. On this island it isn't uncommon to turn the faucet on the sink to find that you have no running water, or when the water is working and you're in the shower, the water pressure is so incredibly low that you don't think you're ever going to get the conditioner out of your hair, and by the time you do rinse it all out, you feel bad about how much water you've wasted, and how much that water costs here.

When I was home none of this crossed my mind, and I'd never taken the time to be grateful for it, and I truly am excited about living here, and learning so much more about how other people live in different parts of the world, parts I've never seen before now, and how nobody should be entitled to anything.

I just feel myself completely transitioning, and I don't want to get up on a soap box and preach to you guys about how I'm this amazing person because I'm realizing this, and how my life is changing so much in so little time, but I really already do feel SO grateful for everything that I had, and at the same time I'm already SO grateful about this opportunity to live here, and feel a different kind of life, and have my eyes opened all that much more...

I'm finding myself praying to find friends here! I left a home with so many friends, I could have made plans to do something every night of the week, and I know nobody here except for the five people I came with, my family. Already the islanders, and fellow med students, as well as people from our church have gone above and beyond at being kind to us, and that means more then they'll ever know. Still, i've never felt as lonely as I do lately, and never felt without so many friends, but I think this will be a good thing, too. Friends are another thing I guess I took advantage of.

All that being said, i'm excited to start the next few months with a completely different perspective, know that I appreaciate all of you, my friends and family back home. Everyone take a nice long shower with high water pressure for me ;) love and miss you all!

Getting settled in St. Maarten

Hello, friends! I've decided to create a blog for my time in the Caribbean as a nanny for my sisters family to best keep all my curious siblings and friends informed on my day to day life in such a different culture.

Our flight here was direct, which was extremely nice. Myself, my oldest sister, Carina, her husband, Casey, and their three kids, Andi, Tanner, and Piper, all got a ride to the airport in two cars from my parents. Loaded in the van and our sonata with 20 plus bags (literally) and a giant boxed up iMac computer, we said our goodbyes (I cried like a baby--I will not lie. I've never gone longer than a couple of weeks without seeing my parents, so this will definitely be an adjustment, although they said they're quite looking forward to the vacation themselves, heh) and made our way into the airport. We had asked my dad to do circles around the aiport until we knew that all of our baggage made it onto the plane and we didnt' have to dump anything off into his car to leave in the states. Phone call number one to my dad: "We still have all of our winter jackets, please come get them!" The bag check attendant was far more than overwhelmed at the sight of all our baggage and our screaming two year old who was awoken for the trek to the airport. We were overweight on some bags, so we were those people in the airport, unzipping bags, and throwing toiletries into lighter bags, light clothes into heavier bags, etc, etc. Word to the wise: Don't bring thirty pounds worth of aveda hair care. Oops. Notified by the airport staff that there was no way they could guarantee a safe arrival of our iMac considering the high amount of people who would be handling it, and the high probability that it would be broken en route, we made phone call number two to my dad and asked him to come pick up the computer. THAT was a bummer.

After checking all of our bags, and getting through security, we made our way to the gate. Hearing conversations of those who live in St. Maarten for a couple months at a time (mostly retired couples) I got very excited about the slow pace of life we were about to embark on. I literally heard two older men discussing their plans to meet up at "the hammock under the tree" that one man must always occupy here. We boarded the flight thinking it was eight hours, we learned quickly that this included our time change, and that our flight was really only five hours. Woot!

The flight went super fast, I had stayed up the entire night before hanging out with my best friend for the last time for a while, so I was quite exhausted. I drifted in and out of sleep basically the whole time. The final descent onto the runway was terrifying, we were slowly and slowly getting closer to the ocean, and I still saw no island to land on. When we did end up seeing an island in the horizon, and got closer and closer to it, it seemed like we were going to crash into the ocean because the island is too small, once you weren't worried about crashing into the ocean anymore, you were worried about the plane hitting pedestrians because of how close it came to the beach! But alas, we were safe, and everything was fine. I should mention that I hate flying, I always get anxious, especially when flying over the ocean for hours. I always picture myself as Tom Hanks from "Cast Away" hopefully i'll never befriend a volleyball... I'm sorry, Wilson.

Once you got off the plane we all got onto this bus, you'd think you were settled in for at least a five minute drive, but nope, it was maybe thirty seconds, it seems we could have walked to the aiport from the plane. St. Maarten is notorious for its awful driving, people constantly honk, slow down to talk to people on the side of the road, pass people in the other lane, etc. So we get on this bus and not ten seconds later a golf cart with two guys in it pulls up RIGHT in front of our bus, no more than six inches away, our bus slams on the brakes and honks, and all I do is look at my sister at the front of the bus with an expression that said, "holy crap, what did we just get ourselves into, and wow they weren't kidding about the awful driving here." We flew through customs in a breeze, and waited for our bags, then got picked up by some facebook friends we'd made through the medical school, and our church. Thank you, friends!

When we got to our apartment we were all just cranky, hot, and tired. The apartment was beautiful, we quickly changed and then went to a friends house for dinner since we didn't have any food and all the stores were closed. We came home that night, unpacked while we were half awake, and hit the sack.

The next morning we went to church. There were maybe thirty people in attendance, and almost all of them were at least fifteen minutes late, everything "island life" is VERY slow paced, nobody is EVER in a rush, and it's much more relaxed, that will take some getting used to. My family was the only white family there, and we had to repeat everyones name a couple of times after they introduced themselves, but everyone was so nice, and so incredibly genuine. I'm looking forward to getting to know them.

The first couple of days here have been complete family bonding, and media black out since we went without internet for the first four days and had literally no connection with anyone outside of our apartment door. We swam a whole lot, went into the ocean and let the waves just tackle you and send you every which way, and sand, so much sand.

The island is French and Dutch, so you see your fair share of nudity. There's this one particular couple ALWAYS by one of the pools here in the resort, they'll lay there from sunrise to sunset, and they're topless, it's quite shocking the first time you see it. Ha. We've named the pool by them the "Boobs McGee Pool" so now when the kids and I are leaving, we can tell my sister and brother in law which pool we'll be at, so I guess we owe a thank you to that lady, without her my sister wouldn't know where we were swimming.

Everyone on the island is really friendly, and they apparently love kids. They're just so much less self conscious as a whole, much more open and far less inhibitions. The other day I came up the stairs from the ocean to go into the pool, and one of the resort workers had a hose and said he'd hose the sand off of me before I got into the pool, when I reached for the hose to do it myself, he insisted that he do it, and I just stood there awkwardly while he hosed me down, the entire time I was just trying hard not to laugh.

The humidity is killer, our hair looks awful all the time, and our biggest problem is knowing whether or not to shower because who knows if we'll be in a pool in fifteen minutes, or that our flip flops squeak when they're wet. Life is good, and so carefree. I'm already loving the relaxed adjustment.

If anyone wants to visit look for the resort window covered in tin foil (it cuts down on heat that gets inside) we're thinking of renaming our apartment White Trash-R-Us ;)

Until next time, like the islanders say, whatever you do, do with a smile.