I live and breathe hair & music

I'm trying desperately to update my blog more frequently, that way people don't whine because they're going through my blog withdrawals (cough* Amy & Hannah cough*) and also so my blog entries don't end up being 800 miles long and they're not overwhelming people...ha

I've been bad about taking my camera with to as many places, and I'm not taking nearly as many pictures which is stupid of me. Luckily a lot of my friends here (Trisha) document everything, it's so nice to have that person in the group who's always taking pictures of everything, makes me happy later to have memories of all those things.

Lately I've been what feels like extremely busy, but in a good way. I'm expanding some things I'm doing at night. My philosophy is, I'll never have the free time in life that I have here so I might as well take advantage of all the things I could be doing. I'm busy with Piper during the day of course, but at nights and weekends without having a job to go to all weekend, or a lot of obligations or things to show up at, I've had a lot of time to just kick it and take part in things I've always wanted to do, but have never done.

French Lessons. Thursday nights I take French lessons, and that is quite an experience. It definitely makes me so happy that I took so much Spanish in high school, and grateful for my fluent Spanish speaking father who always used it at home, I underestimated my fluency that's for sure. I had a five or so minute conversation with a local here who also spoke Spanish and he was impressed by how well I could speak and understand...making Dad proud. Anyways, knowing Spanish has helped immensely with French. Verb conjugations make that much more sense, and past and present tenses of words, not to mention a lot of the verbs are so similar. The one beef I have with French though is the pronunciation. Every Thursday night I feel like my voice is hoarse from coughing and gargling words all night. I write down the French words and then underneath the word I write how it actually sounds, just for practice sake, and half of the words have (phlegm, cough, gargle, hock a loogie) written next to them. Plus I swear, and to those who have learned French, or who speak French, what's up with words that look one way and are pronounced ENTIRELY differently. Sometimes I just have to look to my left and laugh at my friends next to me about these words and how little it makes sense that they're spelled one way and pronounced entirely differently. It can be extreme. It's like writing the word "couch" and telling someone its pronounced "Tibet" how does this happen!? Regardless, it's an absolutely beautiful sounding language, and I'm thrilled to be learning it. It's nice to have my brother in law, Casey here since he can also speak French. I'll definitely need to recruit his help in order to finish my assignments every week. Fun fact about me: My middle name is "Je t'aime" which means "I love you" in French. Nobody believes me when I tell them, and I've had to whip out my license in order to prove it at least dozens of times. Thanks for the bizarre middle name, Mom & Dad ;)
Here's our French class:

Piano Lessons. When I was 12 I took piano lessons for four months and then quit, I didn't like it, I was a bratty little pre teen who thought she was too cool for school and DEFINITELY too cool to have piano lessons in the afternoon instead of hanging out at the skate park behind our elementary school with the rest of her friends...man I was sweet...NOT. Plus when I was 12 we didn't even have a Piano, so I had to go to our church to practice and it always creeped me out to be in there without anyone else. A couple of years later we got a grand piano in the basement and my mom would play it every morning while I was sleeping. Some mornings it was a nice wake up call, pretty piano music to rise to for the day, and other days I had stayed up way too late and wasn't in the mood for her 6:45 piano playing and I wanted to walk out there with a sledge hammer and bang the keys until they were ground up into tiny little pieces and then take the tiny pieces of keys and sprinkle them over my moms head while I said, "No more piano, sleep time." I think that was a literal dream I had one morning while I laid in bed in frustration that my mom was fine tuning her talents and I was just a selfish snot who wanted to sleep in past 7 am. When I turned 14 I started to get REALLY into music. My best friend all through high school and I would constantly look for new bands, I'd listen to him practice guitar all the time, and then once we got our licenses and could drive we were constantly going to concerts. Minneapolis is my favorite place in the world. All of the music and energy there doesn't compare with anywhere else that I'd ever been. I started bringing my iPod with me EVERYWHERE. People would constantly get mad I was always listening to it and not listening to them. I'd take it with me to work and listen to it while I set up shop before our doors opened to customers, I'd take it to the gym, take it to school, everywhere.

I've matured into kind of a music snob. I'm really picky about my music sometimes, and I over analyze it a lot of people tell me, but I guess everyone has their "nitch." Since being in St. Maarten I've been missing my Pandora and Groove Shark stations, and our internet connection is so slow that YouTube videos take forever to load. I'm officially acquainted with EVERY single song on my iPod. 16GB of music and I can put it on shuffle and guess every single song. My iPod is my baby. I love it. A couple of weeks ago I was listening to a guitar intro from "23" by Jimmy Eat World which is my all time favorite song, and I said, "Alright, that's it! I HAVE to learn to play the guitar." It was seriously bothering me, it didn't make sense to me anymore that I love music so incredibly much, yet I can't play a single instrument. I sing, but I want to play the piano, and I NEED to play the guitar.

Cue my friend Trisha. She's a spouse on the island who specializes in music, and teaching vocal and piano lessons. I have my first lesson in an hour and I'm excited to finally start learning piano again so I can get this show on the road. My impatience is wearing thin on my intolerance with myself about lack of musical ability. Enough is enough. Its honestly just been bothering me for so long. Time to take up some new hobbies, and learn some new skills.


The island is a perfect place to cultivate talents, because you have the time and the resources. My church gave me a keyboard to practice on, so i'm going to be the next Beethoven probably...I mean I'm only guessing... ;) (I'm putting winky faces at the end of all my sarcastic comments so that you people know I'm kidding about being super cocky and seemingly obsessed with myself. It's not like i'm obsessed with emoticons.) For those of you reading my blog that don't know me too well in real life, i'm incredibly sarcastic. You get used to it. I hope? Ha.


I've also been living and breathing hair again lately. After Aveda wrapped up last year I promised myself I'd never even brush someones hair for them again. 1550 hours of straight HAIR just burns you out like I can't even explain. I'm not sure if it was especially bad for me because I don't have the same passion as other hairdressers...I mean, half of my class went on to working in a salon IMMEDIATELY after school finished. I could never do that. All of the drama, and the gossip, and living up to the appearance and way people needed you to be, I just felt like my head was going to implode. But alas, after a couple months of not doing hair I found myself reading hair blogs, studying our upcoming hair trends, and I thought "Crap! I actually love hair." I couldn't lie about that anymore. So I've been doing so many haircuts and colors lately, it's been fun to get back into it again. The one thing I'm missing is my salon chair/sink, I've had to get a little bit ghetto...

My friend Trisha just had her birthday last week, and badly wanted her hair done for the big day. The only hard part is washing the foils out, I had Cari just bend over and put her head into the sink when I did hers, and not only is it extremely uncomfortable but also, "Hi, I'm a bleach foil, Michelle is about to rinse me out and I'm going to whip myself into your eye, thereby blinding you." Not so much a good idea. I have awful luck and didn't want to chance it. People leaning their heads down and the bleach foils being so close to their faces just freaked me out. It brought me back to Chemistry class in High School when we were doing a Stoichiometry lab with eye droppers and I distinctly recall our teacher, Mr. Nelson (who was my absolute favorite) say, "Students, do NOT touch the eye droppers, there's sulfuric acid in them and it could flick you in the eye" so OF COURSE I walk on over to the apparatus, touch the eye dropper, and sure enough acid meets eyeball. I had to use the embarrassing eyewash, mascara was everywhere, I wanted to just die. Mr. Nelson always poked fun at me because we were good buddies so it helped a lot when he told me I was his only student to ever have to use the eyewash...someone get this chick a ribbon for her achievements. KILL ME.

So I told Trisha I had an idea, I honestly think it was divine inspiration ha, to just have her lay on the counter top and put her head back into the sink with some towels under her neck as a nice pillow, and it worked like a charm. Her hair turned out beautifully, I got to use my curling wand which I hadn't used in months. The humidity down here is KILLER. Twenty minutes after curling my hair, it looks like a sweaty afro. So I tend to leave the curling wand under my sink for most of the time, which bums me out slightly, I used to curl my hair constantly, curls are the best. But I decided to curl her hair for the big day, and her hair curled marvelously, but of course, by 7 that night for her birthday gathering, it was mostly flat... oh well!

Moby Dick, our Isuzu Trooper is back now! It had been having some SERIOUS issues with chugging and black smoke coming out of the tail pipe, it had apparently been from the flooding here when I drove it through a very wet golf course (oops) apparently the mechanic took our exhaust sensor (what the freak is that?) off and a ton of water dumped out and immediately after it was working tons better, plus we got new brakes so that when I have to slam the brakes for a person who decided they were ballsy enough to jet across the road, I don't almost hit and kill them, always a plus. Getting the car fixed was quite a fiasco, but I'm just glad she's up and running again so we can errand and get out more.

Piper is doing well, getting so big, talking SO much. She's so fun. She likes to collect rocks now, on our walks she'll pick up fistfuls of rocks at a time, give them to me to carry until we return home, and then she gives a couple of rocks each to all of our security guards who are now her friends. She's growing like a weed, though. I've been taking naps with her a lot more lately. I'm basically nocturnal now, I have been staying up way too late for how early I get up with Pipes. I go down to the ocean almost every night still and it's like a time warp down there. I was down there for two hours last night just writing in a journal my friend Jess gave me before I left to use as my "Island Adventure Book" and by the time I came upstairs it was two hours later, I had no idea. But I got to see a bunch of land crabs, and some tree frogs, and it was awesome. Not to mention the ocean is amazing and the sound of the waves combined with how well you can see every star is the best thing ever.

Speaking of stars, yesterday Cari goes, "Did you know there are 60 Quadrillion stars in our solar system, and 60 quadrillion neurons in our brain?" That's so cool because stars light our sky, and neurons light our brain...isn't that an awesome parallel." I just looked at her waiting for her to laugh because of how cheesy she sounded, but she never laughed, because she was indeed serious...how embarrassing. I love Cari's cheesy lines, sometimes she just drowns us in cheese. By the way, it might not be exactly 60 quadrillion, it was some immensely huge number like that, but I don't remember exactly what number it was, I just say that because I know a med student will comment on this and correct me ;) you're all a bunch of nerds. Living with Cari is teaching me a lot about science, though, and reminding me of how much I loved science compared to every other subject in school...which reminds me...what the heck should I do with my life? Ugh.

Hope everyone has a good week, I'm looking for visitors to come from Mid July-Mid August when it's just me here with Piper and Cari, and we have an empty room.
Come swim with us!

The before and after pics of our pool my friend Kristin put together. We had three pools when we got here, all three were drained about a month later because of a psycho court case battle between our complex owner and the home owners association, its been a long time com in', and now one pool is filled again thank goodness, but the other two sit and rot. I swear to you one of these days I'm going to be walking back from the gym in the dark and i'm going to fall into the unfilled pool and bust my legs/arms/ribs/head/body.

Clingy

I'm officially clinging onto the island life with all my might. I think the fact that my departure to go back to Minnesota is so rapidly approaching, I'm starting to panic. Part of me is ecstatic to go home, see my parents, my siblings, all my friends. I miss Minneapolis, I miss going to concerts, the theater, uptown. I miss Dairy Queen and Chipotle. I miss Target like it was a first born child of mine that's died. I have a lot of fun summer plans when I get home, I'm going on some road trips, going to meet my new nephew, seeing a lot of my siblings, it'll be a blast. But part of me does NOT want to leave St. Maarten...

I'm going to miss...the crazy drivers. the three hour grocery store trips with piper dancing in her car seat behind me. going to the ocean every night to watch the waves and look at the stars. our security guards who always worry about me if i'm not smiling at them constantly. laughing at nudies at the beach. saying i'll just dip my toes in the ocean and getting completely bombarded by a wave. saying "hello" to an islander and them responding with "ok." getting asked out by a completely random guy you walk past on the street. iguanas. sweating just from walking down to the pool in this heat. getting stuck in bridge traffic and having awesome hour long conversations in the car you weren't anticipating. schwarmas. seeing a movie without constant commentary and cell phone conversations. hurricane rain storms. discovering a store on the island with things i've been missing since i moved. ting soda. being known as the "tan american with the obnixious messy bun" by the apt security staff. stopping for speed bumps every thirty seconds. watching planes fly over the mountain. watching planes land while you're in the ocean. scrubbing constant sand off my body in the shower. smelling like tanning oil 24/7. being frustrated the water is out. being followed by stray cats and dogs. watching an iguana drinking out of the pool water. spending twenty dollars to send out ten post cards. paying four dollars per pound of a package i received. the mcdonalds drive thru that always smells like sulfur and death. paying twenty dollars for a carton of ice cream. getting hustled by people selling things on the beach. having no cares about the celebrity gossip because you dont have tv, and you dont care about it anymore. not recognizing a single song on the radio. not doing my hair. forgetting what make up is. whats a hair dryer?

Time is like a ticking clock, and I just need it to slow down. I love you, St. Maarten island...

Tagua Nuts, Coconuts, and men who make out with fish.

After four straight months of a brutal work-load, and taking off studying time only to eat dinner, sleep, and talk to the family for a little while, Carina spent the last three weeks on break with us, and it was wonderful. Her last two weeks of the semester were especially tough, she had her last block exams and the week afterward were her finals, so we hardly saw her at all. Some nights I had to peer into her bedroom in the middle of the night just to make sure she still existed and I wasn't just fantasizing that I had an older sister ;) The first couple of days of her break were spent like this...

She and Piper would isolate themselves in the bedroom and took naps together, Cari definitely misses being around her baby having gone from full time mom four months ago to a full time med student now, they both loved their extra time together.

Piper was so tired one afternoon that I was changing her diaper and she put the blanket over her head right after I finished and just fell asleep. Later when we tried to pull the blanket down so that she could breathe, which we figured might be important, she screamed and immediately pulled the blanket right back over her face. So we decided to just let the hermit enjoy her nap with limited oxygen.

Once Cari was rejuvenated from her much needed rest, and once she got into a state of relaxation after hearing the results from her finals and finding out she did really well, she was actually ready to enjoy her break. First thing she wanted to do was go to Maho (Sunset) Beach. I've posted about this beach in previous posts. Normally we wouldn't be drawn to this beach, it's really small, heavily populated all the time, and not that clean, BUT, it's right next to the airport, and watching a 747 fly directly over your head is quite exciting. Having never witnessed this yet, Cari was really anxious to go, and it didn't disappoint. When the plane is descending from the sky it's so incredibly loud, and it generates so much wind power that the waves all of a sudden get humongous, I had to yell to Cari who was holding Piper in the ocean to get out because the waves were about to get huge, and I knew it'd be hard to hold onto her. Sand flies backwards behind the giant jet and it whips you in the face, gets you in the eyes, but it's a blast. Sand's bound to do that anyways. Every single time I come home from the beach and take a shower I'm always mystified as to how sand gets all over your body, even if you don't even swim and just walk on the sand and sit on your towel. Tricky, tricky sand.

Incoming 747. It's slightly terrifying when you're in the ocean and they get so close to you, all I can think of is how much it would suck if they crashed right into you.

So clearly I come from my mom and Cari comes from my dad, not so much resemblance here, but still sisters nonetheless.

Piper and I flirting underneath the umbrella?

Piper LOVES the ocean and all the airplanes, but after a couple of hours it sure wipes her (and everyone else) out.

My friend Kristin organized a "Cover the night-Kony 2012" event on the island which I was very excited about, I took the kiddos and we went to Maho and put up our posters. I was so proud of them for wanting to be involved. We had a nice conversation in the car on the way to Maho, they had a lot of questions about different global issues, and were asking questions about Osama Bin Laden, and 9/11, I was really happy that they're so interested. Andi, Tanner and Piper are all such smart kids, and they retain information like sponges. I get excited when I can teach them something they didn't know about before.

Casey's parents, Kent and Gayle, came to visit and stayed with us for four days, and we had a lot of fun with them. Those poor souls came on an overnight flight so they were just so exhausted when they got here, and were struggling to stay awake all night. They came bearing gifts of our favorite candies, and a cute quiet book for Piper. The Sunday they got here was Carina's birthday, she asked for a stethoscope and some first aid books, she's gotten really lame in her med school years. That night we just stayed in and made dinner and had the cake that Andi found on a pinterest recipe of course :) Cari loves peanut butter and chocolate (duh) so we made her a Reese's peanut butter cake and it was amazing. Pinterest does it again.

The first day they were here we took them to the market in Marigot which is the capitol on the French side. Most of the market consists of souvenir type clothing, jewelery, but there are some stands with really cool items for sale. Kent spotted this stand advertising these "Tagua" nuts.

They're these nuts that harden in the sun, and then this woman takes them and smooths them and sculpts them into awesome little animals, trees, flowers, etc. She had dozens and dozens, and they were really cool.

After an exhausting half hour of bartering with the tagua woman, Kent treated us all to some fresh coconut milk.

After we finished drinking the milk, the worker cut it open for us so we could try the coconut meat, too. We also got a real sugar cane to try, and it was...interesting. Way too sweet for my taste, unless you're into dumping packets of sugar down your throat, then you'd probably be a huge fan.

Day 2 of their trip here we went to Grand Case (pronounced cause) which is another city on the French side, it has a lot of restaurants, and shops. The place was pretty hopping. Walking around with Kent and Gayle was a lot of fun because they like to stop and talk to random people, and walk into buildings where they hear music coming from, and it made me realize you can embark on a lot more cultural experiences if you just chat it up with people you don't know, and venture into different places. We stopped for a little while to listen to this group of kids playing their steel drums in this old warehouse, and then on the way home from dinner we sat in on a church choir practice and you wouldn't believe how catchy their songs were. I was signing them for the next two days.

The main area of Grand Case that attracts tourists is essentially a very long alley that's filled with all of these different shops, pretty strung up lights, and some really cool art museums.

The restaurant we went to that night was off a recommendation from a couple we met on the street. The restaurant was called "Sky's the Limit" the couple told us it was delicious local food, I don't know what that couple was smokin', but the food wasn't anything to rave about. The whole atmosphere was just kind of funny, and by kind of funny, I mean weird. It was an outdoor restaurant, right in front of me was a lobster tank, and I swear to you the lobsters were dueling, the whole time we were eating I couldn't stop watching them deck each other in the face over and over. Psycho. The menus made Cari and I laugh for days. Almost every single entree ended in "food." So you can get "Pork chop food," or "Steak food" and for some reason I thought that was really funny. Not to mention every single entree came with literally ten sides, ranging from coleslaw to macaroni to spaghetti to rice and beans. I don't think any of us finished our plates, it was toooo much food. But our server was awesome, super nice and quick, plus we were solicited halfway through the meal by this lady who was selling her homemade coconut desserts, and those were delicious.

After dinner we took Kent and Gayle to Carousel, the gelato restaurant by our house because it's the best gelato on the island, and they had to try it. The Carousel has a carousel in the back (WHAT A COINCIDENCE) that Piper tried for the first time that night. At first she wasn't wanting to go on it, but when we were leaving she was screaming hysterically and wanting to ride the carousel again, so she's officially a carousel lover.

We were sad to see Kent and Gayle leave on Thursday morning, we had a blast having them here, and had a lot of fun new experiences. Plus I got to try my first sticky rice and mango with fresh mangoes from the market. Very yummy.

Since Cari didn't have school, she went with me to bring Andi to sailing one night. The yacht club where Andi takes her sailing lessons has a nice view of the lagoon and all of the ships and yachts that are docked. We took Piper with and watched as Andi finished her lesson and started putting her things away. It was a perfect night until Piper was walking on the dock and the yacht instructors giant dog ran by, his leash dragging behind him caught on Piper's foot, the dog kept running and dragged Piper behind him down the dock!! It was absolutely terrifying, Cari and I both ran to her and had a heart attack, the dog turned a corner on the dock and the leash came loose off of Piper's foot and she laid down on the dock screaming hysterically. All I kept thinking was how lucky we were that her foot was released when he turned the corner, or she would have ended up falling in the ocean most likely. She screamed for a while but she's a champ and soon she was okay. Now when we take Andi to sailing she makes sure to ask where the dog is before she'll even get out of the car.

Before Cari went back to school we made sure to take her to Orient Beach which is on the French side, it's by far my favorite beach. It's really clean, the water is so clear, and the best thing about it is how much is going on there all the time. There's a lot of people kite surfing, there's a water trampoline, and its a great beach for people watching. Orient is also notorious for being one of the more popular nude beaches, but that's only off to one side of the beach, we stay on the opposite end, but every once in a while some nudey swaggers by, here's a pic of one guy I found particularly funny, just for your viewing pleasure ;)

The highlight of people watching was definitely this one man who was in the ocean with a bag of bread, schools of fish were swimming after him like crazy, he was able to pick them up by hand and I thought, "wow, that's really impressive" then he'd take the fish and kiss it on the lips, and I thought, "Wow that's really gross! I'm gonna camera stalk him" so for like twenty minutes he kept repeatedly catching fish, kissing them, and washing his mouth out with ocean water, it was so weird and random. People kept clapping on the shore for him, he was getting an audience for sure. He saw me with my camera and kept telling me to take more and more pictures, i'm appreciative that he was so cooperative.

We spent a couple of hours just laying on the sand watching people and laughing at crazy stuff Piper does.

Besides beaches and shopping and restaurants we spent a lot of time at home watching movies and relaxing, and a bunch of time in our pool. Our "backyard" pool area is by far my favorite place on this entire island. The view of the ocean is absolutely amazing. It's hitting me more and more every day how little time I have left on the island and I'm trying to take advantage of everything more. I've been going down to the ocean to hang out a lot more lately, especially at night it's so pretty and you can see the moon and stars perfectly because there's no city lights to disturb it. Its so quiet and nice. I went out there at midnight a couple of days ago and sat on the ledge and this old man yelled down from his porch and said "I'm glad you sat down! I thought you were going to jump off the cliff!" So apparently one can't enjoy the view without it being interpreted as a suicide attempt ;) that guy and I talked for a while and then on my way up I stopped to talk to our security guard, Jerry, who's literally my best friend on this island, with the exception of my family here, I talk to him more than anyone else, he's awesome. But I'll definitely miss the ocean view here.

The last thing Cari made sure I do before school again was her hair. Her gray roots were not cute, and she's gotta look cute in her little white doctor coat. My friend Ellen from Aveda is a gem and sent me some color to do her highlights.

Our friend Karla and her three sons move back to the states on Wednesday, so after church today we had them over for brunch to say goodbye and thank them for all of their help ever since the first second we got here when they picked us up at the airport and had us over for dinner and sent us home with a bunch of food and things we'd need in the apartment. We'll miss you guys like crazy!

It's been a really fun break with Cari around a lot more, and showing her the island she hasn't seen yet since she's had her nose in a book for months. Being a doctor looks hard, guys.

My brother Dillon and his wife, Amy, had their baby this week! They ended up having to get a last minute c-section but both Amy and Vince are healthy and home! Dillon had to go out of town for work training the day after Vince was born but we're happy that they're all reunited now. I'm so excited to see him as he gets older, and i'm SO anxious to meet him.

This upcoming week we're getting back into routines. Cari heads back to school and I'm looking forward to having Piper all to myself again ;)

Her funny story of the week has to be last week when she picked up her doll that was "crying" which of course only she can hear, since its HER baby. She grabbed the doll and said "You wanna go in a time out?" then she walked her doll to the bedroom, put her on the bed and walked out. Then she put her ear against the door and said, "are you done crying now? you wanna come out?" then she walked in and got her "baby Emma" and gave her a hug and called her a good girl. She's such a little mom, she's way too cute.

I'm off to a 10 way call video chat with all of our siblings, its hard to get al of the siblings together at one time, so we just do it virtually. Hope everyone has a good week!