Statia life so far...

Bongo (a local here) takes everyone on a little Island tour when they first get here. So when he left last night he said he would be back at 10 am to take us around. He drove us all around and showed us where the grocery store was, the park , the beach, the pool, the soccer field and well basically the whole Island. He also took us to the Atlantic Ocean side of the island where he says NOT to swim cause its too dangerous. Other people say its okay you just have to be careful sometimes!! Its so beautiful and the waves were awesome. We got out and walked around for a minute too. Cows, roosters and goats roam all over the island and I am not sure if they belong to anyone or not.

 Liam at Zeelandia beach (the Atlantic side of our island)

 

These were some cows that were just hanging out in some trees while we were at the beach. 

Later in the afternoon Hannah Farrell and Katie Bridge (they are part of the welcoming committee) came over to take me grocery shopping. Since we had NOTHING! I was pleasantly surprised to see that the store was actually pretty big and had a pretty good good selection of things. I have been told chicken is a sad story here on the island and that people eat lots of turkey meat. So I bought some turkey bacon and some ground turkey to try out. 

I was also pleased to find a box of these. Liam would be SO happy to know that we can still have p-caw's!! That's what he says for  P o p s i c l e.

This is a picture of our apartment... Very narrow.

Tiffany Erickson came by one afternoon to meet us and say hi. She brought us y u m m y  no bake cookies (I ate all but one before I thought I should take a picture) and told me a little about church and about enrichment and how we have an acitvity once a month. I am excited about that. It will be nice to get out and hang out with all the girls from our "group"! 

These are just some pictures taken from our balcony. Its kinda foggy out so they arent that clear. There will be better ones to come for sure!!

There are always a ton of boats in the ocean here. They have an oil terminal on the island and anyway these ships come with oil and they store the oil here until it is ready to be distributed. There is sometimes over a dozen out there at one time.

 Its so green here, but very over grown!

This is a very colorful little l i z a r d. They are everywhere!! Lots of different ones. Most we see are greyish brown ones so this one was exciting. But they are so quick! So it makes it a little tricky to get a good picture!

This is the beautiful s u n s e t  we see from our balcony! There will also be many more of these photos to come. I love taking pictures of the beautiful sunset every night. It really is gorgeous every single night. And this is my view every single day. Its pretty awesome! The pictures actually don't do it any justice either.

The next day we decided we would go for a walk, test out our new chariot that we didn't get to use on our journey here, and try to find the park that we saw on our little tour. When Bongo took us we thought it didn't seem too far away and that we could walk there no problem. Well, walking there wasn't so bad but walking back was a killer. And I wasn't even the one pushing the stroller. We were so dead that we had to turn our AC on when we got back. Liam had such a great time there and it was hard to get him to leave. I forgot the camera though so no pictures this time. But I know we will be back there very soon!

Sunday was church and we were excited to go and meet everyone else here. So Statia has what is called a "group" here, with a group leader and stuff. There is about 30 people including adults and children that attend. We meet for a grand total of about 1 1/2 hrs. Shorter than home but sometimes it feels much longer. We meet in a classroom at the school and so we sit in desks. Its kinda hard to keep Liam happy sitting in a desk for very long that's for sure. I thought I would let him free and see if he would just play with some toys right beside me like a few other kids were doing... not Liam though. He started running around like c r a z y  and I was so embarrassed. Oh well. Hes an almost 2 year old little boy, what can you expect right?!! They don't do nursery here either so we get him the whole time.  For Sunday school we meet outside while the primary stays in the classroom and so Liam just mostly runs around while we listen. But he has lots of fun and there are 3 other little girls that come that are close to his age. We don't have relief society here so that is why we do our enrichment's so we can at least have a part of what relief society is!

We thought we would try out the ground t u r k e y  with our rice for dinner. However I didn't exactly buy anything we could use for a sauce with it. Needless to say we all hated it and it all went in the garbage.... :( I don't really know what we are going to be eating around here but we are in big trouble!!

 

  

We have been on a few walks and Liam has a blast. He loves helping dad push the stroller and he likes climbing in and out. The picture is Brant pushing the stroller up the little alley to the road. You can see the "quill" in the background. Its a dormant volcano that you can hike up! It is what created Statia! We will go up it one day! :)

My boys!!! 

Liam helping dad push the chariot.

It gets dark here really early and fast. We hadn't been on the walk for very long and in no time we were walking in the dark.

We are having such a great time so far and have enjoyed the couple days we had together as a family before dad starts school.