Weekend Photo Summary

I know Dave already posted about the weekend, but I feel like some pictures would help illustrate a few things.

That Ramora at Coki Point was really freaky! We were just swimming out in the super clear, nice, tranquil water making faces at each other under the water ... then suddenly I saw what looked like a shark right next to Dave!






The picture Dave linked to is good, but these are a little more like what it seemed like to me. Except facing directly at me! Like Dave said, it was funny watching the other swimmers see it for the first time.






As for the Chili Cook-Off... My favorite was the American Red Cross's Spicy Chili. Unfortunately, I only got one taste as it sold out fast. Here is Dave tasting some chili. It was a huge party.... as you can see here too.

Finally, since I'm posting pics anyway.. here is where I work:

I'll try to post some pictures during the day soon, as the view is especially wonderful.

We really should have taken more photos this weekend as we saw some amazing views... We'll start bringing our camera with us more now!

An Excellent Sunrise

Sunrise made the clouds to the North East very pretty this morning around 6:30am. Between the power lines and the monstrosity of a house that is being built next door, it was hard to get a clear shot, but this one turned out okay.

Chili Ramoras

Today was the annual VI Texas Chili cook-off. Held at the Bolango Bay resort, it is a chili contest/beach party. The best chili maker gets to go to Texas for the national chili cook-off in November. $10 gets you 30 tickets, each ticket is redeemable for a small sample of chili (4 is good for a bowl) from any of the contestants. Kendra and I spent about an hour and a half at the cook-off, sampling chili. We also ran into Rueben and Heather, a couple of nice folks who we originally met when we went to St. John last weekend. We didn’t have a dollar to pay them back for the buck that we borrowed from them on St. John, but we did give them our last chili tasting ticket.

After the chili cook-off we headed to the opposite end of the island to try out a new beach, Coki Bay, which is right next to an attraction we need to try out, Coral World. The water at Coki bay was great; it was like a big swimming pool. There were many fish, ranging from the menacing (see below) to very small and harmless. There were also a few sea urchins, but they stayed in the rocks, away from tender feet. Now for the menacing fish… we swam straight out, about ½ to the swim buoy, when we saw a fish that was pretty big (~3½ ft long), and a bit sinister looking. It was the first time that I had ever seen a remora, which looked a bit like this one. The weird thing about it was that it kept coming really close to us. Kendra thought it was looking for a quick bite, and I thought it might be looking for a ride. Remoras usually attach themselves to sharks via a suction area on the head, seen in this picture. They feed off of what the shark doesn’t get, so they are definitely more of a scavenger than a predator. One website I found said that they are also very inquisitive, which explains its very forward behavior (it even followed us into the shallows were 10 or so people were. It was quite amusing watching people jump when they first saw the remora).

Well, its off to Kmart/Officemax to get some high quality surge suppressors… power went out twice again last night.

Streets and Hurricanes

On an earlier post, I alluded to the fact that street names here are another interesting story. The short story is, there are no street signs for the most part. Maps indicate street numbers - we live near 394, for instance - and these numbers can sometimes be found on the streets themselves while driving. But people who live here have no idea where 394 is. Instead it might be described as the first northside road that runs parallel to Skyline (aka 40). Basically, people here seem to make up names based on landmarks and sometimes those names catch on and other people use them too. For other roads though, there are many different names for the same road.

Skyline is the road that runs along the hills from east to west. Skyline and Veterans are the two names that are clear to everyone... I think. Veterans runs along the water right outside my office.

Our landlord calls the little road we live on Tulip Tree Lane. She apparently even placed a street sign out at the entrance to the road. I don't think anyone else calls it this though. Another road near us has a similar hand-painted sign of Lemon Tree Road. I bet you can guess what some of the trees on these roads are. I also know someone who lives on the road near Magens that has the dumpsters. The way the previous tenant gave Dave directions to get here included turning left when a chain link fence is on your left and a stone wall is on your right. It's all about landmarks!

I read somewhere that one of the tourist places has a map with both the street numbers and the street names on it, but we haven't found such a map yet.

In other news.... power went out again twice during the night. Of course, I'm thinking it's not really news. I did find out that when Hurricane Marilyn basically destroyed the island in 1995, parts of the island were without electricity for nearly an entire year. The courthouse restored power in about a month. Most of the island had power in about six months. And this was "only" a category 2 or 3, compared to today's Katrina which is a 5.

For those of you who have no idea where we are and want to know when to worry about us when there is a hurricane, a map of the Caribbean is posted below. My impression is that the major news sources in the states don't seem to voice much concern over the hurricanes until they endanger mainland. So, you can always refer to the map and have some idea of where we are. But, even with the big Katrina storm right now, I think it just gave us a little more rain last week. Other than that we didn't notice it because it was too far away.




(We're under the two Bs in the big red Caribbean label. The USVI is just west of the British VI.)

Weekend Fun

The internet connection is working at home again, for now anyways. This morning we went to the Ritz for their breakfast buffet. It was super yummy and we can skip lunch today! Then we drove around a bit to explore the island. Now we're heading off to Hull Bay. We've only gone swimming at Magen's Bay so far on St Thomas, so we figured it is time to try a new beach here. Tomorrow we may go to the Bolongo Bay Chili Cook-Off.

Rolling Blackouts are for Sissies

Cnn.com is carrying a story today about how parts of LA had to endure a rolling blackout for 30 minutes yesterday. I wish we had 30 minute blackouts. Power went out again last night... was out for about 2.5 hours. Ironically, it came back on just as we were going to bed. A couple of locals I've talked to said that WAPA (Water and Power Authority - the electricity generating/transmitting company on the island) was just as bad before this new generator, so perhaps there is no hope that it will improve. The only legit sounding excuse I have heard is that since we are not attached to a larger power grid, it is easy for things to go wrong. Oh well.

We have been experimenting with fried plantains. Plantains are similar to bananas except that they are generally slightly larger, and a bit less rounded (they tend to have “ribs” that run the length of the plantain that make corners). Anyway, you can buy them ripe (yellow-black colored) or not (green). When green, they are cooked much like a potato would be. When ripe, they are usually fried. We have been cooking the ripe ones. First try, we didn’t have vegetable oil, only butter, so it didn’t work so well (butter burns at too low of a temperature). Last night we tried again, with the vegetable oil, and they turned out better. As they cook, they develop a nice browned layer where the sugars in the plantain caramelize (this is not to imply that they are super sweet). Recipe follows:

Fried Plantains
1) Choose the plantain: Plantains for frying should not have any green… they should be yellow. Areas that are black or brown on the peel are okay. (Some people prefer to leave the plantain until it is completely black before cooking it).
2) Peel the plantain: Cut the ends off with a knife, then make a couple of slits in the peel (try not to cut into the fruit underneath) parallel to the long axis of the plantain. Use these slits to remove of the peel.
3) Cut the plantain however you like, making sure no piece is more than 1 cm or so thick. (We have been cutting them lengthwise, so each plantain yields 3-5 long and thin slices).
4) Heat up a frying pan with some oil. (Last night I put enough oil in that when the plantains were in the pan, the oil was about ½cm thick.)
5) Add plantains.
6) Cook over medium heat for about 4 minutes. Flip plantains (the undersides should be golden-brown). Rearrange so that the less cooked plantains are in the middle of the pan.
7) Repeat step 6 two to four more times until the plantains are evenly golden brown where they have contacted the pan.
8) Place paper towels on a plate, put plantains on plate, pat off oil with more paper towels.
9) Serve with either salt or powered sugar, depending on if you are going for a meal side dish or a dessert dish.

And for kicking back after a hard day cooking plantains:
A Nielsam Original drink recipe (Nameless as of now):
Makes ~20 oz frozen drink
Add to blender:
2 cups ice (preferably small pieces so the blender can really chop them up)
4 or 5 large frozen strawberries
1 cup pina colada mix (with no rum)
2 shots (3 oz) [Cruzan] pineapple rum (34 proof)
1 shot (1.5 oz) light or dark rum (80 proof)
Blend until smooth, serve immediately

For those of you who can’t get pineapple rum at home, there’s another reason to come visit (Customs allows 4 bottles of any kind of alcohol + 1 Cruzan (local) bottle duty free to returning US Citizens).

Weather

The weather here is both unpredictable and predictable. Essentially, every day the weather report says 30-40% chance of rain. But the weather website makes it seem like we have miserable weather here. Most of the time it's perfectly sunny with just a few white puffy clouds in the sky. When it does actually rain, it can be just a few drops or it'll soak you very thoroughly. However, it is usually just for a short while at a time - sometimes just 5 minutes - and then the sun comes out again.

Last night it rained pretty hard for about 30 minutes or so and woke both of us up. Rain is quite loud on our roof here. August is one of the rainier months apparently. But the sun still definitely shines and keeps us all warm even if we're temporarily wet from getting caught in the rain for a few minutes. The weather always seems fabulous under water too.

Last night after work, Dave and I went swimming at Magen's Bay again. So pretty and nice. The water isn't as sparkling at dusk, but the sunsets are pretty. The water temperature is about 84 during the summer here and gets down to 79 in the winter.

It's kind of funny. When it's rainy and grey out, I don't mind being inside my office looking out at the bay and the cruise passengers getting rained on. Yet, when it's sunny and hot, I don't mind being at work with the cool air conditioning. But the sunnier it is, the more I want to get out early and go for a swim....

Email updates

I've figured out a way that the blog can be emailed to those of you who'd rather not have to remember to check the website on a semi-regular basis.

Send an email to: blog-request[at]nielsam[dot] com [replacing [at] with @, and [dot] with . and eliminating the spaces of course.] The body of the email should just say "subscribe".

Internet connection, St John

Our internet connection at home died last Wednesday or Thursday. We've been unable to fix it and the company that we paid oodles of money for it has been far less than helpful. So, blogging will be short for now.

We went to St John yesterday for some swimming. It's not that we don't have enough beaches on St Thomas. We just wanted to check out the other island as it is supposed to be way more beautiful than St Thomas. We loved it. The beach we went to - Cinnamon Bay - was pretty empty, the water was warm and clear. (See some great pics with a google image search, or just this picture that we found online.) We got a little pink on our shoulders even with lots of sunscreen. The best part about Cinnamon Bay was how empty it was. We felt like we were on vacation.... Love it!

P.S. This polka-dot template is not here to stay. It was the only one I could get to keep the sidebar with previous posts at the top of the page. When I have more online free-time I'll fix it...

Speaking of Power Outages...

Last night the power went out for about the 5th time in the last two weeks. I think it went off a few times after Dave got here but before I did also. When I say "out" or "off", I mean for many hours on end. I'm not counting the occasional flickers.

Yesterday we had a pretty decent storm. Dave came to work to have lunch with me at a local joint. We got caught in the rain, but it's warm enough that being wet doesn't make you cold. Once we got back to my office and ate (I had a saltfish pate and Dave had stewed mutton!), the storm picked up a bit and the power here went off. At work here we have a generator (we have one at home too but are waiting for the landlord's son to get back in town to show us how to use it). So the power was only out for a few seconds. When Dave came to pick me up after work around 6:30, the power was still out down town.

Shortly after we got home, the power went out in our neighborhood and came back on after we'd gone to bed, maybe around 11pm? Saturday night it was from around 8:30pm until maybe 2am?

One annoying thing is that without power, we don't have water because we need the water pump. All this time I'd been afraid of what happens when I'm in the shower and the power goes out. Last night it happened. Lucky for me, the water didn't stop right away as it has before. No idea why not, seems like a fluke, but I got the shampoo out of my hair pretty quickly.

As you may have guessed, the power company here isn't so great. They acquired a new generator last December and haven't figured out how it works yet. (See this local article for a little more info.) Last night it was different spots of the island that lacked power; Saturday and Aug 1 were island-wide. A lot of the big businesses have generators, so during the previous weekend when it was out during the day, we went to K-Mart to cool off since we haven't bought a battery-powered fan yet.

Looks like we need to buy even more candles!

Two years!

On my first day of work, I was asked if I would stay two years instead of just one. Dave and I talked it over for the last two weeks, and yesterday we said yes! So, we'll be here for two years - more time for everyone to visit us.

One of our conversations about the decision involved what we like best and worst about living here. One of the best things is obviously the beaches and the views. It is really pretty here, and there are so many other islands nearby that we'd love to explore. Among the worst things are the grocery stores (I'll let Dave discuss them since he is in charge of the shopping) and mosquitos. For the most part though, this is a really interesting place to live both geographically and culturally.

The heat right now is on the bad list too, but we've been told that once October hits, the weather will be perfect until the end of next July when it gets hot again. Of course the temperature varies very little throughout the year, but 5 degrees cooler does sound pretty nice. I'm spoiled during the week as I'm in A/C all day. The evenings are great... except when the power is out like Saturday night. Power outages... yet another thing to post about later!

p.s. I'm working on fixing the formatting of this page so that the sidebar shows up on the top again.

Pictures!

Our internet is super slow today, but here's an attempt to upload some pictures:

- Our view to the West/North-West

- Sunset

-Iguana in our tree
- Our side deck - facing North/North-East. This deck is about twice as big as the deck that faces West.

And finally...

My frizzy, curly hair, thanks to the humidity!

Doctors, Good Morning, and Unpacking

I went to the Dr yesterday because I was not feeling any better and was starting to feel completely exhausted - probably from not eating much other than jello this week. Doctors here are a little bit different than stateside. Friday morning, I asked the judge's secretary if she knew a doctor she'd recommend that I could see next week if I wasn't feeling better. She said she doesn't go to doctors here, that she only goes to the doctor when she's on mainland. I think a lot of people are like that here. But she called a few people for me and found two doctors who have a clinic together that were recommended by multiple people. She is so sweet and told me to go right then since I'd been sick so long.

Anyways, these two doctors have a walk-in clinic only. Like many other doctors here. You can't make an appointment, you just go when you want and wait. [Last weekend I went to an allergy doc to get my allergy shots, but she has both walk-in and appointments. Very casual office and she just wore jeans and a tank top.] Long story short, I waited about 2 hours, saw a Doc for less than 10 minutes, he seemed appalled at how long I'd been sick. He gave me some cipro and said I should feel better this weekend. Hopefully it'll do the trick!!!

Oh, one interesting thing about the doctors offices, which happens many other places too though. When a person walks into the waiting room, he or she almost always says "good morning" or "good afternoon", and everyone in the waiting room responds with the same greeting. People are very polite and formal here. At work, for instance, about half the people refer to their coworkers by Ms. or Mr. Lastname, rather than by first names. They do it 100% of the time when introducing people to each other. (And nobody here uses Mrs.! Feminism where I least expected it. I love it!)

The Good Morning - Good Afternoon is popular all over the island. You're considered rude if you don't reply by saying the exact same thing. "Hello" or "Hi" is not good enough. Dave is amazingly good at this, but I'm still learning.

Back to yesterday --- I pretty much stayed in bed for the rest of the day after the Dr visit, napping or reading. I had a fever too, and let me tell you, it's not pleasant to have a fever when it's already so hot here. I had ice packs on me and two fans blasting air at me. Once the sun went down, I felt a bit better.

Today we're going to get through the last few boxes - our stuff arrived on Thursday and we're pretty much all moved in and feeling at home now. Dave had done a lot by the time I got home from work. The bed was made and dishes were being washed (no dishwasher for us!). When I was sick yesterday Dave put together our desks and set his desktop up too. Our internet connection here at home isn't so great. The island doesn't have the standard underground cables - it's wireless DSL for us instead. But the connection seems to come and go. We'll upload photos when we can.

Comments, movers, humidity

I just fixed the blog so non-blogger.com users can make comments. Just click on the Comments link at the end of an entry.

We're supposed to get our stuff today. One of my coclerks just got a call from the same moving company telling him they want to move him in today instead of next week. I'm hoping this doesn't effect our turn today to get moved in.

It's obviously humid here. Dave mentioned the rain.. it rains about every day for a few minutes, or so I'm told. I've seen rain maybe half the days. Last night it rained pretty hard just after we left KMart where we were getting more chicken broth. (Only 30 calories per can!)

One of us needs to post about the street names, or lack thereof, sometime...

Rain and Bleach

It rained here today... after 4 or 5 straight 40% chance of rain days, it finally did. Rain came down for about 15 minutes, probably about 1/8-1/4 inch. You can hear the rain gurgling down into the cistern. No lightning storms since before when Kendra arrived. On the upside, no power outages in a while either.

Talked to Devon (downstairs tenant - landlords son) on the phone. He should be returning in a week or so. Devon said that he drinks the water from the cistern, unfiltered. He also said that the water is bleached and filtered. Hmm.

One thing that I forgot to write about earlier... it is noisy here at night! Lots of chirpy insects, as well as frogs. From about 5am-sun down roosters make a bunch of noise. We tune out the noise fairly well, but I worry about the sleep quality of our guests. I suppose earplugs are always an option.

Post office hours

I work near the big post office in town where we have our PO Box. We were told they don't deliver mail to houses here. We've seen some mail boxes on some larger streets, but definitely none on our small one-land road. Though we haven't seen any mail trucks yet... So, we have a PO Box. I wanted to stop by after work to see if something I got for Dave on Amazon had arrived yet, but I wasn't sure of the hours of the post office. Usually, in such a situation, I check on usps.com. But apparently the St Thomas post offices aren't listed on usps.com! It says my nearest post office is on St Croix or Puerto Rico. Seems so weird to me, as I understand that lots of local businesses don't have websites here, but this is the USPS we're talking about....

Anyways, I'm anxious to find out how long Amazon stuff takes to get here...

Chips, Bacteria, Big Chopping Implements and Kmart

Ah... the first post by Dave. I figure it is about time.

The Tostitos are now kept in a ziplock bag, as well as the Saltines. Hopefully they won't go stale too quick (plus all the creepy crawlies will be kept out. When we arrived, there was a cylinder of Quaker Oatmeal [opened] that was crawling with mite-like creatures... ugh).

Tried to contact our landlord about the cistern... her son lives beneath us, but he is out of town. I assume that he is the one who usually maintains the cistern. That is assuming that anyone maintains it at all. In any case, I found a website with the recommended amount of bleach to add to the cistern, but the site also said this was for temporary purification only. Besides, I don't know if there is already a treatment system in place for the tank. I guess that leaves us waiting for a call back from the landlord. There are also a variety of systems that are designed to kill bacteria viruses (reverse osmosis/UV). I have no idea how much they cost though... On a side note, I am continuing to drink the cistern water, after it has filtered through a Pur water filter. That filter won't do much for most bacteria and doesn't come close to touching viruses, but it does get a whole bunch of pollutants and cysts out.

A road crew has been cutting back the bushes/grass along the major North/South road to town (Rt 35). They do an excellent job. The roadside brush starts out about 3 ft tall, and when the crew is done it is cleared back about 5ft, cut to the ground. Here is the best part... the only tool I have seen them use are machetes. One of the road crew is very tall and extremely skinny. When wielding his garden tool he looks like he should be a horror movie. Its great.

I haven't done much to start my photo business. I have been doing lots of theoretical work on it though. (In other words, I spend time thinking about what I will do when I am selling my photos for $500 a print and people are clamoring for my next "Nielsam Original".)

The most exciting bit of news is that our household goods are supposed to arrive on Thursday. It will be nice to sleep in a real bed, sit on a comfy couch, eat at a real table, and cook with real utencils and spices.

Time to go to K-Mart before they close and pick up some yummy and filling chicken broth for Kendra.

Feeling sick, cisterns, and driving

Kendra here. I've been feeling kinda sick with stomach issues for almost a week. long story short, I ended up in the ER last night. The docs there think it may be related to drinking the tap water here, even though we'd filtered it.

All the rain here is collected in a cistern. I don't totally understand how it works, but my basic understanding is the rain water collects under the house and then stays in the cistern until we need it. Then when we turn the shower/tap on, the water pump gives us water from the cistern. This is the only source of water here, so we definitely have to conserve it. Also, when we have power outages - which seem to be frequent here - we have no water because the pump doesn't work without electricity.

Anyways, maybe there wasn't enough bleach in the cistern to keep the water kendra-friendly. But in the meantime, I'm on a bottled water, gatorade, apple sauce and jello diet. yummy! Hopefully I'll be all better soon so I can start enjoying Dave's cooking again! He's bbq-ing steak tonight for himself. Have I mentioned our amazing deck and awesome view?

We should have our household goods on Thursday. They were picked up in CA the last week of June, so, it's been awhile. We were hoping they'd have arrived while I was taking the bar exam so that Dave could have us all moved in by the time I got here, but no luck. Once we have our stuff unpacked, we'll get some photos up here.

Our car got here last week, and we've both taken turns driving here -- on the left hand side! I believe the USVI is the only US land where people drive on the left. Also unusual is that the cars here are standard American cars with the steering wheel on the left side.

Dave knows his way around much better than I do, but now that I've driven a little I'm learning my way around. The road signs and lines on the roads seem to be more suggestions than rules. People here are pretty patient drivers and very kind too. Drivers on busier streets actually slow down or stop to let someone make a turn across traffic that would otherwise take a really long time.

Time for some plain chicken broth!

First week, random tidbits

Well, I've (K) been here just over a week, and there is so much to report! I'll write a bit about work and let Dave write a bit about other stuff, as he's been here for two weeks.

Work was pretty hectic the first week. My first day involved the beginning of a trial, which lasted a few days. I learned how to write jury instructions. Later in the week I had to deal with a temporary restraining order hearing. We were supposed to go to St Croix for a trial for a few days during my second week, but at the last minute it got postponed. Dave and I were looking forward to getting to fly on a Seaplane for the first time! We expect we'll get our chance before too long though.

We live about 5 minutes from Magen's Bay, which we can see from our awesome deck (pictures will be posted once we get our desktops!). We went swimming there tonight and it was super crowded, even though there were no cruise ships today. Seems like all the locals, including us, thought it was a nice afternoon for the beach. Most people weren't swimming too far out there so it

Some random things of interest:

It's so hot and humid here that when I get out of the air conditioned car, or when i leave the office to go outside, my eye glasses steam up!

We have two coconut trees and one banana tree, and we've seen multiple iguanas climbing in the trees. They are large!

We opened a bag of Tostitos chips yesterday, and we didn't close it up very well. Today, the chips are not crunchy anymore. They are totally stale.

More later!
Kendra

First post!

We're starting a blog to let everyone know what it's like to live here in the USVI. We also plan to put pictures here to show you what our lives are like in the Virgin Islands. In the meantime, you can look at pictures from the wedding.

For those of you new to reading blogs.... At the bottom of each post, you should see "Posted by ...." so you'll know which of us wrote the post. Also, the posts are in reverse chronological order so the newest post is always on top. If you have to catch up, you can read older posts by clicking on the archive links on the right side.