mocking bird

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfyhS5woEJAAs promised, here is the mocking bird singing her heart out just outside the sitting room yesterday. With the very high winds we had last night - whistling and howling around the house and making so much noise it kept me awake all last night - it is hardly surprising she's gone somewhere else today! You'll be hard pushed to spot her in the video, but hopefully the sound will do her justice. To save space on this blog, you can see the video on youtube at the link above.

Home Alone

Nicky's dad left on Sunday morning, accompanied by Nicky up to Miami. Because it is a shame to go all that way and not make the most of it, Nicky is up in Miami until Wednesday shopping: for fun stuff like clothes and flippers, but also for more mundane stuff like dumpy levels (nope, no idea either, but important for measuring the level of dumpies, apparently!), washing machine spare parts etc. It was very very odd for me to be saying goodbye to Nicky from Provo airport - and it is going to be even odder for me to be picking him up Wednesday night! So, here I am, the sole adult in charge of a 6 year old and a 17 year old for 4 days....Nicky (inadvertently) timed his departure with the start of the Easter holidays so the boredom potential is huge! You might ask yourself how one can possibly get bored here, but, with it touching 32 centigrade at midday, the beach is a no-go zone between about 12 and 4pm which leaves a lot of hot hours to fill. There is a cinema which opened recently, but not much else in terms of indoor, out of the sun, airconditioned entertainment to be had (save a trip to the bank, see below). So, today Osh and I tried to renovate the patio doors in his room (marginally successful) to wile away some time after I'd spent an hour in the bank to pay in some money. Speed banking is an unheard of concept here: in order for Tim and I to put some money into Nicky's account Tim spent 1.5 hours in one bank to cash a cheque whilst I was queueing in the other bank ready to receive the money in order to put it into another account. Daniel, fortunately, had extra classes at school, so was entertained for most of the afternoon and was all bouncy and smiley when we collected him at 5.30 (a huge improvement on the monosyllabic teenager we'd had moping about the place at the weekend!).

So, having renovated the patio doors (sort of) and tidied up (Chiquita is due tomorrow and she is a fiendish tidierupper and you stand zip chance of finding anything afterwards!) and sorted out the cabling for Daniel's computer we went to the beach. The islands are normally buffeted by the trade winds throughout the year - and when those winds drop you sure do notice the heat. The past 3-4 days there has been no wind at all - which is great in some regards (preserves the hair do for longer) but does raise the temperatures somewhat - but last night they returned and about 3pm we had a rain shower - great big FAT raindrops for about 5 mins and then the wind really picked up. By the time Osh and I got to the beach we had the place to ourselves and the sand was being driven at sand-blasting speed horizontally along the beach. No idea what the wind speed was, but you could just about lean into it. The waves were huge, the sea had turned a milky turquoise and was very warm - far warmer than on previous days. As a result of the drop in the air temperature (now a pleasant 25 degrees or so at 8pm) I'm in long trousers which feels all rather cosy!

Osh has a heap of homework to do over the holidays to help him catch up with his reading and writing - a good 1 hours work a day to plough through. Actually, there is probably about 20 mins worth but with Osh's attention span and utter inability to focus, it takes him about an hour to do it! Last night he and Daniel watched Howl's Moving Castle which was seriously weird but rather fun, today he's been 'Howl' all day....(check it out on youtube if you've not heard of it before).

I had the joy of a mocking bird singing outside the window for much of the morning: such a beautiful sound which I've recorded and will post here as soon as the camera battery is recharged. I'll also post photos of the pineapple which looks like it might have taken (or rather it hasn't died yet, so I may yet get some pineapples off it) and photos of my stunning native bush garden full of cacti and frangipanis.

video of osh swimming underwater

The boy from Atlantis

This is what a boy does after school when he lives in the West Indies.....he goes to the beach! It is a great incentive to get him to do his homework (no homework = no beach) and now that the clock's changed (we went onto daylight saving on Sunday, so currently we are 4 hours behind the UK) it means we get a good 2 hours of beach time at about 4.30 when the sun is still deliciously warm but the heat has gone out of it (it got to about 29 c today at lunchtime, much lower than that by 4.30). Osh is now swimming - not great distances but swimming none the less - and is copying his big (step) brother and diving into the water in his mask and snorkel. I'm looking forward to snorkeling in deeper water with him before too long - right now he's too scared to go out of his depth! We bumped into Camilla and Beth Sulak on the beach and Camilla and I had great fun building a monster sand fort for Osh - he stood on the sidelines and directed operations whilst Camilla and I did all the work!

Shopping

I’m often asked how expensive the islands are to live on, so I thought I share my shopping receipts with you, to give you some idea of what the costs are. And if you stick through this I knew for sure that I could write about my shopping lists and still hold your attention!

So, I went shopping today, Monday, a national holiday (Commonwealth Day) and bought the following (I’m working on a £1=$1.90 exchange rate):

17oz box of honey nut cheerios: $7.60 (£4)
2lb box of pancake mix: $3.99 (£2.10)
8oz pack of saltine crackers: $3.89 (£2.04)
4 activia yoghurts: $4.20 (£2.21)
32oz pot plain active yoghurt: $3.85 (£2.02)
1 gallon milk: $4.15 (£2.18)
2 limes: $0.33 (17p)
1 gallon orange juice: $7.85 (£4.13)
2lbs peppers: $4.80 (£2.52)

So, all in all, probably more expensive than the UK, and no doubt way more expensive than Canada, although I confess that I didn’t pay much attention to how much food cost in the UK. That said, with a very hungry 17 year old to feed plus the rest of us (we are 5 at the moment: Nicky, me, Osh, Daniel and Nicky’s Dad) we spent around $400 on food last week and we are never short of food or a variety of yummy things to eat. Given that I’ve seen British families forking out £200 in Tescos that doesn’t seem too bad. I think what probably happens is that whilst some processed foods are much more expensive than elsewhere, the fresh fruit is far cheaper (fresh foods are not subject to 33% import tax) and so it all evens out.

I'm learning slowly how to feed a large family. Up to now, I've only had to feed myself and the Oshlet, now I have a ravenous teenager to feed, plus a very hard working man and Osh and me. Needless to say, I tend to err on the side of caution and end up with heaps of left over food which goes into the freezer.

School days

We arrived here Wednesday night - to a clean and chilled house full of flowers thanks to Tim! We also discovered the phones were out and, in attempting to fix the phones, the internet has since gone too, I'm piggy backing on someone else's connection to send this, hence the lack of news.

Thursday was Osh's first trip to school, in anticipation of a full day on Friday.

Come Friday, there was some reluctance to go through the school gate, and then to go into the class room, I eventually got him seated and doing his letters and handwriting before I left. Not a tear was shed by him, but I ended up sobbing all over the headmistresses office when I'd left him! He's in First Grade: which is equivalent to year 2 (ie Junior Kinder, Senior Kinder 1st grade....) which they felt was the perfect place for him given his developments in reading and writing. he is in 'Nazareth' class with about 14 other pupils - one of whom is called Max and likes star wars (the only information I could gather from him when I collected him) and another boy who moved from England about 2 years ago. His teacher is Ms Ocampo from Miami, Ms Perez is the headmistress (from Puerto Rico originally, but 30 years in Miami). I was understandably nervous about how he'd get on, but he didn't come charging out the class room after I'd left so I spoke to the headmistress (seems they are concerned that he has an 'indiviual educational plan' (I brought his files from England) which they only do for 'special needs' kids, and because his file mentions 'special needs' all over it they were assuming he was autistic/dyslecsic/sociopathic etc - as far as I know all kids in the UK get this sort of a plan and he was no different.

I reassured Ms Perez that he is a perfectly normal 6 year old!So, by lunchtime I'm all anxious about how he's getting on, so I drive up there about 1.30 and peak through the fence....and there he is, Oisin Aneirin, yomping around the stunning play equipment (big climbing frame) with 2 other kids, laughing yelling, rough and tumbling with them all over the place. So I relaxed and went to collect him at 3pm......and guess which kid got 100% in his maths on his first day at Holy Family Academy.....yup, that boy! Ms Ocampo was very pleased, said he's a little behind in reading and writing but nothing she doesn't think can't be brought up to speed with some homework (and I'm glad I'm finally at home when he's in from school so I can help him) and 1 to 1 tuition. They did art in the afternoon and Ms Ocampo commented taht he is particularly talented for his age in that subject. He wouldn't eat his lunch because they eat it outside and he's not used to eating school packed lunch outside and was sent to sit indoors during PE because he wasn't paying attention and was chucking stones around (nothing new there then!). So all in all, a good day. He was clearly very pleased with himself and his achievements and, if that weren't enough, he polished off a HUGE plate of rice and stew (replete with veggies!) for tea. I went up at 8pm to put him to bed....to find he'd crawled into my bed and fallen asleep all by himself (clearly all the excitement of school and a trip to the beach after was too much for him).

Since that momentus Friday, he has gone to school happily, I've been able to take him through the gate, say goodbye and leave without any fuss at all (this was rare in England). The children are very friendly and welcoming and polite. How the little girls in particular remain so clean and tidy at the end of a hot day is beyond me. I was concerned about how he'd cope with the religious side of it all (Holy Family is a Catholic Mission School) but he's completely unphased by it all. After his first day he told me all about the stations of the cross (they are around the school courtyard) and said it was funny that they had to say a prayer before eating lunch (!). He's not commented on having to say the lords prayer and the Hail Mary before school starts and before they leave for home, mind you! All that said, with just 54 pupils in teh school, and just 14 in his class he is getting lots of attention and his reading is coming on leaps and bounds (I was horrified at how far advanced his class mates were in their reading - reading a book far more advanced than anything he'd been exposed to in England), but I guess with so few pupils the teachers can pay more attention to each child.

He loves being able to go to the beach after school: he has to do his homework first which is a great incentive for him to get on and do it before swimming. It is very hot here at the moment and we all welcome and dip in the ocean at about 4pm to cool off. As for me, I'm discovering how much hard work it is to be a stay at home Mom! All that cleaning, and tidying up (after a 6year old and a 17 year old!), laundry, thinking what to eat that evening, cooking it, shopping etc....not much time to sit around and paint my nails and drink rum!

The class room block (these are all the class rooms).

The playground

Osh' class room (middle of block above), just the other side of the trellis are the tables where they eat lunch.

Osh outside the school gate with Pikachu (the mini replacement for the one that overslept in the hotel at Heathrow!) The School crest is on the end wall of the class room block - the playground is at the other end of the block.