Wine and Cheese

One of my favorite events hosted by AUC is the Wine and Cheese Party. It's basically a party designed to give people the chance to sample dozens of different wines from all over the world, as well as different types of cheese and dishes that include cheese. The party is held at a professor's home, which is located right on the lagoon. The view and house are amazing and a perfect place to hold such an event.

The best part is getting dressed up in cocktail attire. We had such a great time eating, drinking and visiting with friends. The food was great and the wine was even better!

After the party a few of our friends went out to one of the piano bars on the island to continue the celebration. It's been a while since Brandon has been able to cut loose since he has been having several waves of tests and no down time. He definitely took advantage of our time out of the house. We had a great time dancing and just cutting loose. I have to say in all four years of being together I've never seen dance moves from him that I saw that night. I love to dance so I'm so thankful that I'm with someone that enjoys it just as much as I do. I have never laughed so hard in my entire life!! It was a blast!!

Reasons to Celebrate

March 17th has two great reasons to celebrate. One is of course because it's St. Patty's Day and two is because it's my parents anniversary.

My Mom and Dave have been happily married for 8 years now. They are such a wonderful couple and I pray everyday that I can have half the love and respect for my future husband as they have for each other.

Sometimes the love of your life comes when you least expect it and that is exactly what happened to the both of them. They seem to fall more in love with each other as the days go by. I feel so blessed to be in the presence of such a wonderful couple, that not only loves each other but loves the Lord. I know that their relationship is so wonderful because they make God the center of their marriage. What a great example they lead!

Thanks Mom for being not only a wonderful mother and friend but a great example to live by for being such a great wife to Dave.

This year St. Patty's day came at the same time my friend Tricia was visiting. We decided to spend the day at Mullet Beach since it was one of the first day's since they had been here that it was sunny all day. After spending the day at the beach we walked to Maho for Tricia's friend Amber to get her hair done and for me and Tricia to shop. After a few hours of shopping and waiting on Amber we walked home and rushed to get ready to meet our reservation time for dinner with all my girl friends that live on the island.

Dinner a Bamboo Bernie's was so fun, not to mention the festive food coloring that Jill brought to add to all of our drinks. After dinner we headed over to Sopranos Piano Bar for drinks and music. I had such a great time hanging out with all the girls. Thanks to all my island girls for welcoming my friends from home and showing them a great girl's night out!

I always love any reason to celebrate and St. Patty's Day is no exception. Happy Anniversary Mom and Dave and Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Water is WHAT?!

So we all know that utilities on the island are kind of expensive. So because of this there are several major rules while living on the island.

1) The only time the A/C can be turned on is at night while sleeping.

2) Keep as many lights off as possible.

3) When you leave on break turn off as many breakers as you can.

4) Take quick showers (only one per day) and wash dishes as fast as possible.



Over Christmas break the breaker to our fridge blew and all of the meat in our freezer went bad and ruined our fridge and stunk up our entire house. Needless to say it was a horrifying experience. But our landlord was very helpful and bought us a new fridge the very next week. We've been pretty lucky thus far and hadn't had any incidents related to living on an island, so we thought, "ok it was our turn, this is our big incident."

Actually, that's when the troubles started. Our A/C unit stopped working not long after. After informing our landlord a maintance man came to fix it the next day without us here. Later that afternoon I came home from work and Brandon came home from school to find a note stating that they had been there and that the A/C was fixed now. I was pretty upset to find out that they had not informed us that they were coming and even more upset when I discovered that my I pod was missing. Of course no one would admit to anything so it became a lost cause. Strike #2.

The latest incident is the water. It seems as if the water going in and out all over the island is a never ending thing that we have come to expect. Knowing that we had been gone most of the month of December we looked forward to having a small utilities bill. Of course we prepared for this by turning off some of our breakers before we left. But the only thing you can look forward to on the island is the unexpected. Come the end of January when we recieved our utilities bill and was extremely surprised.

Electric was $167, which was a nice surprise and fairly low to what we are used to.

Water was $273!!!! Which is outragous considering we live in a studio apartment with no washer, dishwasher and a sink that is 12 inches by 12 inches!!



We tried to dispute it with our landlord but he was adament that we had to have used all of the 70 cubic meters of water in 10 days. With nothing left to do we just paid the bill and moved on.

But the water issue was not over, around noon two days ago the water went out again. I just thought it was an ordinary outage that occurs from time to time so I didnt think much about it. We went about our daily activites and when it came time for dinner and showers the water was still out. I became curious because the water is rarely out more than a few hours, so I began skyping friends to see how long their's had been out as well. I was surprised to find out that no one else's water was out, including our next door neighbors. Brandon encouraged me to investigate the situation (he was at school studying so he couldn't) so I took a flash light and walked outside to our water meter and found that the nozel to our water pipe was turned off. I started racking my brain of why it would be turned off and attempted to call our landlord which of course didn't answer. Well I decided to go ahead and turn on the nozel and do the things in the house I needed to do and then I would turn it off afterward. About midnight our landlord finally returned our phone call just to inform us that workers had turned off our water to do some work on the pipes and must have just forgotten to turn it back on.
So it was safe to leave on.



Sometimes it's hard not to feel like we are being taken a little advantage of when you can't really control what goes on in your own home. We have been blessed with such a great apartment at such a great price so I always feel guility complaining about little things like water and A/C that can be fixed pretty easily. It's hard to remember that these are luxuries and that most people around the world don't have such advantages. Sometimes I just wonder if the utilities company just picks a number amount to charge us each month but I need to keep in mind that we are so blessed to have clean water and cold air.

The end of our time on the island is coming quicker and quicker and although I look forward to not having to deal with situations like these, I still feel sad to leave such a wonderful place. We have been so blessed to be able to be part of such a beautiful island and have truly enjoyed our time here regardless of the little bumps in the road.

Days to remember

So I guess I can say that I'm officially getting old. J/K I am now in my mid-twenties!! I can remember being sixteen and thinking "Man, I wonder what my life will be like when I'm like 24!" It seemed like such a long way away, but time has flown by and I still feel like that same 16 year old.
I can say that one thing is certain, I am truly blessed with a wonderful family, great friends and a boyfriend that I could never have dreamed would have been so perfect for me. Last semester my best friend Jessica kept saying that she wanted to come back to St. Maarten for another visit. We talked about it and decided that the best time would be around my birthday. As the holidays rolled around she came to the conclusion that tickets were too expensive and that she would rather save her money to come visit us at our next adventurous location. I was disappointed but definitely understood and I left it at that, for the time being anyway.
Ok so everyone who was around me my birthday weekend knows how the next part of this story goes. I'm not sure how much they believe of it though, because most people know that I'm a nosey person and I can't control my urge to ruin a good surprise. I think I just hate the not being in the part of the secret. Crazy huh?!
Anyway, here goes... About 3 weeks into our last semester I was playing with Brandon's new I pod touch. Going through his music, then looking on his facebook (it's automatically logged in when you click the icon), and then looking on myspace. So as soon as I clicked on his myspace icon his mail popped up and I saw a message from Jessica. So not thinking anything about it I just opened the message and proceeded to read what I thought would just be normal chit-chat about what's been going on lately. But instead it was a message stating that she had bought her plane tickets to come visit for my birthday and that she wanted it to be a surprise. As soon as I read the message I couldn't help but smile and become extremely excited, yet I couldn't tell anyone which drove me crazy for a while. The fact that I couldn't hold it in anymore forced me to began telling my girl friends, which made me even more excited and antsy.
I was pretty good at hiding that I knew for about all of 2 days...After that I think they figured out that I knew, mainly because I kept whining about how I wished she was able to come and how I missed her so much. Brandon said it was over kill.
Anyway, neither one of us would admit that the other knew so we both kept the secret going. I began wondering if it was actually true because the day he was supposed to go get her (or at least the day I thought he was) Brandon decided he didn't need the car after all and he went on with his studies. Being overwhelmed with anxiety and excitement that I couldn't hold in anymore I began talking with friends about it again. One mentioned maybe I should check his mail again just to see if they had sent any messages back and forth, so that is exactly what I did. Peer pressure will get you every time!
After getting on his myspace and checking his mail I noticed an old message in his trash box from Jessica stating that she wouldn't be able to come after all because her grandfather died and she was going to use the tickets to fly to Alabama for his funeral. I was soooo upset after reading this message. I couldn't believe that I had ruined my own birthday surprise and on top of that I had built myself up and got so excited over nothing after all. I cried and instantly messaged one of my friends venting about how upset I was at myself and how disappointed I was that she wasn't coming after all.
To cut this short the message was a whole fake out just to trick me into thinking that she wasn't coming after all, since they said they knew that I knew about it all along.
She arrived on Wednesday afternoon and stayed for 5 days. It was such a great birthday weekend. I couldn't ask for a better best friend! She made my 24th birthday the best ever, with the help of Brandon of course.
I love my life and all the special people in it!!
Here is the list of things we did for my birthday weekend:
Day 1.) Dinner and drinks at Greenhouse
Day 2.) Pinel Island and dinner at Uncle Harry's (yummy lobster)

Day 3.) Lotterie Farm zip-linning, lunch at sunset and drinks at the yacht club followed by dinner with all my friends at La California in Grand Case and dancing at Tantra for their Mardi Gras party
Day 4.) Day trip to St. Barths. Beach hopping from St. Jean to Guanahani where we had a $18 6oz margarita. Dinner at Le Chalet, yummy fondue! and Drinks at Soggy Dollar
Day 5.) Slept in and had lunch at Lee's grill and shopping in Maho before her plane left.
What a wonderful weekend!!

Jumping on the band wagon

Well I guess it's time that I start writing a blog. I've always wanted to start but never had enough initiative to get it going. It's definitely long overdue since there is so much going on in my life that I should be writing down anyway.
I'm currently taking a class that required I make a blog and post comments about a certain topic related to the class. Since that part of the class is over, I figured I would keep the blog going for personal use. So here I am jumping on the band wagon...