Finally got to Orient Bay

This is Paul again.

Saturday was gorgeous: the calm before the storm since on Sunday the Netherlands vs. Spain final of the World football cup was going to take over all concerns on the Dutch side of the island. Actually, I didn't know anyone personally playing on either team so wasn't too worried who won, though it would have been nice to have seen what would have happened on a Dutch island if the Netherlands had won! Lots of talk about a day off! It was not to be. I joined a group of faculty at a party in an apartment building near the school hosted by Dewey (teaches Pathology) & his wife Joanie. Not only were they marvelous hosts but they have, something dear to the Lehmann family, a pug. She is old and grey and reminded me so much of our Tuppence, especially showing that wonderful ability to drop years off her age when a piece of food would end up on the floor.

On Saturday, I went with the librarian around Fort Louis (again). This time I made sure to photograph the interesting signs saying things like there was a door that has been removed, or there was a cistern that was removed. Also a couple of new verandah holderuppers. It was good to have someone with me who had been to Grand Casse - the gourmet capital of the island since there is quite a muddling entry to the town involving backtracking. We had lunch at the open-air barbecue area. A massive lunch with beer and water for the cost of a lunch at the college cafeteria. Some things are really very reasonable here. Then we went on to Orient Bay which neither of us had been to.

It is a glorious bay and this has a long beach of lovely white sand. It doesn't fall away too fast so you can paddle or walk in the water for some distance. It is clearly a full service beach with beach chairs and umbrellas for rent (including access to toilets and a free drink with the rental) and you can rent out canoes, go parasailing, or rent jet skis etc. But in spite of the commercial nature, it remains really lovely. The far south part of the beach has a clothing optional area. While you are allowed to wear clothes, we both felt we had gone far enough as we approached it seeing we were not even in swim things.

On our return we drove over the mountain and stopped to buy our hurricane buckets. Having a waterproof bucket is highly recommended for storing vital stuff in case of a hurricane. Then looked in at a store that basically caters to restaurants. My great find was a 70cl bottle of gin for $1.45 (no tax here). This price is pretty much the same what one pays for milk! The gin was labeled very regally, with crowns and something like like "Since 1848," but had no indication of the country of origin. However, it doesn't taste at all bad if diluted well with tonic and lemon.

A fairly active day and I fell asleep immediately while the Saturday movie was being shown at the college!

Looking forward to my trip to Toledo!

The beach for a walk to work

Mullet Bay is beautiful beach to walk along in the morning. The sand drops steeply into the ocean. The beach runs between Maho where I live and Cupecoy where the University is situated and most of the way is bordered by a golf course which is divided by a pretty badly maintained and narrow road that floods badly when it rains. It was fairly cloudy day when I look these photos but in the afternoons this beach can get a large number of people since it is easily accessible with a large parking lot. The photo that is taken across a piece of the golf course shows the American University of the Caribbean cream-colored buildings with red roofs behind behind it. An island in the storm should we have a hurricane come through! They are very well prepared here with food, water and the ability to run the own generators etc.

Not all that much news. Lots of excitement is on the island with the Netherlands and Spain going on the World Cup Football final.

A trip to Fort Louis in Marigot

July 4 and what better day than to go Marigot and clamber up the hill to Fort Louis in a lovely breeze. Last time I went I did not have a camera. The fort is high above Marigot but the photo makes the hill look slight. At the left is what looks like a very thin monkey puzzle tree but it is probably something else. I was not close enough to really see it properly. I have some pictures of the way up and view. You get a grand view of Marigot bay and behind it Simpson Bay Lagoon in front of the airport. If you enlarge and look carefully you can make out a plane taking off from the airport in one and where we have an apartment near the radio/radar tower (the place that has a spherical top) on the other side of the bay.

The fort itself if largely ruined, but has some gunnery in situ. Some interesting plants and iguanas also. I have a view with the Flamboyant trees included, a single flower is shown also, as well as an attractive but obviously nuisance pink-flowered vine. Once I was down the hill, I thought it might interest you to see some Marigot buildings like the Catholic Church, the museum and AIDS support center which is just opposite the 3 car length road labeled Rue Fichot (also shown you can enlarge to see its label). There is a plaque near the church memorializing one of the priests, F. Kemps, who wrote the much-loved St Martin/Maarten song. I thought the designs for security screens on doors and for ironwork holding up balconies would interest Carol. As always, click on pictures to enlarge since I can't work out how to format pictures very well.

Accompanying photos

You can enlarge photos by clicking on them. A mixture of trees, flowers, birds (the hidden egrets, a sand crab : very shy) and other things including the steel band in Philipsburg, food (more Sarafina's) and a birthday party at a Moroccan restaurant. The caterpillars are devouring the plant in the vertical picture that is in front of the coconut at the edge of the road with a minivan (local bus or taxi) coming along

I'll try and format it better later but this will do for now

Time to update the blog: Still an hour to go before the next football match

This is Paul here:

It has been a month since I last wrote. It is summer season here and it does get hot outside. Coupled with an abundance of rain, it is not nearly so pleasant a season as in the middle of a North American winter. The main trouble with the rain is that the road to work gets really deep since the drainage is largely non-existent. Apart from that though, it really isn’t bad. When it stays dry for a few days, the days are gorgeous and we get good sea breezes. Actually the heat may be less intense than what we get in the middle of summer in Ohio. The “Flamboyant” trees are still in flower and looking glorious with their red-orange coloration and there are also several other trees in full flower. I wasn’t expecting this long flowering season of several months, since, in Ohio, flowering trees get over such exuberance quickly.

Mosquitoes come and go and I now have added a gizmo to the apartment to attack them. It is a battery-charged tennis racket looking “bug zapper” that I wave around and hear the occasional zing as a flying insects is zapped. Actually, I am fortunate that very few come in. I am not totally sure if the rule is the same here as for home: that the ones that don’t buzz are the ones that bite you.

The whole island is using the World Cup football championship as the latest theme for partying. Yesterday (Friday, July 2), we were given a work holiday since July 4 is a Sunday. Three of us went down to one of the bars on the lagoon at Simpson bay and sat all morning drinking beer and watching the Netherlands win over Brazil. Deafening roars after each goal with some Dutch victory song singing!! The other side of the bar was filed with Brazilians who were a lot more somber as they lost. St Maarten has strong Dutch roots and until 10 October this year it will be overseen by the Netherlands. After October 10, it is due to become independent but it sounds like this will not be a complete independence immediately. As with everything there will be trade-offs and most people seem to consider that nothing much will change though a small group of well-connected people will be enriched. Certainly the main talks on the transition have been attended by very few people.

Work continues: I just finished updating and giving a very complex set of lectures on microbial interactions with the immune system having been given pretty awful handouts from the previous semesters. I am using practice questions which have been so helpful before, but I have to do these outside normal lecture hours since my colleagues are suspicious of their utility. I am sorry they have such dyed-in-the wool attitudes but they do the bulk of teaching.

When I walk home along the beach, or in the morning, I am often joined by a band of island dogs that wanders around in complete freedom. They all meet up at 4:00 PM in the afternoon at one end of the beach since the canine words have become broadcast that Corey, a lady with the Quatre Paws animal welfare group which had the raffle where I won the painting, will be driving down to feed them! After meeting with her, they continue their merry ways. It is always a pleasure to see them with a happy grins running along the street in Maho (where I live) and maybe checking out the trash. A reddish odd-shaped one “Wolfie” hangs out on the driveway to our apartment in the evenings. He is getting used to me, though he looked shocked when I call him by name the first time (Corey had told me it).

On the cooking front, my formula for crepes has been converging on 2 cups of flour-meal base (2 parts brown flour, 1 part white flour, and 1 part flax meal) with 3-4 eggs, 2 cups milk(I think maybe more) and a olive oil instead of butter. The ingredients are mixed together and left in fridge overnight. I will retry this with no white flour next time. I do a big cooking of crepes then have them ready for meals. Next blog: the salmon fillets with vegetable combo!

I help out now and again with the St Maarten Diabetes Association blood testing stations. They go a good job on the island and we catch several people with high sugars. When people are working here illegally, something that is often the case, it can be a big problem for them to get medical help. One of the times we were at a Health Fair in Philipsburg (the Capital) where we were treated to excellent steel drum music (see photo). Some of the people on steel drums are fabulous: at graduation I met one who had done his music degree in Indiana transposing Vivaldi to steel drum for his thesis. The Association had an annual diabetes day, a whole day session, two weeks ago. There was a big turnout and an excellent speaker, a clinical endocrinologist from Florida. Among many messages, he made the point that everyone who has type II diabetes can expect to go on insulin if they live more than about 8 years after diagnosis and that if more medicines are used (including insulin) to control blood sugar levels, it does not mean that the disease is worse since few medicines may not actually control sugars at all well. Given that most people think the exact opposite way, i.e., the more you get treated the worse off you must be, this was a great take-home point but one that may be hard for persons to accept easily.

Anyway, time for a walk before the next football match begins. I post some photos after the match.