How chances will I have to do an Easter egg hunt underwater? Not many! Each year, Divi Little Bay Resort hosts an egg hunt to support the Sint Maarten Nature Foundation.
The Sint Maarten Nature Foundation does a lot of good work to protect the island’s ecosystem. I briefly wrote about some of their activities in my article for Seven Seas Magazine.
The hunt was not just for a good cause, it was also incredibly fun! Imagine hundreds of people of all ages on the beach, outfitted with snorkel masks and fins, ready to collect 1,000 painted eggs hiding under the crystal-clear surface of the water.
It was a little bit cut-throat! People are competitive. I went with the other strong swimmers to the deepest area, which seemed to be about 15 feet deep. I strained my eyes for glimpses of color peeking out from the gray-green floor of the ocean and managed to grab seven eggs. Fish flitted back and forth below us, unnerved by the sudden influx of human activity in the water.
In the shallow area, small children hunted for eggs in knee-deep water.
At the end, there was a giant raffle with dozens of amazing prizes, ranging from inflatable pool toys to a tow-day stay for two at Divi Little Bay Resort. It was my lucky day– I won two prizes! One was a lunchbox full of beach items and the other was a free sailing lesson with a Sun Bum hat.
What a great thing to do on Easter Monday! I’ll be back next year for certain.
The best thing about being a teacher is being a grown-up and STILL getting spring break. I’m not in education anymore, but my friend Ally is, and she decided to spend her spring break on the island with me!
Those of you who are also expats know just how wonderful it is to hear from friends back home. You also know that it’s a hundred times more wonderful to have them come visit you!
I spent the days she was here showing her all the best parts of the island. If you have a few days on the island and don’t know what activities to choose, these are the things to do.
We managed to hit seven of Saint Martin’s 37 beaches in four days:
Airplanes at Maho Beach, SXM’s best-known tourist attraction.
We relaxed on Mullet Bay Beach.
Indigo Bay Beach is beautiful. Kito wasn’t too sure about the waves.
We decided to be ‘Mericans and get McDonald’s ice cream at Great Bay Beach in Philipsburg.
Plum Bay Beach had impressive waves the day we went. We tried to get a Little Mermaid-style splash photo…
Dancers
We also went to Kimsha beach and Long Beach for a few minutes, but didn’t stop to take photos.
Naturally, we had to take advantage of the clear water at Mullet Bay and go snorkeling.
We spent some time in both of the island’s capitols, too.
Philipsburg is the Dutch capitol. Jack Sparrow apparently lives there.
Marigot is the French capitol. We visited Roland Richardson’s art gallery, Fort Louis, an open-air market, and my favorite French bakery, Sarafina’s.
Fort Louis with Anguilla in the background
Stacey and I also took her to Fort Amsterdam and Pic Paradis, the highest point on the island.
Of course, the week went far too fast. But it left us with many new friend memories!
No matter how far away you move, some friendships will never feel the distance.
What do you do when you have twelve kids who love trains but have never seen a real one? You take them on a train ride, of course!
The island of Saint Martin doesn’t have a train, but the kids from Player Development SXM know a lot about them anyway. Each day, these boys and girls gather on the little league field to practice for baseball games and improve their academic skills. Many days, my friends and I join them to help with reading and math or coaching.
When practice and homework is done, the kids run inside the repurposed shipping container that serves as their clubhouse to play with their favorite toy: the model train set.
The kids are excited, because this summer, they get to ride a real train. In August, they’ll be packing their bags for the long trip to Toronto, where many dreams will come true. They get to watch a Blue Jays game, see Niagara falls, play against a Canadian little league team, and ride a real train for the first time. For their homework, some of the kids have written about their hopes for the upcoming adventure:
For many of the kids, this will be their first time off the 37 square-mile island.
Many of the kids dream of being a pro ball player, and this will be the first time they get to witness a major-league game.
This is a really big deal for them.
The logo for the team is, of course, a train. Coach Tom asked me to design it for the team, and my friend Andrea made it into a t-shirt for the kids to wear during the trip.
Like it? You can actually buy one for yourself, or send one to one of our kids! All the proceeds of the purchase also go toward the kids’ plane tickets. Make a difference for these kids. Click here!
“So, what grade are you in?” the well-meaning youth pastor asked me, intending to invite me to high-school group. Ah, the familiar curse of eternal youthfulness. I smiled and explained that I’m actually in my twenties, swallowing the urge to snidely reply, “Seventeenth.”
Today, I can truly say that I am indeed in seventeenth grade; or, as it is better known, the first year of my master’s degree. Today is my first day of school, and I feel just like I did when I started my first day of kindergarten.
Part of the reason that I’m so excited to start school again is that it does not involve any math this time. Can I get a hallelujah? The other part is that I get to study something that I enjoy and that I see as significantly impactful to the world. I’m earning an MA in Refugee Protection and Forced Migration Studies from the University of London International. The training will equip me to work with refugees, NGOs, and governments to be a part of the solution for people experiencing forced migration.
I don’t have a lot of experience working with refugees (a few days of volunteering at refugee events in Phoenix, a summer in East Africa, and many conversations with friends and family who have been displaced), but I’ve seen enough overseas and in my own hometown to show me the reality of the refugee situation and the great need for more workers in the refugee protection field.
It’s a hard field in many ways, because you’re working with humans and not hard facts. This is one time when I do think math would be easier, because you either have the right answer or you don’t. Not so when you’re working with refugees. Often their wellbeing depends on what you do, there’s not one right answer when it comes to handling victims of conflict, and it’s often easier to see the right choice in retrospect. Just look at the knots that the Syrian refugee crises has put so many governments into. The U.S. is completely divided on how to handle the potential influx of immigrants. Europe is learning how to accept the change that a new population will bring. NGOs are working to protect people who have nowhere to go, and wicked people are doing everything they can to take advantage of their vulnerability. Somewhere in that mess, there are refugee experts working hard to make sure the displaced people are protected and resettled. It’s messy, it’s painful, and it’s amazing. I want to be in the middle of the chaos and the hurt and be a part of the solution.
I used to always ask God why I was born in a safe, privileged place. Why me, when so many people who are better than I am are born into places of suffering? I eventually stopped asking Him why and started asking what. I don’t know if we’ll ever come up with an answer as to why God lets some people have more privileged lives than others. But I do think He gives us a very clear answer about what we can do with the opportunities we have. Sometime during my college days at Arizona Christian University, I heard a chapel speaker or a professor talk about pressing into places of pain. And it clicked with me. I can use my relatively painless existence to enter places of pain and suffering and “bring heaven down to places of Hell on earth,” as writer Palmer Chinchen puts it. That’s what I really want to do with my degree. I want to learn how to work at the highest level to alleviate that suffering as quickly as possible. I want to bring the messy warmth of humanity to the coldness of political policy. But most of all, I want to learn how I can enter into someone’s place of suffering and walk with them to the end.
To be honest, I don’t know what that looks like or feels like yet. I’m just sitting here at my kitchen table with my dog at my feet, first online assignment of my first class completed and an empty teacup next to me. I can’t image the realities of the things I’ll be studying over the next few weeks. I can’t picture what my life will look like in ten years when I finally get to get my hands dirty and do some real work with real issues and real people in East Africa. All I know is that for the next two years of my life, I’ll progress in my education, one step at a time, toward that unknown place. All I can do today is the task set in front of me.
This is the easiest and fastest East African food I’ve found so far.
My sister, who’s a junior at Arizona Christian University, is working on a project on Burundi for her geography class. Burundi is a tiny African nation near Rwanda, Kenya, and Tanzania. It also happens to be the country where my husband, Ben, was born. Of course, she and her project partners interviewed Ben as their expert on Burundi.
Ben being African: he climbed a tree to get this coconut and opened it with a rock.
She also asked me for a recipe to bring to class, so I sent her directions to make chapati and mandazi. However, those take a long time, so I thought I’d write up a recipe for something a little quicker: chips mayai.
Chips mayai is basically a french fry omelette. It’s a popular street food from Tanzania that is also easy to find in surrounding countires. You can make it from scratch, but this is the busy college student version.
You need:
-Frozen french fries
-Eggs
-Oil (palm oil is the most authentic)
Thaw your french fries.
Heat a generous amount of oil in a frying pan. Cook fries until hot.
Beat eggs (eggs and fries should be 2:1 ratio) and add a little milk, salt, and pepper.
Pour eggs in pan. Allow to cook over medium-high heat until the bottom is cooked. Flip over. It’s fine if it’s messy once flipped.
Cook thouroughly and remove from heat. Serve with ketchup.
Happy Burundian!
Holi is an ancient Hindu festival that celebrates the advent of spring. It occurs each year around the spring equinox.
The legend behind Holi is the story of a prince who is rescued by Lord Krishna from his arrogant and evil father. The king’s wicked sister tries to burn the prince, but she ends up being consumed instead. As the story goes, people put the ashes from the fire on their heads.
Today, Holi is celebrated with a party in which participants throw colored powder on each other, eat special food, and drink. Hindus as well as non-Hindus participate in Asia and around the world.
Celebrating Holi Sint Maartin-style means a party of on the beach, of course! The South Asian Medical Student Association at AUC hosted Holi at Mullet Bay. After the colored powder ran out, everyone played a game of beach volleyball. According to some of the participants, the colors did not wash off in the ocean. I’m looking forward to seeing whether shampoo takes it out or if some of the med school students will have tie-dyed heads for a while.
