As every freelancer knows, there are up seasons and down seasons when it comes to work. Since I can’t get a work permit as an expat where I live, I do a lot of freelancing, especially writing. I usually sell my skills on Fiverr.com under the username BreJay. Lately, I’ve been getting a small avalanche of commissions, which is why I’ve slowed down a bit on posting here. Well, that and the daily power outages. But don’t worry– I’m not giving up on blogging!
If you want to read a bit of what I’ve written lately, you can visit a few sites here:
The work has been slowing down my blogging a bit, but I certainly can’t complain. I’m so thankful to be at the point where I feel busy with work. It can be so discouraging to not have a full-time job, but I’m on my way to building a sustainable freelance business that I can stick with for a long time. I also recently got a “freelance” job with Rev.com, which allows me to fill my extra time with transcription work. I’m praising God that after a year of no regular income, I’m getting the chance to take a bite out of all that student debt we’re accumulating! That first paycheck from Rev was the best feeling ever.
See you soon with more Sint Maarten posts! I have a ton of photos on my camera just waiting to be uploaded for you all. Until then.
Happy birthday! You’re looking good for 240. Sorry I had to miss celebrating this one with you, but I hope to be there for the big quarter-century next decade.
You know, I think I like you better now that we’ve been apart for a year. I guess I sort of took you for granted when I couldn’t get away from you. Now that I’m gone, I appreciate you a lot more.
You’ve done some strange things lately, and there’s a lot we should talk about, but today’s not the day for that. Today’s a day for me to tell you how much I love you.
I do love you, I’ve found. I never really loved you until I left you. I guess I didn’t have anything to compare you to. But let me tell you, I know now how lucky I am to be a part of you.
America, you are beautiful. You have virtually every kind of biome within your borders. You cover the plains, the hills, the mountains, the deserts, the tundra, the beaches, and the tropical forests. Even better, you have every kind of people within your borders. You are beautiful.
America, you’re great to live in. International comparisons say your food kind of stinks, but you do well in quality of life, equality, innovation, education, and freedom. And you’re always pushing to do better.
America, you stand out globally. Of all the nations in the world that receive immigrants and refugees, you’re among the best at integrating people and upholding their well-being and their rights. It’s expected of you, and you do your best to deliver. I didn’t recognize that until I left. I didn’t see how unusual it is, because to me, it just makes sense to operate that way.
America, you’re a good place to be able to go home to. It’s nice to know that I could always go home without any trouble. It’s good to have a passport from you that opens so many doors. It’s good to be confident of the freedom to move from place to place, to speak without fear, and assemble with others as I please.
America, I miss you some days. Some days I don’t. But I’m always glad to know I belong to you. I keep the Stars and Stripes on my wall, right next to the flag of my new home. I used to see the flag every day, and I never thought twice about it. Now, I am glad whenever I see it. It’s strange; I usually see it everywhere on your birthday, but today I only saw it on a Digical ad and on a French man’s t-shirt! I miss seeing it fly high and proud on a pole on every corner.
Happy birthday, America. I hope you make good choices this year. It’s sad to think that this could be one of your worst years, but I’m praying that it will be one of your best. Happy birthday. I’ll see you soon!
Before I left the United States, there were a lot of things I took for granted. I guess everyone thinks their own life is pretty typical until they get a taste of something else.
1. Traffic lights. We have a single traffic light in the entire country of Sint Maarten. It spends half its life blinking yellow. Here, we have few intersections and a lot of round-a-bouts. It’s actually a much better system, and a lot fewer accidents occur because of it.
2. Refrigerated milk. You can get refrigerated milk here, but not every grocery store carries it. I always buy ultra heat-treated (UHT) milk. It’s cheaper, safer, and easier, especially since we get so many power outages. Also, I can stick several cases on the fridge and use them as I need them.
3. Electricity. Speaking of power outages, we get them a lot. Our single power plant can only handle so much at once. So we go without water and/or power on a regular basis.
4. Air conditioning. I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona where air conditioning is literally vital for life. Here, we like to use it now and then but we could certainly live without it. Our apartment complex took almost two months to fix our unit last summer when it died. We were OK; we have a nice trade winds breeze that we welcomed through open doors and windows.
5. Multiple traffic lanes. Unlike Phoenix’s six-lane highways, Sint Maarten has a basic two-lane road going all the way around the island. Passing anyone is an adventure.
6. Self-defense weapons. I used to carry mace everywhere I went. That’s just what you do in Phoenix if you’re walking around alone. I can’t carry anything here– not mace, not a pocket knife, not even a chair. Well, realistically I can carry a chair, but not legally. If you could whack someone in the head with it, you can’t legally carry it down the street. People will make weapons with anything, though– the supermarket next door once got held up by a guy with a stick.
7. Private beaches. There are no private beaches here! Every strip of sand on this island is public property. I took my dog to one of the less beautiful beaches this afternoon. There were a dozen locals there and me. And it’s a Saturday. If that beach was in the States, it would have been PACKED because so many good beaches are privately owned and the rest are perpetually filled. Here, you can enjoy the most incredible strips of paradise no matter your paycheck. I love that about Sint Maarten.
8. Sales tax. Yes, there is no sales tax here! Hooray for no math! Oh, and for not paying extra for stuff.
No matter where you go, there will always be something better and worse about it than the last place you lived. I guess the moral to the story is that wherever you are, enjoy the good things about that place instead of focusing on the bad things. There’s so much to appreciate in life!
The Caribbean is filled with with beautiful butterflies of all sizes and colors. In the fall, you can see clouds of them swirling around the hills and valley of the tropical isles. In the summer, they’re less common int he wild, but you can still visit the Butterfly Farm to see nature’s winged beauties in action.
The Butterfly Farm has locations in both Aruba and Saint Martin. In Saint Martin, it is on the French side of the Island near Galion Bay Beach. In my ten months of living on the island, I had passed in many times on my way to surf, but never had a chance to stop. My friend Stacey and I had both wanted to visit for a long, time, so we decided to take a couple of the kids we know and make an afternoon of it.
Visiting the farm is actually pretty inexpensive compared to farms in the states. We also got the local’s discount: $10 for adults and $5 for kids. Viator has a deal for tourists: $56 for a trip to the farm, a tour, and then three hours at Orient Bay, Saint Martin’s most poplar beach, with all transportation included.
When we got there, we were welcomed with a friendly greeting from the staff and led into the butterfly enclosure.
The best part of the whole experience was seeing the kids’ face when we walked in! Giant blue butterflies floated past our noses, and we couldn’t help but stop and stare at all the life that filled the air around us. Later, our guide told us that the afternoon is a quiet time in the enclosure, so I can only image how incredible it must be in the morning.
We walked around for a while before our tour started. There was a lot to see. Most of the butterflies were as big as our faces!
We joined a tour of the facility. The tours are offered in both English and French. The kids would have been fine with either, but we Americans were happy to take the tour in English. Our guide was wonderful. She made it interesting for both the kids and the adults and was happy to answer all our questions.
The tour took us through the entire enclosure and gave s a complete overview of the entire life cycle. I thought I knew everything about butterflies, but I still learned a few things!
First, we learned about butterfly eggs. When a female butterfly is ready to lay eggs, she finds a host plant to leave them on. Only certain plants, like milkweed, can be a host plant. The host plant has to be edible for the caterpillar and should be poisonous to give the caterpillar a slight toxicity.
This huge caterpillar reminded me of the one from Bug’s Life. It becomes an owl butterfly. It wraps itself in a leaf cocoon and creates a chrysalis inside. It stays like that for a long time, and then becomes a butterfly with a lifespan of only five days.
We loved the chrysalis cabinets. Our guide told us that “chrysalis” is derived from the Greek word “gold.” Most chrysalises have at least a little gold to warn away predators. My favorite one was entirely gold! Our guide said that the butterflies hatch during the night and sometimes up to 75 butterflies will fly out in the morning.
Once the butterfly breaks free of its chrysalis, it spends its time drinking nectar from its straw-like proboscis, mating, and laying eggs.
At the end of the tour, our guide let us put fermented orange juice on our hands to attract the butterflies. We were able to let them land on us, which was just magical!
The little one carried around this butterfly for about half an hour. It didn’t want to leave her! I told her it was because she’s so sweet.
The rarest butterfly in the farm is this white one. Mister G said that it was his favorite of all.
The kids were great at spotting camouflaged butterflies and caterpillars. The little one found some green caterpillars way up in the trees, and she kept peeking under leaves to discover patches of eggs.
The end of our time came too soon! We couldn’t believe it was already closing time.
Just before we walked out, one last butterfly landed on Mister G’s hand for a brief moment… a quick goodbye butterfly kiss.
Carnival is the biggest event of the year in the Caribbean! The island of Saint Martin is no different, and we’re lucky enough to get it twice: once on the French side and once on the Dutch side. Unfortunately, I missed all the festivities on the French side, but I did catch a few things on the Dutch side! My friends and I went to the light parade and Ben and I went to the children’s parade. We also went to the apex of Carnival: the grand Carnival parade!
The parade is filled with elaborate costumes of feathers and glitter. The colors swirled around us and music pulsed in our ears, drawing us in to the heartbeat of the festival.
The parade (and most of Carnival, really) is centered around the sensuality of a woman’s body. With so much focus on sensuality, I felt that the appreciation of people for who they are was lost somewhere behind the sequins and paint. Since this is a family-friendly blog, I want to present a different angle on Carnival than the typical. This post is a study on beauty: not the transient beauty of the revealed body, but the authentic, lifelong beauty of humanity. They say that the eye is the window to the soul, so I have decided to focus this photographic undertaking on the beautiful faces of the people in the parade. I hope that as you look at these beautiful faces, you will reflect on the wonderful miracle that is embodied in each person.
“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously – no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.”
-C.S. Lewis
“So God created human beings in His own image. In His own image He created them, male and female He created them.” -Genesis 1:27
Are you stuck at home this summer, wishing for a European vacation? Turn your staycation into a virtual vacation with these seven activities! You can do this on your own, with friends, or with your kids.
1) Plan your itinerary. The wonderful world of the web (that’s what “www” stands for, right?) has unlimited information on every destination in the world. Lay out your travels in Europe by researching places you want to visit someday.
2) Get a travel journal. It will feel almost like you really went when you fill a notebook with photos, impressions, and information about the cities you “visit.
3) Go to the library. Check out a few books and movies about your destination of choice. Try the kids section for big pages and lots of pictures! You may even find a travel mag or two. Go home, make some tea, and soak in the sights. If you’re a bookworm, find a novel or two from the European location you’ve chosen. There’s nothing like creative writing to transport you to another place and time
4) Read blogs. Blogs are the best way to experience a place for what it is. Most bloggers have no ulterior motives, unlike travel brochures. Leave some comments and save some photos. Print up the pictures for your travel journal.
5) Bring Europe to your kitchen. Search the internet for authentic recipes—the best ones come from somebody’s grandmother who immigrated from the Old Country. Try your hand at a few dishes, and be sure to light candles for atmosphere.
6) Explore the city on Google Maps. Did you know that you can “walk through” not only streets, but also important buildings and even museums on Google Maps? Make the most of this online treasure by traversing a city from the comfort of your kitchen table.
7) Make a scrapbook. Sure, it might be out of style, but it’s still fun. Since you’ve spent time learning about a new place, record your newfound knowledge to look back on later. If you’re adventuring with kids, this will definitely be the best part of your European staycation.
Do you have any other ideas for exploring Europe from home? Tell me about your staycation secrets in the comments!
