A Weekend of Mixed Emotions

Good morning!

Boy, it's been a tough weekend here on Statia.

On Friday, we had a meat market on the island and the Botanical Garden put up a stand where we sold, aloe, neem tea spray (insecticide, but all natural), papayas, squash, oranges from Dominic, herbs, and plants. We did really well and we also purchased some nice meat. There was a produce stand of all locally grown fruits and veggies. I got a sugar baby watermelon, a canteloupe, and a cucumber. It was all delicious and there were more fresh vegetables there than I've seen in three months!

We had a barbeque on the beach on Friday night where we cooked hamburger and steaks. It was really yummy and we all had a good time. We decided to go out that night to one of the local restaurants. When we got back to our car about an hour later, our belongings had been stolen. 3 laptops, 3 cameras, 2 ipod touches, speakers, my hard drive, cash, backpacks, and all the power cords to everything. We filed a police report in hopes of getting our stuff back. We also walked and drove around the island yesterday looking for discarded items that were not useful. No luck yet, but we're not giving up.

On Saturday, we went to St. Kitts! It's an island we can see from the garden. We took a boat over and there was ten of us in total. We crossed over the Atlantic side of the island and boy, those waves were rough! We got across and then leisurely motored into the harbor. The island seemed to stretch on forever as we went around it. On Statia, you can see from one end to the other from almost everywhere. On St. Kitts, that is not possible! It's so big! 36,000 people live there too, that's the most people I've heard of in three months! It was really exciting to go onto an island where they had shops and a wider restaurant choice too. I got some sandals, a purse, sunglasses, and a tunic top. We came back to Statia that evening; it was so nice to have a day trip off the island. We all really enjoyed it and had a nice time.

Oh! I've been working on a sculpture in the last week! I've been building a dragon fly out of scrap metal. It's going to be about six feet long. I'm really excited to see how it turns out. I'll be working on it this Wednesday and hopefully it will be done soon!