Storms and Flat Tires

As the week draws to a close and all of our guests have left the Island we got treated last night to a tremendous thunder and lightning storm. There are two different weather systems in the Caribbean that we are watching for any cyclone development and while they haven't formed any depressions as of yet they are lashing us with a lot of rain. This morning we also awoke to a flat tire. We have a had a slow leak for a while and on Wednesday had pumped up the tire again hoping it would last until next Monday when we planned to go over to a tire store. As usual the best laid plans always have something go wrong and this morning the tire went from a slow leak to a quick one. We pulled out the spare and discovered that the tire jack we have was completely rusted. Fortunately, one of our neighbors was pulling out at the same time and loaned us his jack. Our car is so small though that the jack wouldn't fit under the car so Scott had to lift up the car so our neighbor could put it underneath. Not sure if that speaks to Scott's strength or how small our car really is. With the spare on we went to work and then over lunch went and got our original tire fixed. We should be getting a lot more rain this weekend and are watching the National Hurricane website closely something we will have to do for the next two and a half months.

Stephanie headed home

Yesterday was Stephanie's last full day in the Island. We slept in a little to digest the great meal we had the night before at Grand Old House. The picture to the left is the three of us on the deck. This morning we took Stephanie back up to West Bay to snorkel at a new site we had never been to called lighthouse point. We were hoping to see some green turtles as the site was just down the road from the Turtle Farm and the place where they release turtles into the wild. However, there were none to be seen. We snorkeled out a hundred yards or so and came to a mini wall where there was a drop off of about 45 feet. We got to see jellyfish (Scott got stung) some new parrotfish and the wall was really fascinating. There was another drop off to three thousand feet further out but we weren't sure how much farther and didn't want to snorkel that far out without a flag. The afternoon was spent making banana bread and snicker doodles and basically resting. This morning Stephanie had a 7:40 a.m. flight and is now on her way back to the States. It has been a great 10 days and as much fun for us as we hope it was for her.

Snorkeling the Wreck of the Callie

This afternoon we snorkeled out to the Wreck of the Callie in George Town Harbor. The ship sank in 1944 and was later blown up by the British Army because it was a hazard to navigation.

It is about 100 yards off the shore just north of the harbor. We got some great photos and saw some new fish. Wreck snorkeling is a new experience for us and definitely something we want to do again. There are several wrecks around Grand Cayman and many of them can be snorkeled as well as dived. Tonight is our dinner out at Grand Old House. Scott's father is on Island to do some work at the college so both guest rooms are now in use at our house.

Para sailing on Seven Mile Beach

Yesterday Katie and Stephanie went para sailing on Seven Mile Beach. They caught a tender at West Bay public beach out to the boat. Once on the boat, they got hooked up to a harness and life vest and then sat down on the back deck of the boat. They were attached into the bar that hangs from the para sail and waited for the rope to be released. Stephanie had her camera attached to her wrist tightly to take pictures. As the rope was released they slid off the back of the boat and into the air. They got up a good 200 feet and were up for about 10 minutes. Stephanie took a bunch of pictures from the sky and both said they could see across the island to the north sound. Near the end Stephanie discovered why it isn't a good idea to eat Chinese takeout before going para sailing. The two deposits into the water meant that the ceremonial dip into the water at the end of the journey were to clean as well as celebrate the completion of the flight. Both thoroughly enjoyed the flight, none the less next time we will just have to plan better with lunch and some nausea medicine. This weekend is Stephanie's last on the island and we plan to snorkel a couple of the wreck sites and also the Northern tip of West Bay where there are some turtles.

Playing Tourist

We continue to get to play tourist this week showing Stephanie around the Island. Since we work nights the mornings are completely free to do things and we have been active the past two days. Yesterday we went back to Eden Rock for some more snorkeling. In the afternoon we worked while Stephanie stayed home and rested (we think we may be wearing her out). In the evening she came with us to the college and attended Katie's class. This morning Scott had a TV appearance on the Daybreak show at 7:00 a.m. in town and from there we headed up to Cemetery Beach at the northern end of Seven Mile Beach for some snorkeling. The fish there must be used to snorkelers feeding them because they swarmed us as we got to the rocks about 200 yards from shore and seemed almost angry when we didn't have food. We laughed saying that the fish were telling us "attention human servants we are ready to be fed". After an hour of snorkeling we headed further into West Bay and over to Hell. Stephanie got a bunch of post cards to send out from the Hell post office and we got those into the mail. We then headed back home stopping to pick up a DVD of our stingray city trip and also a book on fish so we can identify all the species we have seen. This afternoon we are taking Stephanie shopping in George Town during our dinner break to pic up t-shirts and other touristy stuff and to see all the neat shops in George Town that the cruise ship traffic frequents. We both realized that we have done more snorkeling in the five days she has been here then the rest of the year combined and its been a really great way for both of us to feel more connected to the Island and remind us what a beautiful place we live in. It is so true how much you miss when you are just working every day and not getting out to see everything. On Friday, Katie and Stephanie are going to try para-sailing so we should have some interesting things to tell this weekend.

Boatswain's and Sting Ray Sand Bar

One of the reasons we love to get guests is that we get to do all the things with them that make Cayman an incredible vacation spot. When you are working all week its hard to get out and do the vacation things but with Stephanie in town we are trying to hit them all. Last night we drove out to East End and stopped at the newly reopened Blow Hole site to watch the water come spurting up. We walked out to the Wreck of the Ten Sail monument and then had dinner at Portofino which overlooks the water and the wreck out on the reef. We ended the evening at the reef resort having Cayman coladas out on the beach.

This morning we got up early and headed up to West Bay. Boatswain's Beach which houses the Turtle Farm was having a free day in celebration of Constitution Day, normally it is 75 dollars for tourists to go in (only 10 dollars for us locals). Even with the locals discount we had never made it up there so today was a great day for our first visit. The turtle farm produces all of the giant green turtle meat used in the restaurants on Cayman. The giant green turtles are an endangered species so the farm produces most of the turtles for release into the wild and actually puts out more turtles than would otherwise survive. We saw the breeding pools for the turtles as well as the pools for each of the age groups. We got to pick up turtles and also swim with them later in the lagoon. There was also a pool with waterfalls and we walked the nature walk. Around 11:30 we had to leave for lunch and our sting ray snorkel tour.

We had lunch at Eats cafe which is a U.S. style diner with pictures of Marilyn Monroe on the wall and on the menus. After lunch we headed out on Captain Marvin's tour of the sandbar and snorkeling sites. The weather early in the day had been threatening but by the time our boat headed out the dark skies had moved away and the sun was even peeking out. We hit the sandbar first and got to feed the sting rays. They are so used to humans that they rub up against you and are very insistent on being fed the squid. Everyone got to kiss a stingray (which brings seven years good luck) and we got some great pictures. From there it was over to the Barrier Reef and then the Coral Gardens for snorkeling. We all had a great time and are exhausted. Stephanie has her digital camera and has already taken well over 1000 pictures in just three days.

We still have trips back to West Bay to visit Hell as well as lots of snorkeling tours planned for the rest of the week. Tonight is a dinner at the house and some DVD movies to rest up after a very active weekend.

Stephanie visiting

Katie's sister Stephanie is visiting this week for her graduation from high school present from us. She arrived on Friday and the last two days have seen us hit four different snorkeling sites, two movies (Wanted and Hancock), sushi, A la kabob and tonight a visit out to East End and the Portofino wreckview restaurant. We had planned to hit the sandbar today but overcast skies and rain caused us to reschedule for tomorrow. Also on the agenda for tomorrow is a visit out to Boatswain's Beach which includes the turtle farm and other attractions. Its free tomorrow since it is Constitution Day on the Island and they are doing a lot of Cayman heritage events. We will go to Boatswain's in the morning, the snorkel tour to the sandbar and the stingrays tomorrow afternoon then perhaps back to Boatswain's in the evening for the fireworks. We have things planned for every day this week while we are at work so that she gets the full Cayman experience before leaving next Monday.

Katie has been doing much better since her surgery though she has only been back to work for two days. Next week she will be back full time and we will see how she does. We are into storm season and have been tracking the storm that is crossing the Atlantic though it looks like it will be heading towards the east coast of the U.S. and well north of us. That will be a normal occurrence for us the next three months through the rest of the summer until the end of October. We are both teaching this quarter and with the biggest summer class in several years we are staying busy.

Katie doing great

Katie's surgery went very well and the Doctor said she is in complete health though she will be in a lot of pain for the next couple of days while she recovers. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers they definitely worked. Katie is on a mission to be completely healthy by one week from today when her sister Stephanie arrives for 10 days.

Meanwhile our thoughts and prayers are with Nick and Julia Koclanes and Maryann Walsh. We are so sorry to hear the news and will be thinking of you.

Update

So much has gone on the last three weeks and we just haven't had time to update our blog. Last week Katie felt some pain and after a visit to the emergency room we found out that she had a ruptured cyst and will need to have Laparoscopic surgery on June 25 at the George Town Hospital to remove another cyst. We have a great Doctor and are very hopeful that things will go off with no complications. Not to be outdone, the kitties both started having sneezes and droopy eyes and the vet indicated that they have kitty herpes most likely caught back at the humane society kennel so their weakened immune systems are susceptible to that type of problems. They have been on antibiotics and are doing better.

Prior to that we had Katie's concert over at the Grand Old House. We have photo's, digital clips and also a DVD that in time we will post on this site in some form or another. It was a tremendous concert and evening. The music and meal next to the water were just incredible. The choir is on hiatus now until September when they start preparing for their Christmas concert season.

Prior to that we hosted Scott's father and his wife for a long weekend and spent time showing them around the Island. They were a dry run for the family coming in the months ahead starting with Katie's sister Stephanie who comes at the beginning of July for 10 days.

We are in the first week of the summer quarter and with our business manager just having given birth and our Director of Operations now being the news director at CITN we are having to cover several jobs and that has made things a little insane at the college.

Will let everyone know about Katie as soon as we know more. Keep her in your thoughts.

Rainy Season comes in with a bang

The rainy (read Hurricane) season officially started on Sunday. From Wednesday of last week on though we got a preview as for five straight days we have gotten rain. Much of it is from the hurricane in the eastern Pacific and from the tropical storm that hit Belize. We are getting the outer bands of both of those storms. Yesterday, Katie and I went to Cost U Less the Cayman version of Costco and stocked up on bulk canned good items for our hurricane kit as well as picking up some 5 Gallon Water containers for drinking water supplies. We hope to finish out our kit over the next few weeks. Katie's concert is this Saturday at the Grand Old House and she has rehearsals for it three times this week. Next week is final exams and the end of the Spring quarter. We have a National Holiday on June 16th celebrating the Queen's birthday then jump right into the Summer quarter beginning on the 18th.

Second Anniversary

Hard to believe but today is our second anniversary. It seems so recent but two years have passed since our ceremony in Aurora. Since we have to work this afternoon and evening, our gift to each other was our trip last weekend to Little Cayman. We did celebrate this morning with a breakfast of cinnamon rolls (reminder of our wedding cake) and some early swimming and snorkeling up at Rum point. Our wedding was at 10:00 a.m. so it seemed appropriate that we celebrated our anniversary in the morning.

Little Cayman

Last weekend we headed over to the smallest of the three Islands in the chain, Little Cayman. With less than 200 people and over 2000 iguanas we were headed to a very secluded and quiet place that was still in mostly pristine condition. We went for four days of rest and relaxation at the Beach Resort on the western end of the 10 mile long Island. We did some biking on Saturday after we arrived to check out the western tip of the Island. The airport bisects the main road and you actually bike over the runway to get from one side to the other and continue on the road. On Sunday morning, we Kayaked out to Owen Island which is a couple of hundred yards off the southern coast and is small uninhabited Island. It was about a 25 minute Kayak and we were both pretty tired when we got to the Island. We spent about two hours out there exploring, swimming and snorkeling. We kayaked back to the resort and took a nap before lunch. When we got back Katie was a little pink but not bad. When we awoke she was bright red on pretty much all of the parts of her body that had been exposed to the sun. We learned later that because of the winds our sunscreen that we applied before leaving was only good for about an hour and not having taken any out with us we didn't have a chance to reapply. I was wearing a tee shirt and had a walking hat on even in the water so I only got slightly burned in a couple of places. Katie was burned bad enough that she was pretty much out of action the rest of the vacation.

We spent most of the next two days hanging out on the hammocks in the shade and reading. We had bought the full meal plan and the meals were incredible. The resort caters to divers and they need big meals since they burn so much on their dives. Katie said it reminded her of camp where everyone would get together for breakfast then go off for their morning activities, then come back for lunch and repeat in the afternoon with dinner being full of the "dive" stories. we both agreed that we need to get certified and do some diving.

Even with the unfortunate sunburning, it was a very relaxing couple of days. We plan to go back and see the rest of the Island sometime before we head back to the States. There are now just three weeks left in our Spring quarter and with no break before the Summer quarter begins things are moving fast and furious. The cats have beaten the ringworm and we havent had to deal with giving them medicine in a while. Katie is getting ready for her concert with the national choir on June 7 and we are looking forward to visits from various family members from each of our families in the next several weeks. Congrats to Stephanie, Katie's sister who will graduate shortly and is coming to visit us in july as our graduation present to her.

Little Cayman Trip this weekend

This coming weekend is Discovery Day weekend here in the Cayman Islands. It celebrates the discovery of the Islands by Christopher Columbus in 1503. He sailed along the coasts of Cayman Brac and Little Cayman claiming the Islands for Spain. Monday is a national holiday so we are taking advantage of the three day weekend and heading over to Little Cayman to spend three nights at the Beach resort on the Island. The smallest of the Cayman Islands, Little Cayman is just less than 8 miles long and has a population of about 150 people. It is about 80 miles north and east of Grand Cayman and about 5 miles west of Cayman Brac. From the western most point on the Brac you can see Little Cayman across the channel. This is our anniversary present to each other and should be a relaxing and very quiet couple of days. We will get our real taste of flying in the Caribbean as the airstrip is a dirt runway. We are also looking forward to the snorkeling at what are widely rated as some of the best dive/snorkeling sites in the world just off the coast of Little Cayman.

Batabano

On Saturday we went to Batabano, Cayman's Carnivale. Here are some pictures from the event.

Radio Commercials

Katie and I each have a favorite radio commercial that the local stations play. Mine has nothing to do with selling anything its just a funny liner... "there are three kinds of people in the world, those who can count and those who cant." Katie's is a commercial for the easy listening station for listening at work and goes..."all your friends and family think your life is a Jimmy Buffett song but your stuck at work grinding it out every day, so listen to Mix 106.1 ............". The radio here has all kinds of stations from hard rock to pop to country and reggae. The one thing we don't have is talk radio or sports radio. Even Radio Cayman is a Christian music station that will break in with the official news during important times.

Off Season Blues

Yesterday was the unofficial end of tourist season here on Cayman. The radio played a song by the barefoot man called Off Season Blues several times. The song talks about the resorts and condo's being empty, the sun tan lotion going unsold, the cars not being rented and the taxi drivers sitting around with nothing to do everyone singing the off season blues. Tourist season returns in November with Pirates week. Now of course comes what is setting up to be a very hot summer. Cayman in April/May is very reminiscent of Austin in August, hot and muggy. You also cant help but sense it is going to be a long summer before the cool "Christmas winds" return in late November and December.

Poetry at Dart Park

Havent had time to post since we got back from Texas as we have been busy catching up from work. Last Friday we took an evening off and attended a poetry reading at Dart park on South Sound road. Dart is a large corporation here on the Island and has a huge charitable arm to keep on the governments good side. The park is behind the national trust building, a building we have biked or driven past a hundred or more times, But until we went looking for it Friday we didn't even it know the park was there. The park overlooks the water and has an outdoor amphitheatre and play areas. The poetry readings were indoors since it was after dark and the mosquitos are too big a problem outside. We were able avoid the mosquitos for the most part even though we sat on a picnic table outside and listened in. The night was designed to have poets on Cayman of all ages read some of their work. We went because two of our students were having their poems read by a third student. Surprisingly several more of our students had connections as their children were reading poems. It seemed that several of the primary schools had their students do a poem for class and then many chose to read it at this event.

Katie is getting ready for her first concert with the Cayman National Choir on June 7th. They will be singing with the Cayman National Orchestra at an event to be held at the Grand Old House on Petra Plantation and the concert is called around the world in an evening. They will be singing songs from all over the world and every Monday evening she heads off to practice.

Coming back from Texas, we brought all of Katie's scrap booking supplies and her special suit case. So of course American lost our luggage and we had to sweat out 24 hours of waiting for them to arrive. This seems to be a common problem with American and its flights to Cayman. We think its because they always oversell the flight so it is always packed then everyone is bringing several suitcases since vacationers come here usually for a week. So they hit their weight restriction and have to leave luggage for the next flight. The problem is we were on the last flight of the day so our luggage didn't come in until the next day. This being Cayman we had to run to the airport to pick up our luggage once it arrived because if we waited for American to deliver it, it would be a couple of more days.

We are into week five of our quarter and things just continue to fly along. We cant even catch our breath once we finish one task its right into another.

Texas for dental work and surprise birthday present

We are back in Duncanville, Texas this weekend so Scott could get some dental work done and we could surprise Katie's Mom for her birthday on Saturday. We left Grand Cayman at around noon on Thursday getting to Miami by 2 in the afternoon. But storms in DFW delayed our flight then caused a three hour flight from Miami to DFW to become a 6 hour flight and an unscheduled stop in Lubbock to refuel when the plane couldn't land at DFW. We had hoped to surprise Gail at her school in the early evening but that turned into a 1:00 a.m. wake up surprise when we finally got to Katie's parents house. Russell knew we were coming late last week and did such a good job of keeping the secret Gail had no idea, even slipping out to pick us up at the airport when our flight finally landed at midnight.

Today Scott got his tooth fixed. He had cracked a veneer last week and since they use different bonding material in Cayman we had to get the work done in the States. We could have gone to a dentist in Miami but decided to spend the extra money and come to Texas for Gail's birthday.

We are here through Sunday morning then return to Cayman.

Spring Cleaning

The first weekend of April meant spring cleaning of our house. We have gotten into the habit of not regularly cleaning and sweeping which meant the job was longer than it should have been. But after a couple of hours we had a sparkling kitchen, bathrooms and bedrooms and a living room that looked more like a living room and less like a storage room for all the stuff we bring home. The cats were a little freaked out but seem to have adjusted.

Friday night we went to the movies at Caymana Bay and saw Vantage Point which was actually a pretty good movie. It was pretty clear many of the people in the theatre had not seen the commercials and they were surprised that it was basically a telling of the same story from several different vantage points which meant that it was jumping back and forth. The quarter is now in full swing. Katie has had two classes with her Intro to College Studies students and is about to start the on line component which we are doing as a pilot program. Its funny you finish one quarter and before you catch your breath the next one is going and we are even already working on the summer schedule and faculty since registration for the summer starts at the end of April. The wheel just keeps turning.

Cayman National Choir

Katie has joined the Cayman national choir and is attending weekly practices in preparation for some summer concerts. This is something she has been talking about for a while and we have adjusted our Monday night work schedule so she can attend the practices. We are both looking forward to her debut and will post photographs when it happens.

It is beastly hot here most days which means a very hot and sticky rainy season is just around the corner and is not good news for the approaching hurricane season which begins in less than 60 days. It is also not good news for our electric bill. Even though we keep our home temperature at 80 degrees it is running a lot and electricity does not come cheap on this Island. The spring quarter is now in full swing and we are both working long days. We are planning to go to Little Cayman for our second wedding anniversary and finally get to see the third Island in the group. We are also fast approaching our one year anniversary of moving to Cayman, it certainly doesn't feel like a whole year has almost gone by.