Money!

Money!:

Well the money just came in on Friday for the grants for both the Children's Garden and the Fruit Garden. I now have my work cut out for me because these are both projects that I will be working on for the next 5 months. The tasks are mildly daunting considering the land needs to be leveled in the children's garden and both areas are completely overgrown by corallita. The ranger for the garden, Carlton is leaving on Friday to leave me by myself to run the garden for three weeks. I'm excited and up to the challenge of running the garden and the maintenance with the volunteers while he's gone, but also realize it's a huge task. things are constantly breaking and I'm not quite sure how to fix everything. The electricity at the garden runs on solar panels, so when the power goes out the backup generator has to be turned on. I'm going to learn about that tomorrow! I've already learned how to start the lawnmower, weedwackers, etc. This may sound very basic, but these are very different types of machinery than I'm used to. For example the weedwackers here have two plastic wires coming out that whirl at high speed. When you want more line, you just wack the weedwacker on a rock and more comes out- voila! Weedwacking here requires the proper safety equipment. Shinguards, like for soccer and safety goggles. Now, if only there were something to protect my nose! Today, a small pebble shot up my nose while weedwacking! It was awful, but I was able to get it out alright- no worries.

I went for a lengthy snorkel this weekend, which was awesome! I saw 5 squid, a puffer fish, tons of coral, blue-headed wrasse, urchins (my personal favorite), and a spiny sea star. It was a blast! The area that I was snorkeling on is actually the old sea wall for the city. It isn't too deep, but the fact that it's completely underwater should tell the island of Statia something. Also, when out in the water, you can look back at the shoreline and see the ruins of old buildings. It doesn't look ugly in any way, because it's just stone walls that are jutting into the sea. These used to be warehouses run by the Dutch.

On Sunday, I went to Zeelandia Beach, which is the most beautiful beach on Statia. On the side there are many rocks that run out over the sea and also come down from the mountain. I went bouldering with some coworkers and it was great! I got up pretty high for myself and then just watched the people on the beach. There were only about 5 people on the beach, which is typical for Zeelandia. It's always very quiet on the beach, which makes it an awesome place to hang out.

I was also going to go fishing Statia style on Sunday, which means you just fish off the reel instead of using a fishing rod, but alas our truck picked up a nasty nail from the dump and we spent at least an hour fixing it. But it was fun nonetheless and it was great getting dirty and figuring out where to put the jack on a big truck. I'm used to smaller cars and it's so much easier!