I love NCAA football season

It is the best time of the year in my mind. Despite the loss yesterday to MSU (and me not being able to watch the game), I was able to listen to the game and it was pretty exciting. One of my close friend here is from Iowa so we will be watching the Michigan vs Iowa game pretty closely. I think his team is favored, but anything can happen in college football. Our significant others (my wife/ his fiance') will be back in the U.S. that weekend for various things so we will be able to drink beer and watch football in peace. Too bad it is the weekend before our block exams. We won't be able to take too long of a break.

3rd Semester

Hi everyone
I haven't blogged anything in a real long time as you may have realized. It is not that nothing cool has happened. It is just that I have been uninterested in blogging it. It really did lose some of its appeal.
But for an update, it is 3rd semester. I am doing well on the island. I got really good grades last semester and I definitely had to work for them. I haven't gotten the final word yet but I am pretty sure I made the Dean's list (gpa above 87%). This is exciting to me because it was the goal I was shooting for and I am hoping to do even better next semester.
Julia is doing well. She doesn't really care for her job here, but she is toughing it out because it really helps with our bills and rent. She is excited about an internship she applied and was accepted for. It is in Key Largo, FL working with physically challenged children and dolphins. She will be working with the physical therapist there for one month. I will miss her when she goes, but it is not until March.
I will attach some photos from the previous semester.

Semester 2

We're back in St. Maarten. I know its been a while since I posted. That being said this will be an extra long post because we have lots of pictures. Our friends, Jana and Kyle, on their honeymoon came and visited us and we got to act like tourist once again. We went zip lining at the highest point in St. Maarten. Its actually pretty cool. There is a temperate rain forest in the hills and it gets about 1500 feet above sea level. Right as we started the course, which took almost two hours, it downpoured on us. It made walking across these tight rope bridges even more
interesting.



The next day we chartered a boat to Prickly Pear island, an island off the
coast of Anguilla (British West Indies). Normally (during high season) the beach is filled with tourist. However, since it was Sunday, cloudy and on low season we were the only ones on the beach. We were the only ones on the island. The snorkeling was amazing. It was like something on the Discovery Channel. We dove among this reef with a school of thousands of fish circling us and Barracuda and sea birds all around us trying to pick off straglers.

The friends are now gone and it back to reality. Julia went back to work and I went back to school. The material seems to be pretty easy right now, just there is alot of it.
Also today we got the inevitable letter.....Tuition.....get this...dun dun dun....is going UP. Well I definitely expected it to go up, but it still hurts. The hike adds about 10k to the final sum after 9.5 semesters of school.
But things could be worse. I could be going to one of the schools in the Caribbean (and there are a lot of them) that doesn't have U.S. federal loans. Students at those schools can't even get loans.
Finally, I celebrated my birthday....on a plane. It was fine with me. We went out to eat with our friends when we got here....and I'm a year closer to 30.

Happy Easter/ Coming home

The semester is wrapping up. Julia heads home on Tuesday and myself a week later after I am done with my two final exams. I don't have class at all this week so I have nothing to do but study for my exams. I will be very happy when this semester is over and I have two whole weeks to relax and see family and friends back home. Julia gets an extra week so hopefully she can get a majority of her shopping time done. The weather has been extremely hot and dry here. It hasn't rained in over a week and it is beginning to look pretty arid out. Luckily we have a gym at the school we can use to work out because you can't run for very long during the day (like more than 5 minutes) with out your skin feeling like its on fire. Most of the tourist have gone home so it is a little more bearable when you are shopping or driving around. Hope everyone is having a happy Easter and we look forward to seeing you when we get home.

Surfs up!

No, we didn't go surfing. But we could have. We went to the beach this weekend with some friends and waves were probably 8 feet at times. It was a perfect sunny day and it was especially unusual for this beach (Baie Rouge) because it is usually very calm. It was a lot of fun swimming and getting toppled by the waves and we spent a bit more time in the water than we usually do.




Later on that night Julia and I went to "Wine and Cheese Gala" at Dr. Acheley's home. It was a pretty nice event. She has a large piece of property on the bay and there were several tables spread out throughout the property with wines from different countries. There was also catered hor d'ouvres. There was a grammy nominated guitarist playing and a silent auction as well. Julia and I won (bought) 2 tickets for zip-lining on the island which we planned to use when Julia's friends come down for their honeymoon.

What a Week!

Solutions, the company that manages our apartment, told us that we did not have to move. They said that they didn't know where the leak was but that a plumber was going to put in new pipes bypassing it. After a little nagging, which I have become quite used to, they finally got the plumber out and with in two days....we had water.
Julia baked me a pizza that night (DiGiorno's---not delivery). It was a spinach, mushroom and cardboard pizza. It was a novel creation.



Later on that night, while at a friends, I got a call urging me to come home because we suddenly had a new pet. Meet Max. He is a 3inch arthropod that did not know how to swim very well.





It sure got Julia cleaning though....I think she scrubbed out all the cabinets.....

taste of the island

There are a few nice things about St. Maarten. One of them is the french pastries. We recently went to Marigot, the capital of the french side of the island. Although, I have not been to the french riviera, many people say it is very much like that part of France. It has a mall with a few clothing stores (very expensive) and there are lots of little shops and boutiques lining the streets. Above the city is Fort Louis (named after one of the more famous French monarchs). We took some stairs up to see the views. There isn't much preservation of it going on. One thing I have noticed on the island is that they don't really preserve anything. But there are some nice views and that appears to be what it's used for. We went with some good friends of ours (Josh and Danielle). After dinner we went to the famous "Sarafino's" pastry shop. The pictures highlight our trip.