AUC

What’s It Like to Bring a Dog to Sint Maarten?

American University of the Caribbean, AUC, Expats, Expats and TCKs, For the New Expat, International Travel, Spouses Organization

Wondering what it’s like to travel overseas with a dog? Turns out, harder than you’d expect but more than worth it! Here’s my friend Jon, the husband of a med school student at American University of the Caribbean and proud owner of a boarder collie, on how to bring a dog overseas and help him adjust. To read more of Jon’s pet advice, head over to The Healthy Pup. 

Once we realized that we would be moving to St. Maarten for two years, there was no question that Forte, our Border Collie, was coming with us! As we prepared for our move, we realized we didn’t like the idea of Forte stuck in a cage in the cargo hold, so we decided to make him an emotional support dog so that he could sit with us on our flight. We had our vet fill out the paperwork necessary for Forte to travel to St Maarten.

We knew that Forte’s high energy would be hard to manage throughout two flights and a layover, so the vet gave us a tranquilizer that we had Forte take after we got to the airport, which made him drowsy but able to walk along with us. We had quite a day – we woke up at 2 in the morning, flew from Chicago to Atlanta, and then from Atlanta to St Maarten. We landed in St. Maarten at about 3 in the afternoon, and Forte was great the whole time. He mostly slept on the flights (and lay on my wife’s lap a lot), and he waited patiently during the short layover we had. He’s weird about going to the bathroom in new places, so we didn’t have to worry about any accidents (but we did bring a few pads just in case).

 

Forte had no problem adjusting to his new home! We brought the blanket he always had in his cage as well as several of his favorite toys. Forte loves to play, so the minute we started throwing his ball around the apartment, he relaxed. We had to buy a new cage and retrain him to like his cage, and that was a process, but he likes his cage now, too! We also packed a few pounds of the kibble he was eating back home.

When we got to the island, we bought food and slowly increased the proportion of new food in his meals, which allowed him to transition to the food we will continue to buy on the island without getting an upset tummy. The dog park near the school is a great place to take Forte and throw the Frisbee for him, which is his favorite (my wife and I like it too, because it tires him out so much)!

We wondered if Forte would become depressed or homesick, but so far he has been his playful, affectionate self! We have done everything we can to make him feel at home, and it looks like we have been successful.


EarthDog Eco-Friendly Hemp Dog Bed – $84.00
from: The Ultimate Green Store

Air Show in Sint Maarten

American University of the Caribbean, AUC, Caribbean, Expats, Expats and TCKs, International Travel, Saint Martin/ Sint Maarten

Things that go fast never lose their appeal for us. Sure, we may outgrow the toy trucks and die-cast tractors, but real planes? Forever awesome. Every year (starting in 2015), Sint Maarten holds an air show above Great Bay. This year, I took R to the Boardwalk to enjoy the show!

Of course, that was way back in November, but who cares? Better late than never. I couldn’t resist sharing the photos.

The first thing we did was explore the festival on the Boardwalk. Unfortunately, most of the activities were either for adults or younger kids, so R found it kind of boring until the show started. Still, there were some pretty sweet motorcycles because of the biker event that was also happening on the island, and he thought those were cool. So did I, if only for the sheer number of them, even though I seriously could not care less about motorcycles.

The air show started (after much waiting under some palm trees) with parachuters jumping from the planes. They landed not too far from us on the beach, one at a time.

Soon, the planes began to show their stuff. They seemed to fly dangerously close to each other! I think that might have been an illusion of distance and depth, but it’s hard to tell.

 

 

The planes did corkscrews in the air, falling through the air at heart-stopping speeds before leveling out above the bay and flying upward once again.

 

You know, I never thought I was much of an airplane person, but I’m learning how awesome they are! Between Princess Juliana Airport down the street and the airshow in Philipsburg, I just may be addicted to flight.

Exploring Tall Ships in French Saint Martin

American University of the Caribbean, Caribbean, Expats, Expats and TCKs, International Travel, Saint Martin/ Sint Maarten, Spouses Organization, Third Culture Kids

Saint Martin is an island with plenty to do! There are often fun activities to participate it, when you know how to find them. This weekend’s activity was a free tour of three tall ships in Galis Bay!

After Coach Tom told me about this excursion, I decided to take R and head over to Marigot to tour the ships. Ben couldn’t come because he had to study, but Dan, another med school spouse at American University of the Caribbean, joined us with his two girls.

The Ships

We got to tour three ships during our Sunday afternoon excursion. The first was a big, green pirate-looking vessel from Germany called Alexander von Humboldt II. The four-year-old was entirely convinced it was an actual pirate ship, although she made sure the rest of us understood that there’s no such thing as a real pirate anymore.

Living on a ship sounds rather restrictive, but I could actually envision surviving a long trip on this boat. The crew’s quarters below were pretty tiny, but it didn’t look too terrible. Plus, the view from the deck is fantastic– I could totally look at that every day. An unobstructed view the the ocean is just unbeatable. R, of course, is all about that ship life. He’s excited about a future in the Coast Guard. I think he’d do it even without the view. Of course, it doesn’t hurt…

The other two ships, Frederick Chopin and the Wylde Swan, were a bit smaller, but no less impressive. They also had more interesting steering wheels, which was all that mattered the the four-year-old.

The Wylde Swan also had a great kitchen area, and whatever they were cooking down in the galley smelled delicious.

The Wheels

The most important part of the entire tour, according to the four-year-old, was the steering wheel on each ship. I think she would have stayed there all day if her dad had let her!

Each wheel was a bit different. I was surprised that the wheels still looked like old-fashioned wooden wheels. I wonder if that is standard, or if most ships (even sailing ships) have more modern wheels.

I have to say that I was pretty thrilled to see the typical old wheels still in use! They have a distinctly nautical beauty about them.

Other Instruments

There were other interesting ship’s instruments, too, beside the wheels. The baby loved the compasses, which were pretty cool.

I really liked the ropes. There were so many of them! I’ve read a lot of books about ships, but I haven’t been on too many of them. I’m always surprised at how much rope holds the ships together.

I really wanted to climb up into the rigging. Of course, I didn’t (seriously) consider it. We estimated that I’d get about halfway up before somebody dragged me down. You know, they did say that we could go anywhere on the ship, and they never said the rigging was off limits…. ah, if only I didn’t have a reputation to worry about!

These are the kind of days when I wish I could stay here forever. I want to spend my whole life wandering around ships and looking at the view!

The island life is a wonderful life, and the sea is a glorious place to be! If my adventures have taken me to the deck of a ship in the Caribbean, where else will they take me? Only God knows. Too bad he’s not spilling the beans yet!

For now, I’m loving every moment of this Caribbean life. What a fun afternoon! Ships are pretty cool. Thanks to everyone who made it possible for us to explore these ships for free!

 

 

 

 

Stargazing

American University of the Caribbean, AUC, Caribbean, Expats, Expats and TCKs, International Travel, Nature, Saint Martin/ Sint Maarten

Island-wide power outages, folks. That’s the way we do life here on Sint Maarten. The power to serve, GEBE? How about “the power to not serve.” “The power to darken an entire island all at once.”

eyes in the dark

It’s become trendy to complain about GEBE and the power problems here on the island, but I actually don’t mind them too much. I guess it’s easy for me to say that since I live in Maho, where we don’t get most of the outages. We’re on the airport grid, and they can’t shut the airport down too often. On Saturday, though, the whole island was down. Black. darkness. No light, except for the occasional building with a generator and one random man rolling down the street on his hooverboard. Despite the darkness, I found a lot to be thankful for.

There wasn’t any point in hanging out inside, and I couldn’t go to bed early since had to go pick up R from his school dance in a couple hours, so I decided to take my dog,  Kito, outside and stargaze for a while. Dang, people, you can see a lot of stars out there when the lights are off! I put down a towel on the grass, lay down on it, and let Kito run around. For all her lack of social graces, Kito is the best fetcher I’ve ever seen. She just drops the ball in my lap, I throw it, and repeat until she drops from exhaustion.

stars in the night sky

Kito and I spent an hour like that. I have an app called SkyView on my phone, which is pretty cool. You hold it up to the sky and it shows you the names of all the celestial bodies and constellations. I really do need to brush up on my Greek mythology, so it was nice to finally take a break from all the usual distractions and just stare at the stars for a while. I could find Cassiopeia and Orion pretty quickly, but I had to re-learn Cygnus, Perseus, and Pisces.

cygnus

After a while, Kito flopped down in the grass beside me. It was so quiet and so dark, just like the rural neighborhood where I lived as a kid. We used to lay out on the trampoline at night, searching out the ancient stories in the sky above. The stars were so bright, just like they were those years ago. It struck me how so much in life changes in such  a few short years, but the stars never change. The sparkling patterns above me were the same ones that the ancient Greeks saw, and even Father Abraham himself tried to count the same glittering specks. Can you imagine how magnificent the stars must look when there is absolutely no artificial light anywhere around? That’s something most of us have never seen that the ancients took for granted. A fiery streak silently sparked through the velvety expanse above. I haven’t seen too many of those in my lifetime, and I felt a sense of being robbed by the ever-present electricity that drowns out the gleam of the night skies.

My musings were cut short by a sudden burst of light. Someone at GEBE had flipped the switch, and the lamp above me suddenly flooded the yard with a warm glow. The magic of the darkness gone, Kito and I packed up and headed upstairs. On the way, I saw TWO centipedes and swore to myself that I’d never lay on the grass at night again. I’m glad I didn’t see those until afterwards, or I would have been sitting on the roof of my car for the whole hour.

tarus

Power outages are no fun, but they really do help you reset your technologically-programmed brain. We’ve only had electric lights for a mere snippet of human history, and people did just fine without them before! I bet they spent a whole lot of time stargazing back then. Like I explained to R later, stargazing was basically antiquity’s version of Netflix. It was the way people used to tell stories, the way we do on a screen now. Sometimes, it’s nice to get back to that. Turn off the modern conveniences and experience entertainment the way our ancestors did.

Here’s a challenge for you: This week, choose a night and stargaze. Download the SkyView app (not a sponsored post, I just think it’s cool) or do your research ahead of time. Learn the stories in the stars, and let your imagination carry you to the top of Mount Olympus. There are so many interesting things to appreciate about the universe– things that even power outages can’t take away.

stargazing

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When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?

Psalm 8:3-4