Great news, readers!  Surgery was completely successful and we are headed home this evening.  We will overnight in Miami and be back on the island at 3pm on Wednesday.  I so appreciate your prayers as I’ve gone through this spinal fusion.  I am pain free and feeling fantastic!  I’m back at it on Thursday, stay tuned!

I’ll be having L4-5 fusion tomorrow so the blog will be quiet for 2 weeks.  Back to St. Maarten on October 24.  My plan is to do some drives around the island and update with pics.  Be back soon!

This was the first morning that we had the internet go out before Andy needed to start working.  I called Coral (Scarlet) and they advised of a known outage in Colebay and it was being worked on.  No worries, he gathered up his tablet, phone, and we headed 2 minutes down the road to La Sucriere where he did his morning calls without issue and under the supervision of the resident iguanas.  Back to the apartment at 10:00 and the internet is back.  I get that this is the paradigm shift.  We have to accept that the things we took for granted, 75mb download speeds, or even working internet at all, are now different.  We’re adapting.  I was forced to drown my internet sorrows in a pain au chocolat at La Sucriere.  And so it goes 😁

About a month out from our move I began communicating with our landlord about having Telem (internet) in place *when we got here*.  Trying to be proactive, I was told by the building owner and our manager that, “it shouldn’t be a problem”.  Our manager assured us everything was being arranged.  So, my surprise factor was high when we got here and nothing had happened to assure Telem was in place.  We were told that a Scarlet router was in place and we did have internet.  Scarlet is another internet company on the island, whose bandwidth and speeds leave something to be desired.  We were advised that one of our neighbors (who had already been waiting 3 weeks) was to get hers installed on Tuesday, October 2, and hopefully he could do ours at the same time.  “All we had to do was go to Telem and pay”.  By now I’m certain that the locals reading this are hysterical 😆. Recall, the “Telem guy was off the island until Monday”, 2 days ago.  Apparently, there is only 1 Telem install guy for the entire Dutch side? 😐  Upon arrival at Telem on Monday we were advised that, no, it “doesn’t work that way, you fill out the application and ‘get on the list’ for install.”  I stated that our manager advised that he could just get it while he was at our apartment complex, since he was going to be there anyway.  Nope.  It doesn’t work that way.  K, then.  Anyway, yesterday around 3:30 our manager messaged us to let us know that the propane is now hooked up and ready to use.  Fantastic!  Any word from Telem?  No, haven’t heard from them 😐. The woman already waiting 3 weeks won’t get hers today and neither will you.  Great.  Understand that Andy MUST have internet to work and oh by the way, Scarlet has already gone out once in the 4 days we’ve been here 😂. Not that Telem doesn’t have outages too, they just have better speeds than Scarlet for what Andy needs.

So….many locals have already warned us, we’ll be lucky to have Telem by Christmas.  In this instance, attempting to be proactive and arrange this before we arrived was futile.  It was enormously frustrating for about 24 hours.  Now, I think I’m settling into the “we aren’t in Kansas anymore” mindset and am coming to truly understand the meaning of “island time” in the very literal sense.  In the end, we start every day with the view in this pic, we are about 7 minutes away from my favorite beach on the island (traffic willing), short of the Telem situation, everything else has fallen into line, and we DO have internet, it’s just not optimal.  If it goes out, there are businesses with internet less than 3 minutes from the apartment.  So if the biggest issue we have is that Telem may  be our Christmas present, overall, we are doing very well indeed.  

This will be a longer post than normal so hang with me, please.

We knew that Monday was going to be a busy day and first and foremost on the agenda was getting the cats to the vet to satisfy St. Maarten’s requirements for import.  During our visit the vet was going on and on about “how healthy they are, how beautiful their coats are, how clean their ears are…”. This, not in a complimentary way, but with a note of true astonishment in her voice.  It made me sad, as I know that many of the animals she sees are island strays in ill health, so our spoiled, pampered, never been outside a day in their lives, cats genuinely were an exception for her.   I hope to be able to get involved with the organizations working to save these island strays as soon as I am physically able after surgery.  It humbled me to realize how much I took having healthy animals for granted.  Not anymore.

After dropping the cats off at the apartment we headed back to Philipsburg to arrange insurance and registration for the car.  We pulled up at the insurance place and, oh crap, in the hubbub of getting the cats seen about I apparently left the car paperwork back at the apartment 🙄. No problem, we carried on to Telem to get the internet seen about.  

As a side note, most everyone knows that St. Maarten is known as the “Friendly Island.”  This is evident in the fact that most drivers will let you in when you’re trying to enter traffic.  And now, I’ve discovered another reason.  When we entered Telem there were a number of people sitting and waiting for customer service.  There was a “take a number” machine but it was empty so I asked the nearest person, “How do you know who’s next?”  He replied, “You ask who the last person is and you go after them.”  Brilliant!  So, I inquired and sat down to wait.  Speaking of astonishing, I was astonished to see this process work perfectly.  Each person going in order, no fighting, no bitching about who was next, it was very refreshing.  Since we knew that the wait would be some time, Andy drove back over to the apartment to get the car paperwork.  It’s not that far from Philipsburg to Colebay, as long as traffic cooperates.  Monday, it did as he was back in about 30 minutes.  While waiting, I missed my turn by one person, who I advised to go ahead as I was waiting on my husband to get back.  Even with that, the next person in line knew I had offered my place to the gentleman after me, and rather than going ahead, stated, “No, you are next as you were here before me.”  It was all exceedingly polite and friendly and I thought, “Man, this never would have played out like this in the US, not even in the ‘polite’ deep south.”  This saga about Telem is its own story and I will blog about it soon.

After finishing with Telem we headed back over to the insurance place to continue the process with the car.  It goes like this, you get insurance ($300 year on my car, liability only.  They will only do liability after a car reaches a certain age), then head to the Vehicle Inspection Center.  I previously blogged about the inspection process when buying a car here so details are there.  I smiled to myself as I entered the VIC office and numerous people were waiting.  I knew the process!  I asked who was last and took a seat.  I only waited about 10 minutes as that office is very efficient.  After getting all the paperwork switched over to my name I was advised I then needed to visit the registrar at the government building.  When you enter the government building the registrar is to your far right.  This process involved giving her all of my paperwork and I guess she registered the car in the system as showing me as the owner.  There was no extra cost for this, it’s just all part of the process.  Total time from obtaining insurance to finishing at the government building, about 1 hour.  

Now, as an “official” car owner on the island, I felt much better about driving around!  The next stop was to the appliance store of a friend to obtain a few items we didn’t bring with us, toaster, coffee maker, etc.  The owner of the store asked us where we were living and when we told him he said, “Oh, there is a great Chinese restaurant right next door to you!  I eat there a lot, it’s so good!”  Oh?  Why haven’t we seen this?  So once home and unloaded we went on a quest to find this place.  Yes, it literally is right next door.  But no signs and very nondescript in its appearance.  You would never know it was there unless you knew it was there.  We decided to give it a try and oh em gee!  It was amazing!!  It’s called Happy Buddha and yes, we left very happy with yummy food in our tummies 😊. Despite no signs and a benign looking building, the place was very busy with folks coming in for takeaway.  Apparently, this one is well known to the locals 👍🏻

After filling our tummies we made the last stop of the night, back over to Cost U Less for a few items we could not find elsewhere.  On our way back over the hill we were greeted with a gorgeous sunset over Cole Bay and Simpson Bay (and the lagoon).  Our apartment is down there somewhere 😉.   

Overall, an enormously productive day affording us a mostly down day today.  We think some beach time is in order as a reward 😁

You better shop around!  One thing that is occurring to us very quickly is that shopping on St. Maarten is not going to be like shopping at home.  Prices vary from the ridiculous to better than the US and those vary still, from store to store, sometimes wildly.  So far, we’ve only perused the stores we’ve not previously shopped in, such as Ace and Cost U Less.  We know of course, about the Super U and other grocery stores on both sides.  Friends told us that shopping will become an art, as we’ll have to go to several different locations for different items.  Gone are the days of one stop shopping at Target or WalMart.  Fortunately, this island is small so even going to the French side doesn’t feel like a burden….yet.  I’m told that with time, knowing I have to go “way over there” will become more of a pain in the ass.  I’m not mentally there yet, we’ll see how I feel in season 😆  One of those, living there vs. vacationing there items, I guess.

The trip was uneventful.  The cats were a bit upset during takeoff but slept through landing. The animal inspector was waiting at the airport exit for anyone bringing pets.  I simply had to present my paperwork to her, and off we went.  It was so easy and no quarantine.  This morning, waking in our island paradise…priceless.  The cats are already adapting, loving the fact they can bird watch from the balcony 😊. A few pics for you, a pano of from our balcony, and a few closer shots reflecting what the eye actually sees.  Those panos make things appear so far away when in fact they’re much closer.  The view is spectacular, we’ve got Cay Bay to the left and Simpson Bay lagoon to the right.  Today, lots of running around to do but we will absolutely make time for a beach stop to slow down, breathe, and take this all in.

Does it speak to the cats’ comfort levels that they literally jumped back INTO their carriers after we took them through security?  At the gate and on our way.  I suspect the adrenaline crash from the last two months is going to kick our asses.  Don’t call us, we’ll call you 😆

Cats on board and the car is stored….for 10 days til I’m back for L4-5 fusion.  The excitement never ends!  We’re hoping for a bit of relaxing time after we get back from my surgery on 10/23.

Gather the boxes and suitcase…