Welcome to Paradise

We have arrived...and I mean that in the sense of we've made it, we've hit the big time! I'm pretty sure life can't get any better right now...

and we're only on the 1st day of this amazing adventure!

The apartment we are living in is fantastic, we have a sea view from our balcony, the property backs on to it's own little private dock with a canal running alongside it, and it has a pool! 

We went down to the canal this evening for our first dip and it was so lovely and warm! and I can't believe it is literally on our doorstep, then seeing that the sun was setting in the sky we hopped on some bikes and cycled a couple of minutes down to the beach to experiment with our new SLR....oh yes it's mega exciting! I can now be a proper blogger...with proper photos! 

We had a 1 hour stopover on the plane yesterday at Nassau, Bahamas.  We weren't allowed off the plane so Byron put our time to good use and taught me how to use our camera on manual settings, there is nothing that frustrates Byron more than people who spend ridunculous amounts of money on snazzy SLR's only to use it in automatic mode...it's pointles - you might as well just buy a point and shoot, so now we finally managed to purchase another SLR I needed the pro to teach me how to use it! 

So here's a couple of shots I did tonight, I was pretty pleased with how they turned out! 

We found this amazing starfish washed up on the shore so I put my newly learnt skill of depth of field (which for those of you who don't know is focusing in on something in the foreground and leaving the background blurry) to good use.  I cannot wait to shoot some cupcake action on this camera, and I might not have to wait too long...I've been recruited to help bake some cupcakes on Thursday for a little boys birthday by a lady I just met today!

The weather is el scorchio all the time, and tonight our landlord whose name is Wally taught us how to button down the hatches incase a hurricane comes our way anytime soon! which is pretty exciting! but do you know what's even more exciting...we stopped by the grocery store this morning to pick up some breakfast and not only was I ecstatic to see that they sold root beer but it was priced at $6 for a whole 12 pack! That's 50 cents a can people, I'm lucky in the UK if I can pick any up for £1 a can! They also sell Lucky Charms, Ghiradelli chocolate and a whole host of other American delicacies...you should have seen the baking section! I was absolutely loving it, we just grabbed some fresh mango to eat but tomorrow we are going to do our full on shop and I cannot wait!!

We also had a little test drive earlier of the 4X4 we will have use of while we are here which was pretty fun.  It's crazy because all the road signs are literally exactly the same as they are in the UK, even down to the colours and fonts used so that makes it nice and familiar! It's an automatic, which shouldn't take any getting used to since it's so much easier than a manual, but somehow I still kept wanting to reach for the gears and it was feeling kind of strange driving it, I'm sure we'll get used to it though! 

The people here are super friendly.  Our flight came in 2 hours early so we needed to call the people who were picking us up, Byron asked an airport official where we could do this and he just grabbed his phone straight from his pocket and let us use it - when would that ever happen in England! or anywhere for that matter! 

The only thing I'm slightly sad about is my inexperience at living on a tropical island! This led to me putting my big block of fondant icing that I brought over with me in the kitchen cupboard last night, and when I awoke this morning it was infested with micro ants! How they got into a sealed packet I just don't know! but I've since learnt you literally keep everything in the fridge even all my jars of sprinkles and everything unless you want an ant covered cupcake which certainly doesn't sound appealing! but I will learn these things as I go along!

For now, we are just still pinching ourselves that we are really this lucky and are really going to be here for a whole year!