Sand dollars, S'mores and Sad goodbyes...and our days have run out!

Sorry to all those awaiting the update on the end of Jade's trip! It's been a busy week and I've only just got around to writing it up! On the day before she left, a trip to Fort George Cay was in order - thanks to our landlords who have their own boat!

It was a pretty good day out on the water, the sun was shining and Wally, the driver, was providing the jokes all day long! 

The water was still as turquoise as ever! Jade and By got to do some snorkelling and they even managed to find some of their very own sand dollars.  The locals call Fort George Cay 'Sand Dollar Island' because apparently you can always find sand dollars there, and aren't they amazing! 

Here is one that Jade found...

and here is By chilling out on the boat trip home back down the canal!  In the evening we had a beach BBQ which was awesome.

By cooked the meat on top and the jacket potatoes underneath with the coals! I liked the staging of this pic with our little pre carved s'mores sticks in the foreground! 

Yes no beach BBQ is complete unless you have s'mores! Here is our friend Milah toasting the marshmallows up to perfection, she's a bit of a pro so she was designated toaster for the evening! Jade had never had a s'more before!! so we quickly changed that...

and I think the look of pure delight on her face is a testament to their tastiness!! They were pretty spectacular s'mores that we were making because we had found some toasted coconut marshmallows and some white & coconut lindt chocolate, so put it all together with some honey graham crackers and you have one gourmet s'more right there!

On the morning of her flight we stopped off at Saltmills for a tasty fry up...and a root beer float because Jade had never had one before!!! Shock horror! especially being the root beer lover she is, I had to change that! They were so good! and our breakfasts were pretty amazing too!

....and of course Jay-dee had to order some conch fritters as a side to her breakfast because she had to get her last little conch fix before she left, who knows when she will get to eat it again! When we took her to the airport her flight had been delayed by 2 hours, hooray more time to spend with us! so we took a quick detour down to Blue Hills and Jade bought some decorative conch to take home with her.

We also found out she's pretty good at blowing out a tune on the old conch shell too, Lord of the Flies style! unfortunately that picture is on her camera so you will have to wait 'til she puts it up on facebook to see for yourself! We took our last pic together by these cute little coloured huts, had a last minute drink at Sharkbite and said our sad goodbyes as we headed back to the airport again.

Jay-dee we had the best time with you, and will always treasure the memories we made! I thought at the time 6 days wouldn't possibly be long enough but we packed plenty in and I definitely got my Jade fix!

Now on to why I love Jade...we have been friends for nearly 12 years now.  We met when we were 13.  Jade was a newcomer at my school and she happened to be in my tutor base.  Back in the days of Year 8 people were deemed 'cool' by the shoes they wore to school! Lucky for Jade she was wearing the right shoes on the day that we met so I introduced myself and we hit it off, at breaktime my sister and Jade's brother Chris came to find me (they were also in the same year group) to tell me that Chris' little sister was starting at St.George's today and that I had to be nice to her! but there was no need because by the time they found us we were already friends! and how grateful I am for that pair of Kickers shoes because Jade has been the most loyal and lovely friend anyone could ask for! She must have been lovely to have put up with my shallow 13 year old self! 

All my old school pictures of us together are back in England so you'll have to make do with these more up to date versions, they're far less embarrassing anyways! 

I've always loved the quote 'Wherever you are, it is your friends who make your world' and Jade is living proof of this.  We've lived in different areas and different countries many times! In the picture above Jade was about to leave for a year of working in Singapore.  When I was 18 I spent my first year of university in Stirling, Scotland.  Jade mega-bused it the 8 hours to come and visit me even turning up in an 'I love William Wallace' homemade T-shirt to try and make the peace between the Scots and the English! It was an eventful visit that led to her being kicked out of my halls of residence (it was exam period so no overnight guests were permitted and we got busted sneaking her in) and us having to roam the scottish villages at 1am looking for a B&B to stay in but with no luck ended up having to sleep all night on the chairs in my psychology building on campus! 

When I was at university in Reading she came to visit me and I was able to introduce her to her first ever Shakeaway milkshake!!! It was such a momentous occasion we had to take a pic (sorry it was on my phone!) in fact there have been many firsts we have shared together like her first ever trip to Scotland, as mentioned above and I also was there to experience Jade's first ever Krispy Kreme experience at Harrod's!

Jade shared my first ever cupcake hunt in London with me and our friend Laur and her recent trip with us here was full of firsts: first time scuba diving, first time trying a s'more, a root beer float, fish taco's, jerk chicken, conch and first time experiencing waters as turquoise as these and beaches as beautiful as they are!!

This picture here is when we were reunited after Jade returned to England from Singapore...no doubt there will be a similar one taken when I return to England in less than a month! and I'm pretty sure a cupcake feast will be involved in that homecoming too! 

I couldn't ask for a better friend than Jay-dee and hope that in the future we will have many more firsts together and get to travel to many more places to visit one another!! 

Half way happy times!

So we're exactly half way through Mara's visit and time sure does fly when you're having fun!

Our beach bonfire complete with tasty S'mores (made the European way!) was awesome! We had the beach to ourselves...as per usual! And despite the windy days we've been having recently the evening we had it on was perfectly calm!

By decided it had to be done in style...so Mara and I went conch collecting to make this ring of conch around the hole we dug!

The fire started up pretty well and kept us nice and warm, it wasn't actually cool out - our long sleeves and jeans were to protect from mosquito's as we cycled to and from the beach, they are out in force after dark!

This picture makes me laugh...it looks like we are having some kind of seance!

So you know S'mores are traditionally made with Hershey's choc but you know my dislike for that stuff! So we stuck with mini squares of Milka and these little Caramel Dairy Milk's that Mara brought over!

We even tried some with Mint Aero, much to By's disgust...apparently mint and marshmallow aren't a good combo in his opinion but they tasted great to me!

By crafted us these great little skewers out of sticks to roast our marshmallows with, after a rocky start for Mara and a few marshmallows catching on fire she got the hang of it!

It was actually her first time making S'mores!! I have a feeling it won't be the last...maybe we'll put a little Christmas Eve campfire on the agenda!

Root beer and S'mores = pure happiness for me!

By took this great shot of the sea...even at night you can see the awesome colours!

On Friday morning By went to help on another dive boat excursion, this time he got to go snorkelling on his lunch break and got to snorkel with a 6 ft shark...scary stuff! Mara and I had a much tamer day consisting of a tasty breakfast of chocolate chip and banana and walnut pancakes, accompanied by some delicious smoothies!

                    

After that we went to check out an awesome view point at Harbour View Drive...

and we tried our hardest not to fall in...it was a sheer drop behind us! We then picked up By from his excursion, here is a picture of the boat he's been driving:

Our breakfast was so enormous I literally couldn't eat until dinner! And what a dinner it was, we hit up Chinson's to give Mara the true Jerk Chicken experience!

She wasn't disappointed, they do the yummiest corn bread too to compliment the spicy chicken that we all love.

Saturday consisted of a crazy bakefest where Mara and I made over 150 mini festive cupcakes - you can check out the pics here! They were for our Christmas party at church. We managed to make it to the beach for a few hours in the afternoon and the water was pretty calm so we were glad we did, we even walked out for a while on the sand bar which was super cool.

Look at that water! Mara was trying out her fisheye setting on her new camera...

We topped up our tans for a little while too

and Mara was pleased with the turquoise nail polish she borrowed from me, it is the perfect match for the colour of the sea!

Today was a pretty exciting day...all week we have been planning to bake some root beer pulled pork that I had seen the recipe for on a blog. Today was the day! It had to cook for 8 hours so we put it on before church and when we came home and walked through the door the smell was amazing!!! It was hard to restrain for the next few hours but it was worth the wait for the deliciously tender pork and oh the taste of root beer too...you need to try this recipe! By was excited...and I'm even more excited that I've made a root beer convert out of him since we moved here!

Doesn't he just get more and more tanned every time you see him??? The funny thing is I'm actually getting the best tan I've ever had before, but stick me next to By and I still look like a white Pommie!

I forgot to show you what our festive conch looked like when they were dry! Pretty cool hey!

It's amazing how 'it's beginning to look alot like Christmas' and there's not even a snowflake in sight!

And the heat goes on...

It's been a busy week here.  Last Friday Night we experienced Pie day Friday at Salt Mills Diner down in Grace Bay which was really fun...especially cause we used to do our own Pie day Friday back in the UK! and we got milkshakes too which made me super happy! It was a nice way to celebrate being done with the first week of work! I didn't get to make it to Beach Volleyball since we had meetings on Friday night til after 6...but I'm definitely hoping to make it tomorrow night.

On Saturday we went to Grace Bay beach which is a 12 mile stretch of one of the best beaches in the Caribbean and it's often found among the beaches of the World's Top 10 Beaches list.  I have been excited to go ever since we arrived.  The waters are crystal clear and the beach is pure white sand.  It was a really fun day of chilling on the beach but unfortunately we didn't take any good pictures...next time.

On Sunday we gave our talks at church which was a very interesting experience! We had to stop after every sentence or two to wait for the translator beside us to translate it into Creole as most of the members in our branch are Haitian.  I think I worked him a little too hard and was speaking too fast for him to keep up with, it will definitely take some getting used to! We downloaded an app on our Ipad to learn Creole and have been busy learning slogans and giving ourselves little tests to see how we're doing! It's like an easy version of French so it seems like it could be picked up fairly quickly.  We were invited to have lunch with some Americans from church and we had a delicious taco bake with them and some yummy desserts! They asked me if my work visa had come through yet and I told them it hadn't, and they said don't be surprised if it comes through after your year is up! which seems a bit crazy! They definitely do things on Island time around here...that's for sure!

We went to Family Night on Tuesday at Church which was fun, and accompanied by more yummy treats! and last night Alyssa and Brandon invited us round for dinner and cooked us a Pennsylvanian-Dutch speciality of cabbage and noodles.  We also went for a stroll along the beach and the sunset was awesome.  We took advantage of having someone else with us to take a picture and so here is one of the two of us! 

On Monday Byron went to this marine biologist's house to help her transplant mangrove trees.  It's a conservation project she has been working on.  He seemed to have fun, and she has even offered to take him kayaking to a nearby Island, Star Island, sometime soon which he is excited about.

He has been busy exploring the Island with his camera and taking lots of shots so I thought I'd share some of them with you.  He is meeting next week with a photographer who is interested in him doing some editing work for her so here's some shots he's snazzed up a little to show her.

He also chatted with a wedding co-ordinator at church who came over yesterday to take a look at some of the wedding photography he has done in the past.  She seemed pleased with what she saw, and said she may have a wedding in November for him to do...so the work is coming in a little at a time, and hopefully it will continue to do so.

Until then he continues to fish, and enjoy the beach on a daily basis.  He went to Coral Gardens the other day, a stretch of water known for being a really good scuba spot.  He saw some giant sea turtles and sting rays and brought me back some cool shells too.

The mosquito bites are still coming, and I'm not quite sure I will ever get used to this heat! but our evening strolls at the beach and this Island adventure we are living makes it all worth it.