The Crookstons

“You guys sure are having an amazing adventure down here”

: Grandma, Grandpa, Andi, Piper and Tanner down on the beach below our condo

Well, tomorrow morning life is going to change dramatically. Again. Cari goes back to school, and I go back to work.

For Cari, it’s been a fantastic, relaxing, rejuvenating and much needed three week break. For me, it’s been a… (searching for just the right words…) a … an unexpected but inspired four month weekend.

Just today I got word that tomorrow I will start a short-term contract for a company in Minneapolis to code a new web-based application for them. It’s not a long term gig, but it’s work. And I’m grateful. On one hand I never thought it would take this long to find a company that would let me work entirely from a remote location, but on the other hand, not working the first semester of Cari’s schooling is exactly what our family needed while we all settled in to this strange new land.

But more on this later. Right now I want to focus on my Mom & Dad’s visit and on Cari’s break. Happily, my parents were able to arrange there visit to coincide with Cari’s freedom so we could all spend time together. And we had so much fun! I’m not even sure where to begin, so, let’s start with Cari’s birthday. Read the rest of this entry »

8 Comments, Written on May 8th, 2012 , Everything Else

Music of the Island

My mom and dad on the beach down below our condo

A group we stumbled upon playing steel drums in a warehouse in Grand Case

Carina is on break right now between her first and second semester at AUC, and much to our delight, my Mom and Dad were able to schedule a trip down here during her break. They like to travel and were excited when we announced we were moving to a Caribbean island. We’ve been looking forward to their visit and were happy that it could coincide with Cari’s break. I’ll compose a better post soon with fun details of their trip, but right now I just wanted to share a highlight.

Yesterday evening we drove out to Grand Case, a fun little village over on the French side that is well known for it’s cute shops and yummy restaurants. (Andi, Tanner and I went there a while back and we recorded our trip here.)

As we were walking down the main street we heard the melodic and distinct sounds of steel drums, so we followed our ears. We ended up in an otherwise unassuming warehouse where we found a group of young twenty-something islanders playing their hearts out on an impressive array of drums.

At first I just took a few pictures, and as I did so I was thinking to myself, “I wish I could record this… it sounds so fun and beautiful.” And then it occurred to me, “Wait! I can record this!” I borrowed my dad’s iPhone (I no longer carry mine with me), put the camera on video mode, and after asking their permission, I started to record. Here’s a short clip of them as they were finishing up a song. Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments, Written on April 26th, 2012 , Everything Else

Lessons of Life: Reflections on Gross Anatomy (by Carina)

Carina and her lab partners

Around my neck was my plastic AUC id, as it hung from the lanyard, I lifted it up to show the guard at the entry gate and he let me pass. My Molecular Cell Biology final would commence in T-minus 20 minutes and it would be the last of many exams taken over my first semester of medical school.

Four months ago, but an eternity in other ways, I walked in to the gross anatomy lab for the first time wearing my new blue scrubs and all my insecurities tucked near the surface of my wavering facade. There in front of me was a very sterile looking lab room and immediately I locked gaze with the large black bags atop ten tables. The smell was completely unfamiliar. I thought after spending hours in a surgery internship that the smell of human flesh would be nothing new. So I learned that living tissue is completely different. The preservation method to keep these bodies fresh required formaldehyde, and this was a new smell that burned my eyes and seared my nasal passages. After hundreds of hours, I never really got used to it.

Our class of 90 students was divided up into groups of six people per lab table. I was assigned to table 3. I wish I could describe how I felt as I stood next to the airplane bag (they called them) with my cadaver inside. Surreal. Our professors gave a brief dedication and we gave a moment of silence to recognize the lives of those who offered their bodies in the name of science and for the benefit of our learning. Read the rest of this entry »

5 Comments, Written on April 18th, 2012 , AUC: American University of the Caribbean

Easter Weekend BBQ & Egg Hunt with the Mormons

Ribs and Chicken on the Barbie.... Sea Side. Mmmm!

One of the great things about being on the island with the American University of the Caribbean and as Mormons is that we get to know people in both communities. In only a few months we’ve met some wonderful people through AUC who will no doubt be friends for many years to come, if not for life. And through the LDS branch here on the island we’ve also met some local islanders who are fantastic people and who we never would have met had it not been for the Mormon church.

(Quick vocab update for non-Mormons: Mormon congregations come in two types: wards and branches. Wards are big, branches are small. The congregation on St. Martin is too small to be a ward, so we’re a branch.)

This past Easter weekend the branch sponsored two activities: A beach side BBQ on Friday and an Easter Egg hunt on Monday. I didn’t make it to the egg hunt, but all the kids and Michelle went and the report was tremendously positive. I did, however, make it to the BBQ with Andi, Tanner and Piper. And wow! What a treat! The chicken and ribs flowed endlessly, the company was terrific, the weather was beautiful, and the beach (which we hadn’t been to before) was beautiful. But most of all, the chicken and ribs flowed endlessly and the company was terrific!

I thought I’d share a few photos of both events. Read the rest of this entry »

6 Comments, Written on April 12th, 2012 , AUC: American University of the Caribbean, Mormons in St. Maarten, St. Maarten Beaches

Block Weekends, aka “Killer Exam” Weekends, and How to Make Them Fun

Carina getting out and enjoying the shops on Front Street with family and friends

Block weekends are no fun, for anyone. “Blocks” are just a nice way of saying “killer exams”, and all of Cari’s classes have them on the same Monday, four times a semester. For most of the week leading up to blocks we don’t see much of her. And the weekend before, we don’t see her at all, unless she’s asleep in bed. Okay, she still comes to church with us, but other that those three hours, she is held up on campus with her nose buried in text books, flash cards, notes and anatomy videos. For 14 hours a day.

On Block Monday she gets up extra early and gets in a last few hours of review before she spends pretty much the entire day taking exams. When she comes home she is finally able to relax a little, but she’s on pins-and-needles until she is able to get online later that evening and see her results.

On those Monday evenings we’ve usually made it a point to do something fun, like go out to a movie and dinner. But the real fun comes on the weekend after blocks. That’s when we kidnap Cari for an entire Saturday and bring her to places on the island we’ve been enjoying all along, but which she hardly ever gets to see. Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments, Written on April 9th, 2012 , St. Maarten Restaurants, St. Maarten Shopping

Feeling Settled, Home School, and Discovering More of the Island

In another week we will have been on the island for 3 months. Time is going both fast and slow, if that makes sense. And while we still miss so much about St. Cloud, we are finally starting to feel as if this new life is settling down. We’re learning the island, developing routines, and meeting new people. There are still the occasional tears over missed friends, and while I’d stop short of saying that we feel like this is “home” we are at least headed in that direction.

Home School

Andi and Tanner enjoying an apple sauce while taking a study break.

Where to begin…

I am learning so much about Andi and Tanner that I never knew before, and I’m also beginning to grasp the holes that exist in public education. If I could go back in time, I would involve myself to a much greater level with their schooling and homework.

I’m not implying they are deficient, but I am saying they both have strengths and weaknesses I didn’t know about. With more careful scrutiny and one-on-one attention, I think their strengths could be more developed and their weaknesses less pronounced. Out of fairness to them I won’t go into details, other than to say I hope this home schooling stint will help in both areas. Read the rest of this entry »

3 Comments, Written on March 24th, 2012 , St. Maarten Beaches, St. Maarten Shopping

Thank You For the Offer for Care Packages, but…

To all our good friends who have offered to send us a care package full of favorite treats: THANK YOU! We appreciate the offer. We really do. It makes us feel loved, and it means a ton to us.

When given such an offer, however, our reply has always been the same: We glad you’re thinking about us, but we’re okay.

Just about anything we might want to buy is already for sale on the island, and to help illustrate, I thought I’d include a few pics of one of the bigger grocery stores, Grand Marché.

Read the rest of this entry »

3 Comments, Written on March 19th, 2012 , St. Maarten Shopping

St. Martin Eclectic

I was in a little art gallery in Grand Case on Friday with Andi and Tanner and saw a collection of photos that gave me an idea for this slide show. The photos were random but aesthetic snapshots of the kinds of things you see every day around St. Martin, but hardly notice. It was a timely reminder that good photographs don’t always need to come from grandiose subjects. Sometimes beauty is all around us, but we look past it. Read the rest of this entry »

Leave A Comment, Written on March 19th, 2012 , Everything Else

A Few Heineken Regatta Pics

Once a year in March, Heineken sponsors a sailboat race around the island that draws crowds and boats from all over the world.

This morning Carina, Tanner and I went to the back of our complex armed with my tripod and camera to catch a few pics of the boats as they began the Saturday morning stretch of the three day race.

I thought I’d share of few of the photos.

1 Comment, Written on March 3rd, 2012 , St. Martin Activities

Tanner & Baseball: Is it the Game? Or the People?

As a dad, it’s been a treat and a delight to watch my son develop and grow his love for baseball over the past eleven years. He has loved that game more than I loved anything as a kid.

Little Tanner playing T-Ball

I’m not sure where it came from, really, because sports has never been my thing. At all. And when I do pay attention to anything in the sporting world, it’s usually college football. But no matter. I’ve been more than happy to nurture and encourage his love for baseball. In fact it’s been a lot of fun.

Tanner has never been happy simply playing ball. Just showing up at little league games wasn’t enough to quench his thirst, and he became the ubiquitous instigator of neighborhood games. He would work the telephone or scour the neighborhood to round up all the usual suspects, corralling them into our front yard where they would play until it became too dark to see the ball anymore. Even as late in the year as November, Saturday afternoons would find a group of boys bundled up in winter coats and hats, playing their hearts out as if that very game was the Little League World Series. And in the dead of winter they would pile into our basement to play the same game, but on the Wii. On those sad days when nobody else was available to play, he would stand in our front yard for hours, just swinging his bat, alone. Read the rest of this entry »

5 Comments, Written on February 26th, 2012 , St. Martin Activities

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