Blog #5 Cell, sea and sick......

It is hard to believe that this smiling, or is he gritting his teeth, man was sick from Friday morning to Monday morning with the flu!!! He bravely rallied round to go sailing with Judy and Anthony on the Swan, also on board were Michael and Ann.

Judy said the waves were about 4 feet high but I'm sure they were closer to 40!!! I found comfort in having this bucket close at hand. Really thought I might need it!!!!

Whew, back into the canal. Nice calm water compared to what lay just beyond the point!!!

One of the many homes along the canal. There are a great many canals on the island. All of the residential and tourist accommodation is on the south side of the island. There are no homes on the north side. It is amazing how many of the hotels, condos and homes are empty. Two hurricanes devistated Grand Bahama in 2004/05. They came back to back. At one time 85% of the tourists coming here were from the States but because of their economic times, tourism is really down and many places are closed, stores, restaurants etc.

So glad to be coming back into Ocean Reef and the good feel of the LAND!!!!

What a beautiful sight!!!! Proud to be Canadians!!!!

Meet Tristan. Six years old and as his grammie says,"Going on 26!!!" This is Jerrisma's grandson. He wanted to come in the car with us and I said fine, come but don't sit on my hat!!! When I turned around to back out of the driveway, he was sitting back there as quiet as a mouse wearing my hat!!! Too funny.

After church in West End, I went back to Jerrisma's house for lunch. What a feast she had prepared - chicken, lobster, fish, peas and rice, mac and cheese, a tossed salad, potato salad, banana bread, pineapple bread!!!! Wow!!! Too bad Ray!!! Get better soon!!!

Tristan asked me to take a picture of him and his grammie. He is trying so hard here not to open his mouth as he is at that stage of not having any front teeth. He is just too cute!!!! I can't wait to introduce him to my grandbabies that are coming from Feb. 20-27th so if you are planning on coming to visit, please note, the second bedroom is occupied between those dates!!!! We leave March 26th so keep that in mind too!!!

Jerrisma outside her church. All I can say about church here is that when the Holy Spirit has its way, the Holy Spirit has its way. Quite the experience for me. I plan to go back for a Sunday when the preacher is in charge!!!

This is the view as you walk out of the church!!! Wow, I want to live this close to the ocean!!!

The following picures are from the Garden of the Groves which is the second of Grand Bahama's National Parks that we have visited. We won't be going to the third park as it is a reef!!!

Gorgeous labarinth!!!!

Duck for dinner tonight!!!!

A Zebra Winged Butterfly

I think our grandbabies would enjoy this!!!!

This is our beach. It is a 3 minute ride from the house. It is always this crowed!!!!!

Come and enjoy the Bahamas with us!!!!

I almost forgot the cell phone story!!! I have been driving everyone crazy by refusing to get a cell phone so on Friday Jerrisma came over with a phone for me and on Saturday Janet, our super landlady, gave me some of her minutes!!!! So, not only do I now have a cell phone, I also have people putting minutes on it for me!!!!! My number??? 2426467622 One problem with the phone.....It keeps ringing. Today I've missed 3 calls already!!!! Gotta love it!!!!

Blog #4 - Ending the Week with Jubilee

We started our week with a road trip to the far west end of the island and it is callled West End. Not too complicated this place we are living in. We stopped along the way at a number of beaches that you don't see on travel brochures. The ugly ones, covered in ugly smelly corral. We did manage to pick up a few conch shells which are truly beautiful. West End is a sleeply little fishing community. It was once a thriving place for fishing and tourism. Feeling so smug and smart that we had found 5 conchs I was amazed to see these huge piles of conch in many places in West End. This sea creature is so abundant that the disposal of shells is actually a problem. Mind you, I have seen some for sale for $10 each in stores. Love that entreprenurial spirit!!!! We came across the actual dump for conchs and really wanted to take some pics but the smell caused me to reverse the car out of there in a cloud of dust!!!

Another place we visited this week was the Rand Nature Centre. There were some great displays of local birds, shells and especially of interest to me, old locally made baskets. There was a trail to walk through with trees, orchids and shrubs marked. This turtle pond above was well stocked with little fish and turtles. We din't see any turtles eating fish but we did see one large turtle trying to eat one little turtle!!!

On Saturday morning we had the great pleasure of meeting our "Ambassador" Jerrisma. She is a volunteer with the Department of Tourism in their People to People program. She has now adopted us and will show us the island from a non-touristy perspective. Jerrisma makes wonderful straw bags and because I am artsy crafty too our first outing was to Port Lucaya to see articles that have been made here on Grand Bahama. She knew many of the vendors and was great as explaining how things were made and where.

The building above shows one of the many pastel colours that are frequently used on the exterior and interior of buildings here. Very tranquil.

You can see Jerrisma here in the background. She had asked this young fellow to crack a conch for us to show us how it is done. OMG what an ugly piece of flesh that is!!!!!! I can't believe it is an island staple!!! You acutally don't eat the nasty black parts, just the orangey white part. It could be used in tire manufacturing but they cut it up real small and make everything else you can think out of it to eat. I mentioned last week - conch fritters, chowder, steamed blah, blah, blah. I've had my fill already and it only took about a week for that feeling to come over me. You are left with this gorgeous shell which can be crafted into bowls, spoons, jewelry. Love the colour!!

It has been so wonderful to have Judy and Anthony here to help us find stuff we need and to show us around to the places we need to see. We still haven't seen them all of course but we are making our way through the list. Judy has been so generous sharing her friends with me and above is a truly remarkable woman whom I have had the please to meet and spend time with. This is Doris Hamilton. Miss Hamilton teaches at the Beacon School for disabled children by day but by night she wears a completely different hat!!! She spends two and a half months every summer studying batick print making in Africa. She batiks but not just your regular old tree or fish. All of her designs have meanings. Every symbol she uses has a meaning. She has a large chart with them all on it which in my dreams, I would choose say two symbols, print my own cloth and then make my own shirt out of it!!!

On Saturday I went to "help" but there were so many other women present and I knew that this material was being made for a customer that I was intimidated to try. She makes her blocks out of foam, dips them in wax to harden, carves them out and then dips them in wax again to print. We had such a good time. Her daughter was there with her 5 kids, her partner in business Porche and her daughter, Judy and her sister-in-law Ann and myself. We sat around the living room after eating cream cheese and crackers and having an icy cold drink. It was a wonderful experience. I can't wait to go back!!!

And now we come to the close of the week, yesterday at the Jubilee Cathedral. What an experience!!! It is almost hard to know where to start. As you can see, the building is huge. The stained glass windows are actually made from concrete which got my creative juices flowing. The sanctuary is round with a balocony above. There are flood lights for the tv cameras. There was camoflage material around some posts and around the alter. Soldiers for the Lord.

As I looked at the program I was so disappointed to see only one hymn. Seemed a little strange. Hmmmmm. Things started off pretty tradionally. Announcements, Call to Worship, Scripture and then the one hymn and thats when everything went to _____ woops, better not say that!!! That is when everything got moving. They were jumping. They were running. They were shouting. They were raising their hands. They were singing and it when on and on. Wow!!!! There was litergical dancing better than I have seen anywhere before.

When we were introduced we had to stand, pretty normal BUT THEN the choir started singing this welcome song and the congregation were all clapping. It was wild. Part of the song was about how you would never be the same after coming here which only made me think, "Good grief. What do they have in store for us? The only white people in the midst of at least 500 blacks!!!"

The Bishop Godfrey R. Williams started giving his sermon when someone told him there was a two year old in the congregation that had swollowed a 25 cent piece and they were going to decide that day if they needed to do surgery. Well, up to the front went the little jewel all decked out in puffy pink, everyone stood, all hands were extended to the child and a healing was taking place. They even had the x-ray showing the quarter!!!! Then the Bishop started a healing for the whole congregation including for healing for stuff you might have inherited from your ancestors. He was prancing around all over the church. Sometimes yelling and sometimes speaking softly. What an amazing orator. Sure had my undivided attention!!! When he was done with that he moved onto his sermon that he said was going to be 10 minutes. Ok, sure.

Are you ready? The service lasted THREE AND A HALF HOURS!!!!!!!!!! I loved it and can't wait to go back!!!! And the people said, "AMEN!!!!!!!!"

Blog #3 Busy, busy, busy.......

One day last week two guys came to the door selling lobster tails. I bought a bag of 12 for $20 and they are very delicious. Another day, a different fellow brought us this red snapper as a gift from our landlady. She is the best!!!!! We ate two last night for dinner and again, they were very delicious!!!

These are some of the students from the Beacon School for Handicapped Children. Judy and I went there one afternoon to help make costumes for Junkanoo. What is that you may ask and I am still asking!!!! It is something like Mardi Gras, a great excuse to have a parade with lots of whistle blowing, drum banging and loud music. Great fun!!! We stuck little gold balls on the pants that had already been covered with crepe paper. Don't ask. They looked fantastic until I saw them in the parade and couldn't see one gold ball as the kids were moving so much and having a great time!!!

These are just a few of the many "hats" the kids wore to match their costumes. They really looked wonderful as they marched along the route.

A glorious afternoon with a picnic lunch was spent at Gold Rock Beach in Lucayan National Park. You park across the road from the beach. On this side of the road their are caves that we are going back to do another day. As you cross the road there is a vendor selling everything from icy cold drinks to shirts from the back of a truck. You walk through some mangroves on a boardwalk and over a bridge where you can actually feed the fish with bread purchased from the ticket people. Surprising to me as normally one is not suposed to feed anything in a National Park or take anything out like pretty flowers or plants or shells. It was grreat fun watching the feeding frenzy as the many varieties of fish competed for lunch. The book says it takes about 25 minutes to drive there from Freeport but it took me a lot longer as I tend to really take my time. It isn't just the driving on the left it is also about the roundabouts.

I remember roundabouts from my British childhood as being all black and white and very scary. For anyone who doesn't know how they work this is the basic rule: the guy going around the circle is "it" and your job is to get into the game and become "it". Once you have dashed into position, you could stay there all day just circling around should you wish or you can leave the circle generally by 4 different exits. Everyone sitting at the exits is waiting for you to leave so they can get into the game. At first I found these obstacles to driving to be really scary but now, I think they are fun!!!!

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Here's the Golf Guy doing his thing. We have been here for 11 days and Ray is off golfing right now for the third time. He's having fun. I went last Friday to drive the cart, offer advice, mark the card according to Ray's instructions of how many strokes (I never know. I'm bird watching or taking pictures or drinking a coke!!!) and even to pass him the right club once. It was a putter!!!

Saturday night we took a cab into Freeport to participate in Junkanoo. We paid $10 each to get bleacher seats and what a wonderful experience it was. I have never seen such gorgeous costumes in any other parade. I should mention this was the Junior Parade comprised of all the local schools. There were 20 of them and it took three hours!!!!! Lots of big spaces but so worth the wait. By the end, I was frozen. I kid you not. It was really cool sitting for so long. We have been loving the daily temperatures so much nicer than the heat and humidity of Mexico last November.

Here's Judy holding hands with her charge. You can see she was having a great time. The school's theme was about flying free and they all had their arms and hands going to some great music coming from their own band. Proud moments!!!!

We asked our taxi driver to come back and pick us up and when we explained that we didn't have a cell phone, much to her surprise, she told us to just ask a policeman and they would call a cab for us. "Sure!" I said in great disbelief but after the parade when I asked two police officers where I could find a pay phone they asked if they could help and then called us a cab!!!! Now, that is "To SERVE and protect!!!!"

On my Bucket List was to go to a really sensational black church where there was great music and lots of "and the people said amen!!!" so Sunday we went to St. John's Native Baptist Church with Judy and Anthony as it had a reputation for being the church of my dreams. It was quite the experience. The people of this church couldn't have made us feel more welcome. Lots and lots of hugs and welcomes. Yes, we were the only white poeple in the congregation!!! Yes, there was hand raising, singing, dancing in the aisles and lots and lots of amens and praise the Lords but........ Next Sunday we are going to try to find another church with faster music. I hear there are 300 churches on the island so we will find the church of my dreams I'm sure.

Please note the woman on the right above. Notice the camera? Well, she took more pics of us leaving the building and getting into our car than I did. Wonder what she wrote in her blog this week? A miracle, a miracle...........................................