Goats

I have been telling my family since I arrived here that it is very different here than home.  One thing that has been a difference is the goats and cows and chickens and horses that you see standing along the side of the road, crossing the road, wandering aimlessly around wherever they feel!  I believe most of them started out tied to the ground somewhere by the rope that is usually hanging around their necks but most end up just wandering!

The goats are by far the worst.  At times, you have to stop and wait for herds of them to move out of the road!  I always seem to not have my camera with me, or out, though when the best photo opts are there!  I will work on getting some better pictures to help you understand this craziness I speak of!

Goat crossing!  Only two this time - that is a record!

Mom and her babies - if you see the black baby has an injured back leg =(

This is what you see on the side of the road!  Goats just hanging out!

Fall in St. Kitts

Unlike home where the leaves are all changing and falling, the temperature is getting cooler, and seasons are changing, the weather in St Kitts is still the same!  Most days are around 80-85 degrees during the day, dropping to 70's at night, the wind has been abnormally low (from what I hear) and the sun shines 95% of the day...unless we get a random 5 minute DOWNPOUR...and when I say downpour, I really mean DOWNPOUR!  Luckily they come and go and the sun is back out in about 5-10 minutes!  School and work have pretty much been the only thing we are doing with our weeks and we try to take one day a weekend to visit the beach for a few hours!  One would think living in the Caribbean you would be tan and beached out - but we average about 3-4 hours of beach time a week..if that!

When we do make it to the beach, there is always lots to see.  Here are some pictures from a recent walk down the beach at Shipwreck.

One thing that is almost always a must-see here are the sunsets.  At times, the clouds block some of the beauty, or the sun sets too fast for you to catch, but they always show some sort of color or reflection on the water.  Below are some of the sun sets that we have been able to catch on camera while here.

This is the opposite side of the sunset - the colors are all over!

Turtles!

One thing that is a religious event for us is our Monday night trips to Snapper to feed the turtles.  Brayton has a deep love and passion for turtles and working with them and this is a great way to be involved!  I really love them too, and they always give us a reason to smile!


One of the turtles there is named Olivia.  She washed into the beach here and was missing her two right fins.  She is a forever resident!  She is a princess and she knows it!  She loves to play 'hard to get' but is such a cool turtle!  This is Olivia.  She is an Olive Ridley turtle (not common to St Kitts)

Some of the other turtles at SNAPPER are just there until they are big enough to be tagged and released or until they are ready and able to be released.  One of those turtles is Brimmie.  He is a Hawksbill Turtle and he is not a fan of human (which is good!) but he knows we feed him so he cooperates!  The other turtle that lives with Brimmie is Frodo.  Frodo is a green sea turtle(common to St Kitts) and he like kid!  When you walk to his tank he begs for attention and loves to entertain!  We all have a special liking for him!

This is Brimmie - the Hawsbill turtle.  He is 1/2 of a centimeter away from releasable! 

Brimmie again

Brimmie again

Frodo on the left - Brimmie on the right

Frodo - the Green sea turtle

Aside from the 'big' turtles, there are a variety of hatchlings there as well that were either: not ready to be released, or needed some rehabilitation before being released.  Right now there are 5 babies there - here are some pictures:

One of the little tiny babies!  They are smaller than the palm of your hand!  They are also hawksbill!

floating in some 'sargasm' (aka seaweed)

Quick Update

I once again have not been doing a good job at blogging!!  Nothing too exciting here - lots of exams and studying and lesson planning!  The apartment from our last post is official - we are moving in December 1st!!  Mom and Dad and sisters and Travis and Aunt Lo and Christian are coming down for 10 days in August - and they are pretty sure they are booking the villa NEXT door to ours - so that will be really exciting!!  This weekend we have our final two ocean dives and Brayton can't wait and I can't wish the weekend to get here any slower!  I am sure I will make it, be certified and then love it...I just need to get through all the skills!

Last week we got an email from Dr. Stewart (she is in charge of the St Kitts Sea Turtle Monitoring Network that we are apart of) and she had 15 2 day old hawksbills hatchlings that needed to be released, so our friends Kate and Trevor and Brayton and I took them to the beach, set them on the sand and watched them make their voyage to the ocean.  It was somewhat scary because they were so small and they were getting washed around, but 11 of the 15 made it out, and hopefully did not get eaten by anything on their way!  I hope they are swimming safely off to sea now!  We had to bring 5 of them back to campus for some more rest time before trying to release again because they were not moving (the babies had experienced some trauma earlier in the day so some were just not strong enough!).  We couldn't take pictures because you can only use red light with them, and it was dark out..So just imagine how awesome it was!

Hopefully this weekend we can take some more pictures around the island and get a good update on here!

Hope everyone had a great Halloween - all the kids pictures are GREAT!

Much love! <3