You know it’s hot when you get out of the cold shower and you’re not entirely certain whether it’s water or sweat you’re drying off...

Here comes this weeks report of madness... not sure whether I told you all, but we've now changed out schedule slightly, which means my new internet-day is the Sunday, so stay tuned for news on Sundays now... Cheerio

Hello everybody,

Welcome back to “Tales of the Caribbean”, that mystical group of islands where rivers of sweat are flowing, and the trees are laden with mosquitoes… Fortunately, they’ve finally also got some mangos on them! Yes people, it’s mango season. Sweet, heavenly bliss that it is to dig your teeth into a perfect mango you picked off the tree yourself. It would sound really good to say freshly picked, but most of the time the birds and crawlies get to ripe mangos before you do, so the better idea is to harvest them a little green and then let them ripen on top of the fridge. Hmm, I love mango. Unfortunately, the mango tree in our garden is performing rather rubbish, so we have to salvage them from elsewhere, which makes the supply rather disrupted at times.

I swear I can smell lillies, sitting out here on the balcony. Just have no idea whatsoever where that smell is coming from. Weird…

Anyways, back to the more important things, which is reporting my failures to you guys in detail, thank the heavens I produce quite a few of those in any given week.

For some rather complicated reasons I have now been declared the family cake-maker, any insistance on my part that that is the most epicly bad judgement call ever made were to no awail, so I finally caved in and gave it a try…

Dear Immy provided me with a recipe for a banana loaf (straightforward and easy, she claims). Owing to the abundance of mangos, I decided to substitute banana with mango, and some mixing, mashing and measuring later I poured a dough-like substance into a baking tin. Lacking any instructions as to baking time, I poked the thing a few times with an outsized tooth-pick and then declared it done, since people were waiting for their cake…

Well, apparently it is a good idea to let a cake cool down and settle a little bit before taking it out of the tin. Apparently, it’s also a good idea to grease the baking tin, rather than lining it with flour (as one can do with bread), only because a brown cake with white spots on it looks rather intriguing. Alas, only NOW it is that I know all these things… live and learn, I suppose

So with Karins help I was trying to get the cake out of the tin, poking a knife in between the tin and the cake to loosen it up whilst saying: the middle is rather soft still… tipped the whole thing over and out came: the middle bit, while the err cake-frame stayed in the tin… much laughter, puzzled looks and shaking of head later we each had a bit of cake and a bit of – well filling, I suppose. It actually didn’t taste all that bad, just looked like the accident it was.

That incident obviously put a dent into peoples confidence as to my cake-making abilities, which is why I got handed a cake-mix package last week, which closely following the instructions on the back I managed to turn into something that looked and tasted like actual chocolate cake, I’m quite proud of that feat. They also made me make icing for the very first time in my life!!! And got royally fed up with the amount of time I was taking to stir the cocoa into the icing sugar… I just didn’t want to mess it up…

So, much venturing into the fascinating world of cake-making has been undertaken, unfortunately there is probably more to follow, as there has to be if one day I want to call myself maker-of-cake without people bursting into laughter and quite possibly pulling a muscle in the process…

Hope you all are well and taking up hobbies that are actually enjoyable rather than painful and embarassing, or maybe that’s just part of the fun.

Take care guys!

Carola

photos of random randomness

Holy smokes...

Hello guys,

don't think I've forgotten you all, it's just that the past two weeks were, well, different, leading to me not being able to access the internet, leading to me not posting anything, or answering any e-mail. Below is a post (in german) from Tuesday the 10th, so a little bit outdated, but hey...

Hoping that things will be back to normal at a soonish point in time, so I can keep annoying you guys with boring stories about life on an island, in the meantime take care, and have loads of fun.

Cheers,

Carola

Hallo Hallo!

Ach ja, ach ja, was soll man bloß erzählen? Es ist Dienstag und meine Wenigkeit hat sich im Laufe der letzten Tage immer mehr mit der Notwendigkeit konfrontiert gesehen, ein ernstes Wörtchen mit der Moskito-Welt zu reden... aus irgendeinem Grund scheinen sämtliche Moskitos der Kleinen Antillen mich auf einmal als ihr Lieblings-Essen auserkoren zu haben und somit verbringe ich meine Nächte damit, mich von Seite zu Seite zu wälzen (auf dem Rücken liegen geht nicht, da ist der Sonnenbrand) und zu versuchen, meine Haut nicht komplett als Schicht abzunehmen vor lauter Juckreiz, außerdem bin ich komikalerweise durch fast 3 Wochen Dauerregen nicht mehr an die Hitze gewöhnt, die letzten Samstag wieder Einzug gehalten hat und schwitze mich demzufolge zu Tode. Aber na ja, genug beschwert, auch das geht vorbei, hoffentlich, Moskito-Stiche in 1 Euro-Größe sind nich so lustig...

Zu berichten gibt’s momentan nicht viel, ich bin diese Woche bei den Bäumen, was zu Arbeitstagen von akzeptabler Länge führt, ganz zu schweigen von das Haus erst um 8:15 verlassen müssen... ausschlafen fühlt sich gut an.

Aus irgendeinem Grund oinkt draußen ein Schwein. Hmm, komisch.

Letzten Samstag war leider nich so viel mit frei haben, musste nen Mietwagen abholen (ein Zwischenstopp in ner netten kleinen Strandbar mit Chicken-Curry hats nach nicht allzu viel Arbeit schmecken lassen), deshalb kann ich nich mal berichten, dass ich zu faul war, irgendwas zu machen J

Diesen Samstag steht wieder mal ein lang-ersehnter Kino-Besuch auf dem Programm, hoffentlich mit der ganzen Familie, die wir hier sind, allerdings passen nicht alle ins Auto, was dazu geführt hat, dass ich beim letzten Mal zu Hause geblieben bin... weswegen mir allerdings dieses Mal ein Ehrenplatz reserviert ist, bzw. der ganze Plan existiert nur, damit ich auch zu meinem Kino-Besuch komme, was ich sehr, sehr liebenswert finde. Also mal kucken, irgendwann klappts bestimmt.

So da la, ich geh mich jetz auf die Couch fläzen und einen Film anschauen, gehabt euch wohl ihr Lieben, ich wünsch euch eine schöne Woche!

Baba,

Caro

If only I had more time on the internet... or maybe not, I don't know

Hello oh thou lovely people!

It is Wednesday evening, and I am sitting at the table in our new apartment in Soufriere, which is where the iguanas are (supposedly anyways J). The story behind the new apartment is a lengthy one, let’s just say the old one wasn’t what we needed, so we are all very happy to be at this place now, it is not only big enough, but actually nice.

You might have gathered from this that I’m on iguana duty this week, which excitingly involves looking after the one that was caught when April and Karin were down here last. The big fellow, as I like to call him, isn’t actually massive but decent sized, and very pretty… although he is not too happy with being locked up in a cage, surprisingly enough…

Other than that there is nothing much to report, I’m afraid, poor me had to go on a shopping trip last Saturday, to acquire a much needed new pair of trousers (or pants, if that is more to your liking), as well as a new pair of flip flops. My favourite pair of fieldwork trousers has finally given in, much to my dismay, and my flip flops have decided to add a little adventure to walking about in the rain, or on anything slippery, so after a few rather ridiculous stunts in the past weeks, I decided it was time for a new pair.

Isn’t it good of me to share these exciting facts about my clothing with you? To dare think that you guys might have better things to do… oh well, there we go. So anyways, after all the hardship involved in running round a touristy Caribbean town in search of a pair of trousers which doesn’t fall apart as you look at it, I did the unmentionable and planted my ass firmly in the next fastfood restaurant, Burger King, u might have heard of it… can u believe it? There she is, in the middle of food excitingness, with about a thousand things on mind that I wanna try, and where do I go when things get tough? That’s right, to that Burger and Fries, washed down with a Sprite… shame on me. Oh how I enjoyed it...

So you see that there isn’t much happening, or I wouldn’t report on the lack of my culinary ventures in such detail. The rain has kept holding us in its grip for two weeks now, last week (yup, the week I was out camping) was madness, but fortunately it only got real bad after we got back. Friday saw the island in a near-shutdown, with small landslides and floods which made getting from A to B near impossible. We tried getting to our weekly meeting in Union, but got stopped about 10 mins down the road by a river that had decided to take over the road… It all can’t have been that much less bad than the Hurricane last year, and the damage from that is still evident all over the island. Those are the moments when you realise again that you’re sitting on this tiny island in the Caribbean, very much delivered to the mercy of the elements in a lot of ways. Which is as it should be, but it still sends a little thrill down ones spine…

That’s it from me for this week, hope you’re all well! Enjoy!

Carola