Cruise ship, trade fair and beetles

This morning at 5.45 the RMS sounded her horn to let the island know she’s back. It was fun hearing the horn so early in the morning when everything is still quiet, and of course Aaron came rushing in to ask if I’d heard it. It’s amazing how cheerful he is the moment he wakes up. Caleb is slightly different. Another cruise ship, the MS Prinsendam, came in at around 9 am, with 600+ passengers and 400+ crew members. You can imagine what a difference 1000 extra people on the island makes! Town is crawling with camera-laden, be-hatted American tourists. In honour of the tourists, another trade fair had been organized, which I visited with the boys. It was in the mule yard near the swimming pool, so the boys were thoroughly occupied on the swings and slide etc. That left me free to wander about, and I had a short lecture of what happens to a coffee bean, from cherry phase, to pipping, husking, grading and finally roasting. I introduced myself to Sharon Wainwright, who is the Air Access Manager for the island, and also the mother of one of our GNC girls. Since we hadn’t met, she also didn’t know who I was, and was very pleased to meet me (apparently my name is well known in her house – Aunty Lynn this and Aunty Lynn that). She is a Saint, but has lived off the island many years and has a posh English accent. She has a really tough job with the air access.

In school, I read a library book about insects and beetles and things to the boys, and then decided to do a beetle craft. I made it up myself, and it was quite an involved craft with weaving, painting, sticking, cutting etc. It was great and worked really well – I did a lot of it, but the boys did painting and sticking. The beetles have a black body with a green thorax and black head, with pipe-cleaner legs and feelers, wiggly eyes, pompon dots on the thorax, and then the wings were the great part – they painted wings, and I had cut out transparency wings too, so the bugs had two sets of wings like a ladybird. I attached these with brads (split pins), so they open right out like a real beetle. Pretty cool!

While Aaron was resting, I went outside to take a photo of the house, since I thought I needed a nice one which included the golf for the s/book. As I was taking a picture, a tourist was walking up the road (well, there were probably about a hundred tourists walking up the road, but this one was close to me). I laughed and said I looked like a tourist myself, taking a photo of my own house. He was very interested to find out that I am the Baptist Minister’s wife, and promptly video-interviewed me. He is a Reformed Presbyterian, and actually his father was a missionary, so he was very pleased to meet me. He gave me a postcard photo of the ship, which I’m sure will find it’s way into my s/book somewhere. We finished chatting, and I went and told Nick all about him, so Nick went to meet him too and showed him the church, which was also very interesting to him and got appropriate video coverage. Nick was thoroughly interviewed too.