An apology from afar

Well, here goes, my first attempt at a blog.....

Many of you have been curious about our lives here on the island, so I thought I would take this opportunity to catch you all up.

Here is the first entry in our journal (an email that I sent out when we first arrived on the island). Future posts will be my attempt at getting everyone up to speed, so to speak.

Enjoy!

On December 25, we packed up what remained of our life in Fort Wayne Indiana and headed for Williamston Michigan to spend the holidays with my folks. Upon our arrival we had a lovely holiday celebration, complete with gifts and warmth. The next morning we hoisted (with some help from my father and my brother-in-law) nearly all of our boxes up into the attic over the garage. A few were reserved for repacking and storage in a more temperature controlled environment.
As luck would have it, my sister Abby was moving out all of her things into her new home and that left some room for ours! Much to my father's chagrin.
A week of preparation, relaxation and anxiety ensued. But finally on Saturday, January 2, April drove us to the airport. A true testimony to both the cargo room of a Subaru Forrester and the packing abilities of the Schmidt family. We had 4 large suitcases (2 overweight), 2 carryons, 2 backpacks and 3 humans.
Our flight from Detroit to Miami was uneventful (and for those that are wondering, yes, the medication helped a great deal!). Our layover in Miami was many hours and we had prearranged a hotel stay. Little did we know that we would have to claim all of our baggage, take it to the hotel and recheck it in the morning. Life has a way of working things out though, because one of our suitcases had started to rip. Left to the baggage handlers, all of our belongings may not have made it. So from the hotel, we walked to a gas station to see about purchasing some duct tape (It fixes everything, right?!) Well, the best they could do was packaging tape, so we settled for that. The next half hour or so was spent taping every single inch of the lower portion of the suitcase.
Our flight from Miami to St. Kitts was another uneventful one, for which we are grateful. The University staff and students that met us at the airport are very helpful and friendly. They loaded us up in vans, minus one of our suitcases. You guessed it, the unlucky one! It somehow got left in Miami!
We barely got settled in last night in time to go with the group to a local restaurant for supper and I got to try Ting for the first time - thanks Mike for the suggestion, it is GREAT! The rest of you will just have to come and experience it for yourselves. We made sure we had clean clothes laid out for the morning and crashed!
This morning started bright and early at 7:30 am with breakfast and then many logistical things for Ericka to do, i.e. student visa, medical information, drivers license (I got one too - and no there isn't a separate one for motorcycles!), banking, etc. We also took a tour of the campus and got our ID cards. Who knew there could be so many hills and stairs on such a little campus on such a little island! We are gonna be in great shape - maybe even before the week is out!
We took a trip to the grocery and returned around 6pm. Just the essentials for now, but you can imagine 12 people shopping and then piling back into one large Toyota "bus". We just got the groceries unloaded and Ericka decided to go out with some of her new classmate friends, so I thought I would take this opportunity to jot down a few things.
I don't want to bore you will ALL of the details, but YES it is beautiful, YES it is warm, YES we are in paradise, blah blah blah :-)
We love you all and wanted to send you a little update. I hope to keep these going over the next couple of years while we are here. Might even include some pictures.