We have arrived safely in Freeport, Bahamas. We just haven’t had an internet connection until now, so that’s the reason for not having updated my blog.
About Freeport…. well… it’s a harbour faaaaaaaar away from city, beach, shops or anything else. It’s just harbour with lots of containers and other ships. Quite boring actually. Since the cruise ships also dock here, the taxis are all tourist prices, which means expensive, and with expensive I mean they’re about the same as Norwegian taxi prices!!
Yesterday we’ve been to a beach with a group of people (8 all together) and we told the taxi driver that we were not rich tourists, but we’re missionaries from the book ship and that there’s no way we could pay that. The first taxi driver we spoke to did us an offer we still thought was to much, the second one offered us a good deal ;-) He drove all of us in his taxi minibus to the beach for 15 dollar, and picked us back up at the beach in the afternoon and drove us back for 15 dollar again, that’s about 2 dollars each one way… not bad! (and he even was in time to pick us up! well done for a Bahamian ;-)) )
We had a great time at the beach. Even though we’d been told that the beaches in Freeport are not that nice and that we could better wait until arriving in Nassau next week, the beach was just beautiful! Right next to a beach resort, so there was even some music and things to look at on the beach. The sea is just amazing here!! The colour is a beautiful green/blue, also here in the harbour and it’s just tempting to dive right off the ship ;-)
Today we’ve been on the ship doing home schooling (or should I call it ship schooling?). There’s another family from the USA who is going to stay here this week. They have an 8 year old girl (Ellen) and a 5 year old boy (James). The family is really nice and this morning the kids all did homework together. And in between we had lots of fun on the fun deck!
For tomorrow we’ve planned on going to the beach again with the other family. Herbert will have the afternoon off so he can join us.
Today another container with books just arrived and most of the staff is taking boxes out of the container and moving them to the book hold. Lots of work.
The book sale is a bit slow here in Freeport, but that’s not strange seeing how far we are from where people live. In Bermuda we were docked right in the middle of the city center, but here we are in the middle of nowhere.
But, yesterday we had the opening and the media was there as well, so it should have been announced in the local newspaper and on the radio today, so we’re hoping for more visitors tomorrow.
The kids still like being on board the ship I think. Bente is being terribly spoiled, everybody wants to hold her and hug her, they all love her :-)
Natascha tells Krister every day: “mimi, ik hou van jou” (in dutch! for the non dutch speaking, this means “mimi, I love you”) That’s so cute, but the only answer she gets from him is “nee” or “nei”, poor girl, doesn’t get any love back… hehe…
Well, time for a cabin clean up now, since our cabin is not really big, it quickly gets messy, so tidying up every day is absolutely required. But well… don’t really have much else to do around here, so why not ;-)
This week it’s our turn to clean the toilets and shower rooms in our department, but that isn’t really much work either.
Will ask Herbert to put some of the latest pictures on the site tonight!
With love to all of you and God bless you!
The van Vliet family