12/13 PM

I have completed my 4 hours of retail work today....my store is located in the harbor where the cruise ships dock and also where the personal yachts dock...typically they do not come to St Thomas as a destination only to stock up on goods....but some of them are really big and I can not imagine how much work goes into one of them....much less the money..... we do get a lot of the staff from those watercrafts that shop...and they really always have a roll of cash...maybe I should look at another career...travel, dishes, travel, floors, travel, dusting, cooking, travel, shopping.......hmmmmmmm

Before we came down, we decided to ship some personal items so our condo would be more like ours. It was nicely furnished but wanted to personalize it.
UPS outrageous
FED X outrageous
US mail...within certain limitations good pricing...so we discovered that the 18 gal rubbermaid containers were just the right fit. Sturdy and price effective....loaded up on stuff from years past that mean something to us....pictures, kitchen things etc. We shipped six total, it took 6 weeks for them to reach us....Felt like Christmas.....

Mail, another story.....we made arrangements with the PO to have our mail held, and mailed to us one time each week in a bundle....that comes about every week and a half......see these are just some of the adjustments that we had to plan for and make arrangements to take place....

Soooo, we needed a car...found one through networking here on island, a year old Jeep Wrangler and actually got a deal on it....I wanted to get a junker because we did not need a full time car and everybody here is a crazy driver and even though we are USVI, drive on the opposite side of the road....(YIKES)

Coconuts fall on the roof, the hood or anywhere they can... and there is hardly a car here without dents from them falling on your car or a minor fender bender from roaming right of center a little too much....nope, got the Wrangler...we decided to borrow from a bank here in order to establish credit.....Mertz got that process started weeks ahead of time and it still  took 3 weeks once here to complete....I almost had to produce my birth certificate......not kidding!!!!

the journey continues....