Lessons In The Sun: Arrival on Saba/First Few Days

The Plane from St. Maarten to Saba

Hey everyone! Sorry for the delay the last few days have been insanely busy for me. I had a huge long day (or two) of traveling and flying with no major problems thankfully. In Toronto I met up with a ton of my class and we all took the rest of the trip together which was fantastic. There were so many new Saba students on that flight. Then we arrive in St. Maarten which was gorgeous (i’ll probably be saying this word a lot) and haul all of our millions of bags to the tiny plane that would take us the 30 miles to our new island home. It was a little daunting looking at the plane and pilling in but the pilots were great and there was never any real scares.

We finally get to Saba with only some of our bags (I got one but some people got none) and we all crawl out of this tiny plane and are hit by the humidity and heat! It is sweaty here! But above all else we are hit by the beauty that is Saba, seriously you couldn’t dream this place up! We are so lucky that we get to live here and study here for the next 20 months.

When we get to the airport all of the locals are super friendly, if not a little hard to understand, and they get us checked in and put into taxis that take us up the one road to Windwardside where all of our hotels are. There a couple of us who are staying at a hotel called Scout’s Place which was a great hotel and to top it off Saba students and family get a 10% discount which I didn’t know about before I got there. Luckily my roommate D had already checked in so I just got shown around to our room by “a friendly Canadian face” as she called herself and met my new roommate. The woman then spent about half an hour telling us about the island and where to eat and go and she told us that if we ever need someone to talk to that she is there for us! Talk about wonderful service, she really cares about the people of Saba and wants everyone to get the most out of this island.

We decided to then head out for dinner so we walked around Windwardside and eventually settled on a place called Saba Snack which served an eclectic mix including delicious mexican food. A few of our classmates joined us as we headed to another place to grab some beer and just chill out after a crazy day of traveling. We met up with some students from the upper class who stayed on the island during the break and they were kind enough to show us around the island.

Kitchen

The next couple of days have just been moving in to our new home and meeting my other roommate L. L’s parents came with her and I have never seen anyone more prepared! They are wonderful and have treated us so well and tried to help us get settled in too, taking us all over to get stuff to set us up so we don’t have to take a cab everywhere. They also set the wifi internet up which will be up hopefully within the next couple of days.

Theres been a huge influx of new students and so our group is steadily growing and everyone seems pretty awesome! Suddenly we are not the new ones who don’t know the island and we are showing people around and introducing the locals. Its crazy how slowly time can more here because it feels like its been much more than three days.

Heres some pictures of the dorms and arriving at the island, i’ll add some more later. I have to get outside and enjoy this beautiful day!