It's December?

1. “Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November”

Well, if you don’t know by now, Katelyn and I are engaged! I must say, I’m the man. She didn’t see it coming.

How it went down…

We had planned to go to a beach for several days leading up to November 5^th. The weather all week, however, was seriously looking like it was going to pose a threat as it rained all week…every. day. I had it set in my head that I wanted to propose on that Saturday, no matter the weather. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night” could have thwarted my efforts to propose on that day. Ha! I somehow forgot that it takes TWO people to propose.

The morning started out a little rocky between Katelyn and I. I had a scheduled agenda (time, place, setting, etc.) of how the day was to go down, ultimately sneaking in the proposal at a calculated moment. Katelyn had HER own agenda as to how she wanted the day to develop. Needless to say, they did not match up and a brief stalemate ensued. My whole plan was to propose to her on a beach while she wanted to do something a bit fancier that involved her/us dressing up a bit and maybe going to a beach at maybe this time of day. This is understandable that Katelyn would want to do something a bit more upscale than what we’ve been doing, because at that time Katelyn didn’t stray farther away from our apartment than the maybe 200 yards it took to get to the pool and back. Nevertheless, it was dissolving my plan and I had to act. After minutes of playing the give and take game of our afternoon plans while maintaining poise and not blowing my cover, the plan was now that we would go to a beach for the afternoon (albeit, the beach that I wanted to be at for the proposal…success!) and we were to do something fancy that evening by getting dressed up a bit and going out to eat.

Post lunch, we head out for our destination, Shoy’s Beach. Katelyn and I are traversing by car on unfamiliar territory to get to Shoy’s and when we get to the designated parking area for the beach, we see no beach. After some nosing around, I see a footpath leading to what looks like a shoreline. I coax an uneasy Katelyn to take my lead and head through the footpath to our endpoint. Now, I’ve heard of the term “deserted beach” a time or two in my life. Stateside, I much, much, MUCH more enjoy the less-commercialized beaches of North Carolina as opposed to the Myrtle Beach zoo-esque beaches. I even loosely and undeservingly use the term “deserted beach” to describe those beaches of my preference. But in all reality, the emptiest of beaches I’ve ever been to have all been down here in St. Croix, and those have consisted of roughly 16 or so people. Shoy’s Beach contained not a soul when we arrived. Excellent. So we spend a while swimming and sunbathing, Katelyn seemingly enjoying herself while I kept a close eye on our belongings, hoping a swift tide wouldn’t wash out the engagement ring and take it out to sea (we’re close enough to the Bermuda Triangle where all things lost at sea are never found). A few hours have passed and Katelyn and I are satisfied with the time we’ve spent on the aptly coined “deserted beach” that is Shoy’s Beach. BUT. One more thing left to do.

I ask Katelyn to join me in one final hike up and down Shoy’s before we leave. We walk and walk and…walk a good ways away from our stuff and Katelyn gets a bit nervous about straying too far away from it. I ask her to humor me and keep walking a bit further where we are out of sight of others(yes, there are now about 4 people on the beach at this time). I wanted privacy for this. I stand on a sandy mound, hands at my waist, surveying the area when I notice Katelyn starts to head back. After much coaxing yet again, I get her to stand next to me and look out into all the shades of blue that is both the sea and sky. I then break the silence by saying, “so, could you see yourself getting married here?” Katelyn replies, “sure.” I then ask, “well, could you see yourself getting engaged here?” Katelyn (oblivious) replies, “sure.” I then drop to a knee and pop the question.

…..Thankfully, I didn’t get a “sure” response this time.

2. “Frederiksted Friends”

Part One of the day is complete. We’re engaged, “googly-eyed”, and super glad it didn’t rain. We both spend the rest of the afternoon calling our closest loved ones, breaking the news and what not. Now it’s time for me to live up my end of the deal and take Katelyn out to dinner. We get relatively dressed up and head out to the boardwalk in Christiansted which is lined with shops and restaurants. We end up at “Fort Christiansted Brew Pub”, a restaurant that boasts the only on-island microbrewery. Upon entering the restaurant grounds, we pass another couple and I give them an island-friendly head nod and greeting as we make our way to our table. Our drinks are ordered and delivered to us after a few minutes. We then order and proceed to sit back and watch the sun set. Shortly after ordering our meals, I see the guy from the table we passed on the way in come over to our table. He apologized for interrupting our dinner and then he asked if we were staying in St. Croix or just visiting. We told him we’re here to stay for a few years. Then they pulled up some chairs and joined us for dinner.

We exchange greetings and names. It turns out this other couple is in a similar situation as us. They expressed their desire to look for other people on the island to hang out with and we seemed to fit the bill. And, Katelyn and I were absolutely in the market for friends as well. They are in their mid-twenties, are married, and have just moved to Frederiksted. He is a high school science teacher and she works for an advertising firm, working at home via the web. A wonderful meal with some new friends put the icing on the cake to a day Katelyn and I will likely never forget. New friends Katelyn and I will likely never forget as well.

OH! And the best part (those sneaky snakes). They were especially blown away at how just hours prior, we became engaged. They were genuinely excited and happy for us. So much so that he stealthily paid for our dinner without us knowing and they both left before we had any idea what was going on. Very cool. That day, “everything was coming up Milhouse Katelyn and Ben.”

3. “Brought to You by the Letter ‘H’”

One of the many cool things about living down here is that you are completely engrossed in the island culture. My favorite cultural difference so far would have to be local vernacular. It simply amuses me. It took me a little while to realize why it was so humorously intriguing to me, but then one day…it hit me. They don’t pronounce the letter ‘H’.

One day, me and Anthony (locally known as: “An-tuh-knee”) were having some fun with a few of the guys on the job site (WITH. Not AT the expense of. These guys are very friendly, good sports and ultimately find some way to reverse the jokes, making fun of us whiteys. It’s all in good fun.

Question: “Could I hear you count, starting from the number one.”

Answer: “One, two, tree, four….”

Question: “What does a pitcher do with a baseball?”

Answer: “He trows it!”

Question: “What place is awarded the bronze medal in the Olympics?”

Answer (my favorite): “Turd place!”

4. “hge5y bnr67f”

My days at work are busy. 10-11 hours at work isn’t quite enough time to complete most tasks I want to accomplish before leaving. A small part of the reason I’m not 100% satisfied with my progress is due to our internet and network server performance. The way our network is set up, it runs through my boss's computer. So if he’s not using his computer for a while and it goes idle, my connection to the network is disabled. The internet goes out at random moments throughout the week as well. One knows when they have been disconnected from the network because you get all kinds of error messages while you’re working with or trying to save a file on the server. Personally, I get about 10 “(is not responding)” messages….per day. On top of this, any given day can be a super, extraordinarily busy day in which something arises that needs my attention. So when I get error messages like the ones below, I just want to drive my forehead into my keyboard. *hge5y bnr67f*

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