It wasn’t all easy.

Regardless if I’d just spent the last 2 years roaming in a school bus, I am a New Yorker thru and thru. The island moves sloowwwww.

My AirBnB host sent a driver, who was an hour late, to pick me and my exhausted dog up at the airport when we arrived. My head almost spun around. Thankfully, he registered the look on my face, quickly offered me island weed and P. became one of my greatest support systems from there on out.

He was my age, from Curacao and I gathered over time that he worked on the property doing whatever they needed at the time. Driver, bartender, rooster catcher. He was it! He also kept me in the loop on what was going on with Covid on the island. When the property had events, he let me know in case I was going to be working with a client and the noise would effect me. He went grocery shopping for me, when this promised errand from host went unanswered. We also just laughed and he never hit on me once and I felt safe with him. P. was a good reminder, after my crazed husband, of what men could be.

But the pick- up wasn’t the only slow thing. Don’t need anything in a hurry. And the NY attitude doesn’t work. It’s like they’re all too hot to care.

Speaking of hot. 6am hot. 1pm hot. 9pm hot. It was a lot! I used to run errands and explore in the early mornings. Work remote in the middle of the day and, if i could stay awake, venture back out when the sun finally disappeared and even then I’d be sweating. But when that island breeze hit?!? Whew! There’s nothing like it.

This New Yorker loves nature but I’ve yet to find the crawling bug lover in me. One morning, and I shudder and gag just writing this, I woke up. Did some breathwork in bed. Rolled over. And was met EYE TO EYE with an iguana!!!!! Just resting his green dragon body on my pillow. #thehorror. These mini dinosaurs were everywhere, including the one that fell out of a tree and almost beheaded me!

I was yelled at for taking a picture once. I didn’t even realize that people were in it, I was shooting the ocean behind them. They wanted all pictures erased! Turns out there were refugees from Venezuela and were scared I would post to social media and they would be caught and returned. It took a half hour for them to calm down. #humbling