Snail Mail on the Explorer

Hello everybody, I thought just before Christmas I should send you my snail mail address so you can send me postcards and/or German chocolate....haha. No seriously, I would love to receive some "real" mail. And yes, I'll be running low on German chocolate soon.

So here it is:

Anna Esau
Youth Staff
Explorer of the Seas
14 Terminal Boulevard
Bayonne, New Jersey 07002

Please make sure you copy it correctly otherwise it won't make it all the way into my precious hands.

So I went to this really amazing beach in St. Marteen like 2 weeks ago and it was very cool, something completely new to me. When you see one part of it you might think it's a normal beach:

Maho Beach in St. Marteen

But when you turn around you see this:

an airport!

small jets flying in...

...and big planes taking off.

Some of the guys holding on to the fence while the plane is taking off right in front of them, causing the sand to hit our faces and the rest of our bodies so hard that it hurt.

And when I'm not on beautiful islands in the Caribbean I'm actually working and enjoying different kinds of skylines, like the New Jersey one.

Newark, New Jersey

Or I hang out with my friends after work, here with my german/dutch friend I roomed with the first two weeks we got on board.

And yes, I dyed my hair :-) And Julia doesn't always look that scary. She is just really excited to take that picture with me...

So that was it for today. Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends, einen schoenen ersten Advent an alle meine deutschen Freunde, and hope to hear back from you!

It's been a month already!

It's been a month now that I signed on the Explorer. It actually feels longer than this in a good way. Once in a while I miss German food and my nephews and nieces, but most of the time I feel very fortunate and blessed to be able to work with kids (which I enjoy for the most part), travel the world, see new places, and meet amazing people along the way. This combination is made for me!

Visiting the places we travel to (Haiti, St. Thomas, St. Kitts, Dominican Republic etc.) sometimes puts me back in time when I was living in Costa Rica. I went to a Capernwray Bible School there called Portantorchas. In those almost two years (first as a student, then working as the cook of Portantorchas) I learned to love Ticos (people from CR call themselves this), their way of life, and of course their very beautiful country with the rainforests, mountains, and beaches. Lots of good memories there. And though most of the places I'm going to with the ship are new to me I reminisce about my time in the “Rich Coast”.

St. Kitts

The Explorer had her 10th birthday recently and in honor of that we had a huge BBQ by the pier in Bermuda.

Samana, Dominican Republic