Plans Are Made for Changing

Im a good 10 posts behind on my blog, and Ive been waiting to be motivated enough to sit still for several hours and write about Venice, Florence, Pisa and Lucca. But that’s a daunting task and Im a procrastinator. So, as much as I like to post things in order, Ive decided Ill have to come back to those adventures in some future posts. For now, let me start with a story about a lil’ ol’ place on the other side of the world...

To recap, Monet & I had decided, mid-trip, that Europe was too cold for the likes of us. “But you live in NY,” you say, implying that we should be so used to the cold that we would be nonplussed by it. However, until you have lugged a 50 lbs suitcase plus a heavy backpack laden with laptop, DSLR camera, 3 chargers and many other miscellaneous things up and down a thousand train station steps, thru numerous streets and alleys, & up and down mountains in cold and rainy weather (not to mention my personal favorite, the 80-step bridge in Venice, city of a million bridges and zero ramps)... Well, until you’ve done all that for 6 weeks, you are not allowed to judge us.

So, sitting in our freezing cheapy-cheapy hotel room in Pisa one night (which, by the way, was up several flights of stairs itself, and no, there was no elevator) we decided enough was enough. I don’t believe in being miserable. So we researched plane tickets to warm places; the coast of India, Costa Rica, a place with a beach, anywhere. Just get us the hell outta Europe in the winter. Long story short, tickets to St Thomas were the cheapest and we kinda knew one whole person there. So here we are.

We take our time settling in and trying to adjust to the slooow pace of the Island. Theres no such thing as “Im in a hurry” here. Life moves at a truly relaxed pace and if you’re a busy-body New Yorker, well, you’re shit out of luck. Starving one day, I walk into Wendy’s for what I assume will be fast fast food. Silly me. I nearly hurl myself over the counter to move the employee’s hands for her bc I have never seen it take so long to put some lettuce on a chicken burger. I mean, does that really require painstaking precision?? It takes everything in me not to scream. It isn’t her fault after all… this is just the Island way.

Our friend E, a NY transplant who has lived here for over a decade, just laughs at us every time we come to him with a similar story and reminds us each time, “TIVI”. This Is the Virgin Islands. You better get used to it bc the Island way isn’t changing, and the sooner you accept this fact, the easier your life will become.

The lady at Pizza Hut took 10 minutes just to acknowledge your existence at the counter? TIVI. The cashier at Kmart is slow as molasses? TIVI. The internet service provider doesn’t hook up your WiFi until Monday bc when you call, its Friday, and theyre doing ‘other stuff’ and, even tho they assure you it will be completed that day they end up just not doing it, bc they know they can get away with it, but of course they don’t TELL you any of this until Monday, meanwhile you’ve been trying to figure out all weekend what the hell is wrong with your internet? Whew. TIVI.

This is gonna be interesting…