Looking at the blog for the first time in a while, I see it is time for the monthly post. This one, however, will be a bit different. We have now completed our Peace Corps assignment and are back in the US. July 24 was our last day. We were working very hard up until July 22, even working weekends, to finish up a project, so we didn't have much time to really reflect on our service until now.

It is different thinking about it from the states rather than in Jamaica. I am glad that I did it and if I had the opportunity I would definitely have made the same choice, although I will admit that I would hope for a different country. Jamaica isn't really any one's first choice for a country. It is a tourist country which makes it hard for people to understand our life there, which was much different. It is also difficult to travel around to other countries (almost all flights go to America, London, or Canada with a few others to Grand Caymans, Bahamas, and Cuba) which is one of the reasons we joined Peace Corps. Since Jamaica is so close to the US it feels a little bit like cheating too. You can duck out and head home if you want to at any time. Some volunteers went back 4-5 times. When you are living on the other side of the world you can't take a quick 5 day trip home.

I feel that I got a lot out of the experience and grew immensely as an individual. Jamaica can be a hard place. It can be dirty, hot, difficult and at the same time it can be beautiful and wonderful. I would not say our time was wonderful, but it was good. We worked hard and I know that we made a difference for a lot of people. The victories were peppered with failures and disappointment, but that is what helped me to grow as a person and to learn so much. Hopefully they will keep up the work now that we are gone. The want and the need is there, they just need a little motivation and assistance.

We now have a little bit of travel and visiting friends and relatives before starting our new jobs.

I don't know how many people are still following the blog as we only post about once every month, but we are still here. Summer has hit Jamaica with a bang in the past couple of weeks. This is in contrast to the winter when summer is here, but it is a milder form of summer. It has finally stopped cooling off at night. A couple of nights ago it was 87 when we went to bed at 10:30 and 83 when we woke up at 6 the next day. This morning it was 85 at 7 AM. When we leave, we are moving to a place where the July lows average 48. I think Carrie will invest in some sweaters.

We are nearing the end so are starting to think about the past two years. People are asking what we think of Jamaica and the Peace Corps. There were very difficult times and very good times. Overall it was definitely worth it and the experience was great. Another common question is would you recommend this for other people. I would say that I would recommend this for some people. It just isn't right for everyone. All in all, it has been a very good experience and hopefully we can take some of our remaining time here to spend quality time with the friends we have made.

We recently returned from our first real vacation on the island. Daimon and Kirsten came down for a week and we had a great time showing them around. we spent the last night in Montego Bay with them and once they flew out early in the morning, we took off on our own vacation. 10 days traveling along the north coast. We spent 3 days in St. Anns Bay with Kelly and had a great time cooking, walking, and we did successfully spend most of a day at the beach. This is a greater accomplishment than you might think because we can't sit still and I don't really like sand. We then traveled to Portland where we spent 4 days with Josh and Jesse in their amazing site. Hiking, playing in waterfalls, swimming in the river, and catching up on The Office on their wall (their projector is awesome!). We spent the last couple of days staying at Great Huts in Boston Bay enjoying jerk pork and reading books. We actually spent a whole day reading books. I don't know if that has ever happened before. Then home.

Several weeks ago we went for a 4 mile run and when we were finished we were walking along the beach to cool down. Every morning between six and seven there is a large group of older Jamaicans who come down to walk and swim and they are very friendly. This morning they were all focused on looking out at the water and they didn't say much. Then I saw a fin break the surface. There were two dolphins a couple hundred yards out. They just swam along with their fins and tails breaking the surface every once in a while. We slowed our walk and watched them for about 10 minutes. It was the first time we had seen dolphins, but we had heard that they were in the area. It made for a special morning.

As of next week, I can proudly say that I will have completed my secondary project. My adult literacy program will be officially turned over to the community center for continuation. I will spend the rest of my time at the center working to organize my materials and create a few more easy-to-read adult literacy booklets. I will also continue to tutor my students on a more informal basis. It has been such a pleasure to work with all of them and so rewarding to be witness to their progress.

It's clear to us that the season is shifting into full summer. Yesterday was the first day that an afternoon rain shower caught us without umbrellas. This usually only happens once or twice before we get back in the habit of carrying umbrellas every day for rainy season. This will be our third and final Jamaican summer!

Peace,

Carrie

It is incredible hard to believe that we have approximately six months of service left. Our of 26 total months, a measly six remain. Crazy.

We spent the holidays in America with our own families, though we had several festivities we had to decline in Jamaica to accommodate our trip. Of the 28 days we were in the US, we only saw 1.5 days of bare ground. We wished for snow and we got it. We loved all of it, from walking to skiing to hiking to driving. The time with family, friends, and familiar comforts was rejuvenating. Also, our cat still remembered me and slept at my feet every night. Just wonderful.

Returning to the island was also very heart-warming. Within an hour of landing we both received several phone calls from friends and coworkers. It was good to come back to our home and our community. This place has become comfortable now. The true test of that is to go away and come back.

That being said, we are full-fledged back in working mode now. With this comes the true realization of the continued existence of the frustrating and disheartening parts of this experience. It also brings with it the prospect for continued success and reaching out to just one more person.

We have already had some good fun since we came back as well. We went to our first Jamaican all night stage show, Rebel Salute. The music was good and the overall vibe of the concert was positive. We saw some big name artists (such as Queen Ifrika, Taurus Riley, Beenie Man/Ras Moses) and felt just a little more Jamaican for having had this experience. Though most of our good Jamaican friends that came with us wanted very little to do with the comfortable tarps and blankets we brought. They were up front dancing all night long! The all night long part was hard enough for me.

We were also able to watch the inauguration live on CNN, which was a treat for us. We happened to be at a Peace Corps conference and they altered the schedule to let all the participants watch the coverage. Huzzah!

Remember, I said this was a massive post of everything-ness, so get ready. Upon leaving my job in the US, I figured that I would miss working in the laboratory after so many years. I do miss it, but not in the way that I expected. I still get the same sense of challenge and accomplishment through the development work we do here. Thers is a real-time feedback mechanism in social work (the other person or people) that adds another dimension to the experience of challenge, inquiry, execution and analysis. The highs of success seem higher and the lows of failure seem easier to endure as there is a human on the other end driving you to try again. I do miss the precision, accuracy and ability to investigate single variables at a time...

And finally, I would like to say how much I love banana pancakes. They are delicious. And there is a very good song by Jack Johnson that should be played while making them.

Peace,

Carrie

It took me about 3 months, but I have finally updated our photos on our Flickr site. Hopefully I will have even more up in the next week or two.

For the past four months or so our blog has been pretty sparse and boring. That is partly because we have been so busy and partly because we have been in Jamaica for so long. We just reached the point where it didn't feel like there was anything to write about. I am going to try to catch up on the past couple months. Some of this may have been posted already, but bear with me.

I will try to fill some information in on the past several months. Carrie has been spearheading adult literacy classes two nights a week that I am helping her with and I tried to start a literacy class one night a week in my community that I was doing. Carrie's classes have been excellent and all is going well. We had assessments last week to see what progress had been made since August and several students had made excellent progress. I wish I could say the same for my class. It has probably been my biggest flop as a Peace Corps volunteer. I will give it one more shot after Christmas, but there just doesn't seem to be any community interest. Everyone says they want the classes, but no one shows up. Oh well. Other than that I have been working on my rural water projects and have been branching out into other communities and am now actively working with three and have a fourth that is ready for assistance. I am currently in the grant writing stage, but hopefully will have some projects getting off the ground next year before we are done with our service. I am also working with an organic farming group that has been getting excellent support and has been promised quite a bit of funding in the new year. It has been a huge success.

In September and October we mostly just working. No big trips or really much travel. We found that we had community events most weekends and mostly we were feeling very integrated into the area. The last week of October and first week of November my parents were in town. That was an excellent visit and gave me a good break as I was working partial days and then spending time with them. They saw the office where I work as well as the communities were both of us work. It was also the first time we did a lot of the tourist activities in the area. We went to YS Falls, Black River Safari, and the Appleton Rum Tour. We also spent a night in Negril and a day on the beach. Hopefully soon I will have some pictures posted on Flickr.

The rest of November was mostly work again. We didn't do much for Thanksgiving. We had a dinner planned with some local Americans, but the teacher we had lined up for our class had to cancel so we ended up teaching instead. They did save us some turkey so we each got a turkey sandwich the next day.

December has been busy but fun. The first weekend was the Reggae Marathon in Negril. We were planning on volunteering last year but ended up moving that day so we said we had to go this year. It was well worth it. We were working at a water station so had to be there Friday night for our "training". There was also a free pasta dinner for all of the runners and volunteers. The race had 700 runners and 300 volunteers and the organizers got 8 hotels to cater the event. Each hotel set up a tent with 5-6 different pasta dishes, salads, fruit, bread, etc. It was wonderful. The race was set to start at 5:15 am to give the runners the best part of the day to run in and the water station people had to be there at 4:15 am to set up. We woke up at 2:30 to get across Negril and to the check in for breakfast that wasn't there. The breakfast ended up showing up at 10:30 with the lunch (luckily most volunteers had left by then so no long lines). The race started on time and we were at Mile 4, which was perfect. We handed out bag water and bag Gatorade (for those of you that don't know what bag water is, imagine a closed plastic bag full of water). The race included a full marathon, half marathon, and 10k race. 4 miles in most of the runners/walkers were still in a pack and it only took an hour from the time the race leader passed us until the last walker went by. By 7 am we were cleaned up and done. We walked back up to the finish line and watched the first marathon runners come in, some of our Peace Corps friends finish, and stuck around until lunch. Then back to our hotel for a nap before heading home. It was an excellent experience and I loved it all.

The weekend after the marathon was the Bluefields Bay Marine Festival which was put on by Carrie's organization. She put a lot of time and energy into the event and I came to assist however I could and to put up a booth for the health department. There were two days of the festival with a conference of fishermen, policy makers, and other persons involved with or impacted by the fishing industry on Saturday and a fun day with boat races and cultural events on Sunday. The festival couldn't have gone better and everyone involved thought it was excellent.

We are now on vacation and enjoying the time to relax for several weeks to regroup ourselves before getting ready for the last 6-7 months of service. I should find some time to post pictures and make sure everything is up to date.

I also have to say Go Griz!! The University of Montana is in the FCS (I-AA) football championship game on Friday night. I was able to listen to the semifinal game on the internet last Friday night. It is nice to be able to follow some of these things.

Scott

Jamaican food is excellent. There have been very few things that I have tried and not liked. One item that we get at social functions a lot is chicken foot soup, and it is always delicious. So, we decided to give a shot at it (after a brief lesson from a local).

The first thing is, it is weird to work and cut chicken feet. I kept having an odd feeling of cutting the fingers off little children. Yes, quite odd. But the results are well worth it. The soup was fantastic and probably one of our best attempts at a Jamaican dish (although I think we make a really good stew peas with pig tail).

I eat chicken feet in the soup when it is fresh cooked and they are hot. I don't like it as much as pig tail, but it's not bad. I'm not sure I can do it in leftovers and I know I couldn't choke down cold chicken feet. Just how it goes. They are a key ingredient in the soup though. I like a thick soup so full of vegetables it is almost a stew and it seems that the feet release gelatin during cooking that makes for a perfect soup consistency. Lovely!

Thanks to those of you last year who made it worthwhile for me to advertise local fundraising events on our blog, I’m going to do it again. The Bluefields Bay Fishermen’s Friendly Society is hosting the Bluefields Bay Marine Conference and Festival on December 13th and 14th, 2008. The conference is the first grassroots effort to bring together fishermen, interests from the tourism sector, and government officials to discuss the environmental issues surrounding the marine environment in Jamaica. After all, these are issues that impact everyone's livelihoods, whether they are harvesting from the sea or marketing it to visitors. The festival is a community cultural event which includes cultural music, food, and educational booths, as well as a fundraiser for the Society’s yearly operating budget. Here is a ticket for the festival: My proposal to all of you is to purchase a ticket to support this event. $350 Jamaican dollars is about $5US. Please contact us via email and we will work out the logistics. No international checks this year, we promise. We have another idea that is flawless and secure for all involved. Thanks!! And happy beginning of the holiday season! It's only in the upper eighties these days...it definitely feels like winter is coming.

-Carrie

It has been another month since we have posted. I think the large time frame is because time is different here. I may have mentioned this once before, but it bears mentioning again. It is summer here 12 months a year so it is hard to tell how long ago something happened. Cory came and visited the last week of June. That was over 4 months ago but it seems like only a month or two because there have been no seasonal changes to indicate a break. As such, something that happened a month ago can seem like just a couple of weeks ago. I only wish the time going forward felt as fast (and some days it does).

Mom and Dad came down to visit the last week of October and stayed for 10 days. It was fantastic! We took them to see all the places we work and to the different communities. They seemed to have a real good time. We also enjoyed the weekend with a trip to Negril, YS Falls, and the Black River Safari. It is difficult balancing work and pleasure when there are visitors here, but it is great seeing family. I hope to have some time over the holidays to post more pictures as work slows down. Right now I am too busy trying to get some work done before December. It seems like everyone wants everything now because once the holidays are here everything slows down.

Scott

It has been a month since we have posted to the blog. Why the long wait? There are a couple of reasons. One reason is that nothing significant or interesting has really happened for the past month. This isn't exactly true, but more or less the case. For the past month we have been going to work and coming home. We haven't traveled or really done anything exciting.

What has happened over the past month. I got bit by a dog while running about two weeks ago. He took a pretty good chunk of skin out of my right calf. For those volunteers who are looking for a way to meet more people and integrate into the community, I highly recommend getting bit. I was in the community where Carrie works. Every time we would go there all I would hear is "Miss Carrie, Miss Carrie". Nobody even knew my name. Now I hear "Scott" and "How is your foot" (in Jamaica the foot starts at the hip and ends at the toes). I get more attention than ever.

The only other thing that I can think of right now that has happened is the ocean has cleared up so snorkeling has improved. In the past month I have seen lobster, sting ray, jelly fish, and too many little fish to count. Some of the fish are plain, some are pretty, and some are down right ugly. They are a lot of fun to watch.

Scott

I have uploaded photos to my Flickr account from the past month. A link is at the right hand side of the screen.

Scott

I really enjoy sharing our success stories with this blog audience. Of course there have also been challenges and failures, but those aren’t near so uplifting to write about. Our recent successes: Community work day: Scott organized a Peace Corps/community work day to help clean up the community and do some landscaping work. Together with people from the community, we picked up more than 25 bags of garbage. It filled up the entire back of a truck (the bed was about four times the size of a pick-up truck). As we walked along the road, children from the yards would run out to see what we were doing. Several of them put on gloves and worked with us for a while. It rained before we were finished, but we still got a lot done including cleaning out some drainage areas so roads and yards don’t flood. To follow up the work day, we had a cook-out dinner at our house for all those who were working. We fed about 20 people from the Peace Corps, the community, and our yard. It was wonderful to cook and host. Literacy Class: My literacy class participants dwindled over the summer so I moved the class to a larger, more central location. The first class was Tuesday, and there were six people there. Disappointed, I talked with several people I knew in the community to bring more people to the class. On Thursday, there were 18 people. Huzzah! We had a very vibrant second class and I hope most, if not all, come back this week. Plus, I now have a classroom that I can permanently keep materials in (no more running a class out of our tiny house and carrying everything we need up the hill each day) and we have secured $100US per month in donations for teaching supplies and to rent the facility. Let’s hear a “hip hip” for these victories! Peace,

Carrie

We weren’t very good about keeping people informed during the storm. Sorry, but it didn’t seem like anything that needed updating from here. The eastern side of the island apparently had more heavy rain that resulted in some serious flooding that took out houses, roads, bridges, etc. On our side of the island not a lot happened. The storm moved so slow that we sat outside having a BBQ in the yard with our landlord and other people in the yard until the sun went down while the storm was raging on the other side of the island. It came quietly in the night, knocked out the power, and then rained for a day. It was mostly like a good thunderstorm that lasted for a couple of days. We were without power for 1.5 days, but that is about all that happened here.

I did get bored during the storm and shaved my hair off with my battery powered beard trimmer (which took all the rechargeable batteries in the house and had to be touched up a couple days later). It had been a year since I had cut my hair. Everyone now jokes that Gustav blew my hair off. In reality, I think I was just frustrated with the lack of control with my life and needed to change something. I cut my hair, changed my ring tone on my phone, and put a new background on my computer. I feel like a new person. That is about all that I have control over right now. Also, my hair was hot and was getting in my face a lot.

This past weekend we went to Ocho Rios and spent Saturday with a group of 21 volunteers playing in a waterfall called Blue Hole. It was a fantastic day jumping and playing in a couple of deep pools under a few waterfalls. We try to avoid large groups of volunteers, but we were in a remote location so the fact that almost 1/5 of all volunteers on the island were there didn’t detract from the fun. Carrie and I then went to another volunteer’s site and helped with some water sampling on Sunday before coming back early Monday morning.

I haven’t posted pictures for a long time. I try to do it once a month (because that is about how often I take pictures) so it must almost be time again. I will try to do it in the next couple of weeks.

The Olympic spring races are like Jamaica's Super Bowl. Especially this year when Usain Bolt is running like he is. We watched the 100 m final at home on Saturday morning before going about our business. This morning I was at work when the 200 m final was shown. I tried to find it online, but couldn't. With only a few minutes to spare I knew that there was a tv in the waiting room at the clinic next door, so I walked over. I was near the back of the room with approximately 40 people between me and the tv. I knew I was in trouble early when they showed Bolt getting ready to get in the blocks and everyone stood up and yelled. I figured I only had a small chance at best to actually see the race.

The start was subdued with everyone getting very quiet and waiting. There was some light cheering as he came around the first corner. That was all I saw. Once it was clear that he was out in front coming down the back stretch everyone between me and the tv stood up and rushed the tv. Only about 1/10 of the people in the room actually saw the race as everyone else saw people jump up and down and cheer. I knew Bolt won, but that was it. I hung around for a few minutes and saw the replay. Wow. It was an interesting experience. Everything shut down for 15 minutes.

We have been fiddling around with a garden for several months now. Our space is limited and our tomato and bean plants didn't yield much more than tasty snacks (though they were tasty and fresh). However, our pumpkins did great! Just by using the seeds from a pumpkin we purchased at the market, Scott managed to grow and harvest three pretty decent pumpkins. Here is one that we picked today and should manage to feed us for the rest of the week. Pumpkin pasta...pumpkin soup...pumpkin souffle...pumpkin omelets...pumpkin rice...red peas and pumpkin...pumpkin bread...pumpkin pie! We are also saving the seeds to toast and plant another vine or two.

So hats off to producing enough of something to make a dent (ding?? scratch??) in our food expenditures for the week.

Today it felt like summer for the first time in a while. Then I realized, schools are out. Suddenly it was easy to get a taxi and there aren't children in uniforms every where. Schools here let out in early July, not May or June. Two months of easy travel!!

However, the ease of travel comes at a price. In the last couple of weeks the weather has gotten hotter. What does that really mean? It doesn't cool off at night. The temperatures during the day really aren't that much different, but the extra 4-7 degrees at night make it really hard to fall asleep. Last night our bedroom was 86 degrees when we were going to bed at 10 pm. It cooled down to 82 during the night. This is a big difference over those 72 degree nights back in March. Even just a few weeks ago it was in the low 80s as we went to sleep. I guess I will stop sweating some time in November.

On July 3, it was both our one year anniversary for coming to Jamaica and our third wedding anniversary. That means about 14 months to go (give or take). The past year has been a mix of ups and downs but in general it was been a good experience and I feel like I am getting a lot done. The time has been going fast and I hope that continues. I am still coming around to the thought that it is summer back in the US. It was May before I figured out it was spring so hopefully by September I will remember that it is summer. I do miss seasons.

As I sit here writing this blog it has struck me that we left for Miami exactly one year ago. We spent two days in training and then left for Jamaica on July 3rd. Thursday will be our one year anniversary on the island. We still have a little more than a year left as our volunteer service didn't start until training was over in August, but it is still a milestone.

My brother Cory and his girlfriend Marie have been in town for the past week. We have had a lot of fun going around showing them our little corner of Jamaica and our projects. It makes me proud of the work we are doing and the people who are our Jamaican friends. Some days it is hard to stay focused and positive on our projects and the seeming lack of progress and how it seems like we aren't integrated enough into the communities. Then we start showing what we have been working on to outsiders and we get a new perspective. I can see that we are making progress and that the people really do appreciate the work we are doing.

I haven't posted new pictures for a long time and they are building up. We took a trip to the St. Thomas lighthouse a couple weeks ago. It was a very nice trip and I have some photos from it. It is the farthest eastern point in Jamaica. I was curious about the garbage that had washed up on the beach near the lighthouse. Most of it had come from Haiti. Hopefully there will be more up in the next couple of weeks.

This afternoon I had one of those moments that just makes me so glad that I made the choice to come here. I am fairly certain that it won't come across very well in text, but I feel like it is one of those key moments that I just want to share. I started to write out the context and it got cumbersome and boring. So I will just sum up:

1) The idea to ask adult literacy class participants to perform community service projects of their own creation and design in lieu of payment for the class IS NOT a bad idea. I am so proud of them and their initiative.

2) The literacy primer that I wrote is a hit (which was a risk for me since I am really not a writer or an illustrator). Today my class groaned when I said we had to stop reading in order to go on to other things. There is absolutely no reason that books that are easy to read need to be boring. We are in the middle of the second 10-week session and they are clearly excited about reading. I can only hope this keeps up. Again, I am so proud of them all.

Hopefully we will have some new pictures up soon. It has been a while since we posted and we have traveled a bit recently. I'm hoping to have pictures of the baby goats that have to be born any day now at the end of the beach road...the momma goat is huge and has been so for weeks now. Soon come.

Yesterday we were watching a nature program that was talking about the poles. When they started to talk about summer at the poles Carrie mentioned how funny it is to think about that. It struck me, it's like talking about winter in the tropics. It is currently June and we have been here for 11 months. Some days I can barely tell what month it is and if I don't think about it I couldn't tell you what season it is back in the US. Winter here is a little more comfortable, but it is 12 months of summer. Even the US south has a period where a jacket is nice and you know that the season has changed. Not here. It's not something you can really prepare yourself for. Time does pass quickly though.

Time has been going fast and it is hard to believe we have been here for 11 months. Our projects keep us busy and we really don't have time to think about it. We are starting to realize that we are closing in on 1 year left and if we have anything we really want to do we had better get started. I know that I need to start computer classes at the health department and I know that if I don't get them started soon they will never happen. I also tend to pick up small things every week or two that I help the health department with that fills my time.

Congratulations Rob and Layla!! We are looking forward to seeing you in Jamaica.

Last Friday was Jamaica's Labour Day. This brings to mind the last camping trip of the year, grilling, etc. Usually a three day weekend that is spent as a holiday. Not so in Jamaica. Labour Day is a day for just that, labour. Most communities or groups chose a project and people get together and work on the project. These projects include fixing potholes in the road, painting crosswalks at schools, cleaning up litter in communities, planting trees, and the list goes on. I like the idea of a day for all of the country to donate their time to a community project. If only there were one Labour Day a month.

This past week I prepared a classroom lesson on nutrition, and vitamins in particular, since one of the classes was studying foods in science class. I broke down the lesson into 1) identifying the vitamins (A-K- a fun alphabet game- where is vitamin F?) 2) learning how the vitamins help our bodies (vitamin C helps our immune system!) and 3) discussing what foods have each of these vitamins. This all followed up with a fun bingo game. With a few exceptions, I don't usually know which classes I will be visiting on a given day, so my lesson plans are vague enough to adapt on the fly to kids from 3rd to 9th grade. The vitamin lesson was a little more advanced than usual, but I ended up spending an hour with third grade anyway.

Vitamin K is a lipophilic compound involved in post-translational modification of blood coagulation proteins. Yes, I do understand all that with my molecular biology background, but my grade 3 class didn't stand a chance. I summed it all up by describing vitamin K as helping blood clotting. Does anyone familiar with patois see where this is going?

As I started to talk about vitamin K and it's helpful effects in making our blood clot, I received wide open stares from the students. I repeated myself. Same wide-eyed stares. I kept on with the lesson by asking kids what happens when they cut themselves, do they keep bleeding or does it stop? They said it stopped, and I said that's what vitamin K helps with. On we go with the lesson. There was even a blood clotting question in the follow-up bingo game.

It wasn't until my walk home that I realized my mistake. In patois, "cloth" (pronounced "clot") is a general all-purpose swear word, especially with partnered with certain words, many of which I will not mention here, but yes, blood is one of them.

Oops.

We finally did it. We live so close to the sea, but we rarely go for a morning swim for exercise. This morning we did it. Finally.

It was a very nice morning for it, though the sea was cloudy and a little rougher than it usually is at that time of day. I was wearing my nifty prescription goggles, but they didn't make much difference since the water was so cloudy. We probably managed to swim for about 150 yards before I got stung by a jellyfish. We pondered getting out to walk back, but decided to just swim back in the more shallow water, avoiding the general area where I got stung. Then Scott got stung by a jellyfish. It was a very good lesson for me to know that the sting isn't terrible. It has completely gone away now with the exception of a bit of a lingering rash (just what I need...). We didn't get a fabulous workout, but it is a start.

I think next time we will wait for the water to be clear. Then we can at least see the jellyfish coming.

For any Dostal in-law, the feeling of being somewhat overwhelmed during a family reunion is a familiar one. There are many conversations at once, often in the same circle of people, and the key to participating in the discussion is the volume of your voice. I love the feeling of community, family, and love that these reunions (and conversations) evoke, but there is a development process for actually participating in the chats.

Scott and I had a familiar experience in Jamaica the other day. We spent an afternoon in a village just chatting with people for a couple hours. Though, I should say, it felt more like being an in-law at a Dostal family reunion. The conversation ranged from the health of their babies, to water, to what happened (or didn’t happen) at a party last week, to the fact that Scott and I could actually understand what was being said, back to the party last week, and on to other parties that people may or may not have been to. It was loud, boisterous, full of opinions, and laughter. The patois was so thick that we really could only follow what one person at a time was saying, which meant we missed out on 75% of the conversation.

On the walk home, Scott asked me why I was so happy with being a non-participant in a conversation about a subject that I couldn’t really relate to. I think Scott finally may have experienced what reunions are like to an outsider. Step one is just being there and holding your own. From Dostal-family experience, I know that being a full-fledged member of the family (or community) is only a few steps away. And next time, they will welcome you back with open arms.

Sunday was a bit of a frustrating day. It was a nice day and we had nothing to do. We both commented that if we were in the states we would have a car and we could go for a nice drive, take a hike, go to a movie, go visit friends, etc. Instead there was really no one in the area to go see, we had no car, and there was really nothing to do. We ended up filling the day, but those are the days that make us pine a little bit for home.

In general, things are going very well. We are both having successes and that is important. The days seem to crawl by, the weeks go by, and the months fly by. It is hard to believe that we have been here for almost 11 months. It really has gone fast. It is also hard to believe that group 77 will be leaving the island soon. We have just over 15 months of service left. Hopefully they will go as fast as the first 10.5 months have.

Since coming to Jamaica I have been called many things. Here is a short list in order of most frequent: Big Man, Boss Man, Brownie, Whitey (yes, I do get brownie more than whitey. I only get called whitey about once or twice a month), red man, rasta boy. There are others, but they are infrequent or inappropriate for this blog. Then Friday I heard one that really made my head spin. While walking down the street I heard, "Hey, raggamuffin!" I looked around and saw one man yelling in my direction, and there was no one else around me. I was being called a raggamuffin. I don't even know what that means. I guess it may be time to think about a trim or at least shaving (I was thinking that when I was called rasta boy a couple weeks ago). Things that make you go WHAT?

I have added pictures to my Flickr account of our Blue Mountain hike and some photos of my project in Beeston Spring

On Sunday, April 20 we made our second attempt at Blue Mountain Peak. For our first attempt, see our previous post from January. The second attempt was both better and worse than the first. We did learn somethings from the first time and we were much more prepared. We knew that we needed to leave as early as possible and to bring flashlights so we could hike back in the dark if we needed too. As a result we left at 6 am and brought flashlights. It was a good thing too because we needed all the time we could get and we still came home in the dark.

We left Mavis Bank at 6:15 hiking toward peak. We're not sure exactly how far it is, but we are guessing between 12 and 13 miles. We like to say 13 so we can claim to have walked a marathon. Either way it is a plenty long hike. We kept a nice relaxed but constant pace and made it to the top almost exactly 6 hours later. We were tired but not in too bad of shape. The last time we made a couple desperate pushes to try to make the top and the result was cramping muscles and overall exhaustion. This trip we were relaxed and feeling good at the top. We sat there for an hour eating lunch and relaxing before heading down.

Heading down we made a mistake. The three of us (Carrie, JJ, and I) felt that the reason we hurt so bad last time was our big push to reach the top, which we didn't make. Not so it turns out. It was 11 miles of walking downhill. We reached the river crossing at the bottom around 7 and the sun had set. We were slowed down slightly by some tasty yellow raspberry like berries (little yellow crack berries as we called them) that were highly addictive. They were the first berries I have had in Jamaica. In reality they were more forced rests than anything else. By the time we were done my knees, ankles, calves, hamstrings, and every other muscle and joint in my legs was in agony. Just to say we did it we walked the last two miles on the road back up to JJ's. The only reason I think we were able to do that was because we had been in so much pain that now our legs were mostly numb. We finished 6.5 hrs after leaving the peak.

I am glad we did it and I am never doing it from Mavis Bank in one shot again. The top was clouded in so we didn't get very good views, but it was beautiful up there and hiking in the clouds is really neat. I would still like to do a sunrise hike from the hostels 7 miles from the peak.

We also found out that the last time we tried for peak we came up about 1/4 mile short. It took us 10 minutes to get from where we turned around to the top. If we had known we would have gone all the way up the last time, but we made the right decision for that day as we weren't sure how far we had to go, we started an hour and a half later than we should have, and we didn't have any flashlights for night hiking.

I have lots of pictures and hopefully one day this week I will have time to upload them.