"They say a wise man builds his house on a rock"

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Friday morning at 4:50am I wake up. Get ready and walk with Keith over to catch the bus to head to Montego Bay. We stand in line to check in and I notice that the woman running the office is the same one from when we went to Ocho Rios - the same one that told us last time that there were no open seats on the bus. We check in without any problems and board the bus. It’s still 20 minutes before we are suppose to leave and hardly anyone has taken their seats yet. Out of all of the rows of open seats I choose the one right behind the guy that has his seat fully reclined. I use my ninja moves to maneuver into the row and sit in the window seat (where the person in front of me has their seat in the fully upright position). Keith and all of his six-foot-plus glory stands in the isle and looks at the space where he would have to jam himself into, then to me, and then around the empty bus, the available leg room of the remainder of the bus calling his name. He tells me that he will sit somewhere else…

I get up and move to another row.
Gosh.
Some people apparently need to sit on a bus for four hours with more than and inch of space for their legs.

We wait eagerly for the bus ride to begin. Not just because we are ready to lay on a beach and drink pina coladas for three days, not just because we get to see a new part of the country, not just because we get to eat something other than fish, but because we are excited for the music on the bus! In Jamaica the buses have these awesome mixes of tunes for you to enjoy on your journey. You’re probably thinking, ‘oh a mix of songs! How lovely!’ And don’t get me wrong - they are FANTASTIC - but, the mix is actually just bits of songs. Most of one song, then 30 seconds of another, and then 15 seconds of a different song, followed by all of another song. But here’s the best part…there doesn’t exactly seem to be any overarching similarity of the songs in the mix. It will be a Whitney Houston classic from the 80’s and then 15 seconds of a song from The Lion King, and then Boys 2 Men. It’s brilliant! Although occasionally frustrating. Just as you get really into the song, and your singing along - BAM! New song! If the song is better than the last you cope much better than the other way around. It’s always disappointing when a great song is interrupted by one that ranks much lower on the scale of greatness.
But, I digress. Sadly, there was no Jamaican-mix-music-party-time on the two hour ride from Kingston to Ocho Rios they played all of the songs all the way through.

However, when we left Ocho Rios to Montego Bay they put in a…I guess you could call it a play? Rest assured -- comedic shenanigans where in full force for the next few hours. Complete with a woman sitting at the front of the bus that would laugh HYSTERICALLY (and I’m not just using that word casually) and yell at the characters on the television that was positioned just above the windshield.

The drive was beautiful. The road skirted the rocky coastline and cliffs.

Once we arrived in Montego Bay we caught a taxi to the hotel. It took the driver all of three minutes to offer us the “best marijuana in Jamaica.” He offered to pick us up on Sunday when we were leaving. He had me take down his phone number and specifically requested that I write “taxi” next to his name - not the other services that he was offering.

We checked in, and went exploring around the hotel. We found the mini-golf area, the water park, the lazy river, the beach, and the major construction project complete with jack-hammers and everything! In an effort to escape the soothing sounds of hammers we found the most secluded beach at the resort which just so happened to be next to the au natural section (don’t worry there was a large wall that offered privacy). I thought it was only appropriate that I finished “Naked” the book by David Sedaris this weekend.

We hung out on the beach for most of the three days, went kayaking, played pool and went down the water slides in the pirate themed kiddie pool (and have the photos to prove it)! We caught the bus back to Kingston, and watched the “inspired by a true story” movie about the inner city kids that are taught how to dance, which suddenly makes the world a better place and turns bad kids into good ones.

Note to self: open a dance school in the next week and a half.

We walked home from the bus. I dumped out my book bag full of dirty wet clothes all over my room so they could dry. I’m really looking forward to using a washing machine…

Fell asleep.

Got up Monday morning and got ready. Had breakfast (no fish). Went into work and went down to our weekly supervisory meeting. Turns out he’s not coming into the office today. I guess that means our ONLY meeting today was cancelled. I guess that means I don’t really have much to work on seeing as how I am waiting to get feedback from him that I submitted to him last Thursday.

Mid-day the security officer at work came into our office and told us that we needed to come to a meeting regarding this coming Friday, “Family Fun Day” on the north side of the island. The entire office comes together to discuss the plans for transportation, security, food and “fun activities.” Things eventually turn into a heated debate about dominos, and if it should be included in this years activities - apparently last year all of the men played dominos and refused to join in the other group activities - which then caused all of the women to play scrabble. After much yelling, the next big decision to be made was who was going to bring the beer for - I KID YOU NOT - the BEER DRINKING CONTEST!!! Once that was decided, there were rather animated discussions about the proper scoring criteria and regulations that would be expected of the judges for the drinking contest. Wow…are we really having this conversation?

Umm…apparently we are. The meeting ended with the decision to finish discussing everything else via email. Because clearly, all of the important things were hashed out.

Afterwards I did a lil bit of research on the ole’ world wide web.

Had a delicious lunch of Easy Mac.

Headed home. Did some laundry.

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