Blogs from Kingston, Jamaica, Central America Caribbean - page 7

After 2 ½ hours of caroling and mass at St. Pius, we checked our watches to find that it was, finally, Christmas Day. The only problem being that it was now well past midnight and we still hadn't heard from Nancy, whose flight was supposed to land in Kingston at 6pm on Christmas Eve. This was a predicament of mammoth proportions as we were all exhausted and had no way to actually contact Nancy. Dr. Pedro was particularly concerned as he had been fasting for 3 days in anticipation of the arrival of his "little white girl." (There is, by the way, a song with sign language hand motions to accompany this term...just ask.) So we called the Air Jamaica hotline which informed us that a flight had arrived from Miami at 12:18. We checked the ... read more

I am currently sitting in Norman Manley Airport waiting for a flight back to the USA. Per customary Jamaica my flight has been delayed two hours and I have about at 1.5% chance of making my two other connections back to Wichita, KS. Some of you may be wondering why I am on back to Kansas… my Grandpa Clouse died on Friday, December 16, 2005. I am going home for the funeral and will be returning to Jamaica on Christmas Eve (flights were much too expensive on other days). I haven’t been able to sit down and write my blog in a couple weeks and quite a bit has happened. I will begin with the arrival of a volunteer dentist, Dr. Pedro Chimal, to St. Pius. Anyway, this is very good news for me because Dr. ... read more

After a 9 hour flight with a dodgy touch down the plane broke into applause at the fact that we were on Jamaican soil in one piece! After extended customs and immigration, and a bizzare baggage retrieval system we managed to spot David in the crowd, leaping around and shouting "Welcome to Jamica mon!" David seemed to have embraced the Jamaican way of driving - dodging potholes, beeping his horn and cutting people off like a local. As if that wasn't scary enough Mark looked up only to see what looked like a gun being pointed at us by a local on the side of the road. The following day was David's 60th Birthday, which he managed to extend to 3 nights of evening celebrations. On Friday we got a taxi for the day to take ... read more

Today served as yet another reminder why I do NOT love teaching and why I DO love Olympians. The day started with a blast: cussed out by the sewing teacher because the posters I made to advertise the training center's open house said "Fabrics & Textiles" instead of "Clothing & Textiles." Apparently, this is the ninth deadly sin. You know, right behind Greed, Lust, and Bypassing-The-Cheese-Aisle-At-The Supermarket. As if anyone would notice the different between Fabric and Clothing on a silly poster. I mean, a) who takes the time to read posters, anyway, other than the geeks who design them? And b) isn't clothing made of fabric, so what's the big deal? Punk teacher. In my own defense, I was not supposed to make the posters in the first place and I DID ask two different ... read more

It’s been a good couple of weeks. I visited Hellshire(pronounced Helsure) Beach for the first time. Hellshire is the public beach in Kingston and was quite nice by my Kansas standards. Jamaicans consider it to be not very nice. I, however, was pleased to be at a beach where there were only Jamaicans and no one that just stepped off of a cruise ship. The beach was Caribbean heaven. Their were shacks with palm leave roofs all along the beach selling fresh fish, men offering rides on horses on the sand, and kids playing football(soccer) on the beach…and then their was the water. Of course, the water wasn’t as pristine blue as the water in Ocho Rios, but it’s still pretty nice. I hope to be going back very soon, and I would be there today ... read more