Blogs from Jamaica, Central America Caribbean - page 27

Come On In, Dear, The Water's Fine We finally did more traveling this past weekend, as it had been far too long since we’d left the convent for a good adventure. It was about 9:45 on Saturday morning when 3 of the 4 remaining Passionist Volunteers - Jess, Maggie, and Eric - arrived in their white station wagon to pick us up. Our destination: Port Antonio, home of the gorgeous inlet of water made famous by the movie Blue Lagoon. It took us just under 2 hours to get to Port Antonio, the drive alternating between towering mountain vistas and huge green waves crashing along the northeast coast of the island. Our first stop was, in fact, the blue lagoon or Blue Hole, as the indiscriminately placed cardboard sign stated. In fact, the sign was so ... read more

Only 12 weeks to go! With only twelve weeks left in Jamaica I really feel like I need to see everything here I possibly can. So, I’m hoping to have good trips for the rest of my time here. This past week I’ve been very lucky and made it out of the convent on a couple of nights. Last Sunday I had the pleasure of going to a jazz concert with my friend Dwight. Dwight was performing (he’s a musician). The music from the whole night was awesome. I really enjoyed listening. Probably one of my most exciting outings was this past Thursday, when I got asked if I wanted to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Portia Simpson Miller, Jamaica’s first woman Prime Minister. Dwight asked me on Thursday afternoon if I wanted to go with ... read more

So, the girls and I headed to into Ocho Rios for our shore-excusion -- horseback riding! What an adventure! They put about a billion of us on horses and treated us like children. It felt like we were a gange of pre-schoolers out for a pony ride for the day! After riding, I headed of to the Dunns River falls with two of the girls... we climbed, got soaked and had a blast. I had been to the falls years before so it was good to be back -- they were just as I remembered them!... read more

The last couple of weeks Jamaica has been engrossed in the recent political party elections. Prime Minister PJ Patterson resigned thus sparking the party elections. There are two dominant political parties in Jamaica: The People’s National Party (PNP) and the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP). Currently, the PNP has control of the job of the prime minister and the government. So, whoever is president of the PNP party is the prime minister. PJ Patterson, PM, and former president of the PNP is now passing his torch on the new president, Portia Simpson Miller. That’s right, it’s a woman! Jamaica has now joined the ranks of the few countries with a woman head of government. Way to go Portia! People seem to be very happy with Portia. She will be inaugurated, as Prime Minister, later this month. I ... read more

Happy Valentine’s Day! Love is in the air in Jamaica (don’t worry Mom I’m not running off to Vegas;) haha). I can tell that it’s soon to be Valentine ’s Day here in Jamaica because there are an abundance of horribly ugly fake flowers lining the streets for loving buyers. Who ever thought fake flowers could be popular? I’m really looking forward to this Tuesday. I’m taking Meaghan out to eat. We are both really excited to be visiting our local Subway (yes, we have the sandwich shop in the city of Kingston). We haven’t been to Subway yet, so we are both very, very excited. I sing in the junior choir at St. Pius. The “Junior Choir” is quite deceiving. It is called the “Junior Choir” because at some point all of it’s members were ... read more