Tales from a Terrible Blogger

So I know it has been a long time since I updated. I would like to think that I have good reasons for that, but the only good reason I have for the last at least six days is that the wireless was down here. Besides that my only excuse is that I am a terrible blogger. But I don't feel so bad b/c I figure like five people read this total.

Ok so after the field school kids left, we took a little trip down to the South Coast to document a church in The Alley, Jamaica. It was a great little getaway and we stayed in the Milk River Bath and Hotel, which was darling. They have these mineral water baths that are supposedly more radioactive than anywhere else in the world. It felt like regular water to me, but I guess we will find out in 5 to 10 years if it really did any damage. We ate some good food, saw neat sites, very small rural towns, literally drove across the country N/S from the beachy area here, through the mountains and to the plains of the south coast. While it was nice and we documented a church in 3 days (and I did my first ever hand drawing, a section, which turned out pretty good), I missed the North. I guess I am a Trelawneyian/Falmouthian/like the North coast better.

We got back and there were four of us here vs the normal 30 or so it had been. I moved all my stuff into my new room, first private room in a month, and Gareth and I started documenting more buildings. Since then we have two more done and they look awesome. We have gotten really detailed and added signage, etc. We just started a third one today.

We have also started cooking for ourselves and have done pretty well so far. We have had pasta, breakfast for dinner, mac n cheese, will be hitting some ramen this weekend, and ate out a couple times. The eating out is so cheap it's not even funny. We can get a plate of food that will feed me twice over for 250J, about $3. It's amazing. I am going to be so spoiled once I get back and am expected to pay like $5 to $10 a meal. Cheapskate I will be. We don't do much exciting during the week, just play around on the internet and watch movies, but on the weekends, we go fishing with Peter or find something else to do, like the beach. In a few weeks, we are hoping to travel to the east coast to Portland. They have some good spear fishing (for Gareth) and just beautiful scenery.

I wanted to do something for the 4th like make brownies with american flag decoration on them, but that prob won't happen. Maybe we will have to have hot dogs, although I really don't want to b/c the ones here are really made of chicken and dyed a creepy red color, which would be patriotic....

46 days left in Jamaica and it feels like we have lived here forever. It will be nice to go home, but also kind of weird. I am excited to be back in my country though - I knew I was a homebody before, but am bonafide now.

Things I miss the most (and most of them are food): Tacone, Andolini's, Cane's french fries and sauce, sweet tea, kool aid (and yes I could make it here, but it won't be the same), anything Mom cooks, heck maybe even lima bean casserole, a good selection of books (I have run out and am now reading one on the Mayflower, can we say I need a library???), Kevin, the ease of calling up a friend and not worrying about ridonculous charges, random text messages to Kelly, my bed.

I think that is most of them now. I don't miss tv too much but I really only watch a few shows. I am excited about doing more reading once I am back now since I am not required to do any. I got a sweet cricket shirt at the market, like really sweet. I still want to get a soccer jersey, but that will wait for the Mobay airport (apparently they have a really good sports store there) and while I paid around 7 us dollars for my cricket shirt, i know the soccer jersey will be more and i can deal with that. Over the course of the summer, I will probably have spent around 360 US dollars total. Not too shabby. While I love the cheapness of everything, there are big differences that are harder to get used to. Like living in a male dominated society as a super freethinking independent girl. No one is mean but things are different. Females opinions aren't really taken into account so much and if anyone needs anything, they always call for Gareth, even if I am closer. It's just something I have to get used to for at least the next 46 days. Oh well. I will live.

Oh and while I love carbs, I am getting tired of the amount of carbs here. We thought our country had a terrible diet. At one meal, we can have yams, boiled dumplings (which I liked the first day, but not struggle to get them down, they are very dense), rice and peas, boiled banana (which sadly doesn't have much taste) and roasted breadfruit. Can we say carb overload? I can handle one or two, but once you get above that, I feel like I could sleep for days. I love brown stew chicken though. Mmmmm. And the other bad thing is that there is so much sugar in most people's diets here, especially kids. They drink really sugary drinks and bag juices and the punch (i.e. kool aid) is so so sweet. I always have to water it down like 3/4 water, 1/4 punch. However, Jamaicans walk a lot more places, so they get more exercise. So i don't know who would lose on a scale now.

Ok, well I have to catch up on a week's worth of missed internet browsing....

--doesn't mind carrying a few choice pieces of baggage so she has a conversation starter in almost any social situation--