out and about

#1: HAPPY BIRTHDAY JILL!! (She turns 21 today.)

#2: A big shout out to Cousin Jacquie and Meg Helmer (and family)! We received JQ's letter and Meg's PACKAGE! this past Tuesday. It made our day, possibly our week. Meg, in my opinion, salmon strips (not to mention chocolate) is probably the best thing you could send us. I had to really draw on some inner strength not to eat all of the salmon strips while Matt ran to the store to get some laundry detergent.

#3: Some new pics...A couple weekends ago a small group of us checked out the Bob Marley Museum, a national landmark for a national hero. We enjoyed our time there, especially considering we were able to get the resident rate -which is 1/4 the cost. Instead of paying $20(US)/person, we only paid about $5. How'd we do it? Matt spoke with the ticket lady, explaining the situation. Only half of us had our temporary PC ID on us. This ID literally consists of a homemade picture hand-stapled to a business card bearing the PC office address. It looks like something made in a little kid's clubhouse. But she bought it, or more likely didn't care, so we're all $15 richer, which is a heck of a lot these days. Plus, we really are (sort of) residents now.

Today we also went on a little trek to the Blue Mountains.
*I must say it's a real blessing to be married to Matt when it comes to travel (okay, and maybe for other reasons too). He's more or less become our personal little tour guide when we've been traveling with our small group of friends these last couple of weekends. He usually does most of the necessary research prior to departure (contacting the local PCVs to find out the local Jamaican fares compared to the 'tourist fares' that everyone will try to charge us, figuring out what trails are close, what's open, etc.), somehow fitting all those necessary essentials (sunscreen, water, rain-jackets, maps, etc.) in my little purse/bag, and he's even been known to whip out a little hand-drawn map on a scrap piece of paper to make sure we're heading in the right direction. He's got a great balance of being prepared, while at the same time being extremely flexible as things change or don't go as planned....now if we could just work out all those other "Matt" kinks. Just kidding :).

Anyway, Blue Mountains. We had an EXCELLENT day today. Blue Mountain coffee is widely considered to be one of the best in the world. And believe it or not, the only coffee that we've had thus far in Jamaica has all been instant. That's right. Instant coffee. You know, the kind that you just stir into your hot water? Yeah, tell me about it. You might be asking, "Why, if Jamaica has some of the world's best coffee, would everyone be drinking instant?" Excellent question, one that we are just beginning to understand ourselves. Firstly, Blue Mountain coffee costs on average $30 (US)/pound. Most Jamaicans can't, nor won't pay that. Bringing us to the second point, Jamaica's not exactly a coffee culture either. And thus, due to foreign demand, and more importantly foreigners' willingness to pay that much, Jamaicans are content to drink their Mountain Peak Instant Coffee.

Okay, so back to our day. Matt tracked down Dorothy Twyman, the owner of Old Tavern Coffee Estate. Dorothy and her late husband have been growing coffee on their 100 acre estate for many years. Their estate coffee is considered by some to be the best of the best of Blue Mountain coffee. Now, if Blue Mountain Coffee is considered to be some of the best in the world, and Old Tavern Coffee is considered to be the best of the best of Blue Mountain coffee, one could argue that we drank the best coffee in the world today. Plus, Dorothy herself let us sample and taste which coffee beans we wanted, and then subsequently brewed the freshly ground beans into a pot that she shared (along with conversation) with just the six of us. So what does that mean if the grower of the best coffee in the world prepares for you your own individual cup of coffee? It means we felt pretty special. Thus, we spent the first part of our day enjoying (the best) coffee (in the world) and biscuits in Dorothy's quaint little cottage in the high country of the Blue Mountains.

To top things off, within an hour of leaving Dorothy's, we ran into Joe Weber, a program planner for Catholic Relief Services. He is stationed in the Caribbean, and has spent significant time in St. Lucia, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Jamaica as of late. It looks like he'll be spending more time in Jamaica soon, and so it was great to meet him, as he is involved with much of the same kind of work in which PC is involved in. Largely due to this similarity, and the type of people that are drawn to international community development/social justice/etc. we found an instant connection in Joe. Not to mention, that Joe had a CAR. Woohoo! That's right! All 7 of us piled into Joe's RAV4 and we were able to get a ride all the way back to our home in Stony Hill without having to worry about getting robbed blind on the taxi fare, being hassled on the street by ductas (This is the bus driver's side-kick. The more people he gets on the bus, the more $ they both make. More on these interesting and eccentric people later...), endlessly waiting for our minibus to fill up, or constantly checking the time to make sure you're going to make it back before dark. Maybe in most developed countries transportation timetables are followed pretty strictly, but here... well, we're on Jamaican time. Those timetables are an estimate at best; arrivals and departures are completely dictated by any given number of unpredictable variables. One of our PC staff members, a full-blooded Jamaican, referenced this cultural difference, when in the States she was baffled arriving at 9:02, and the bus, scheduled to leave at 9:00, left without her.