portie

Here’s a picture of our current home in Stony Hill, our room is the open window in the upper left-hand corner:

For those of you who might have forgotten :), our anniversary is on Tuesday, and we asked the PC for special permission to leave Stony Hill for the weekend. This may not seem like that big of a deal, but the PC has us on what we all are referring to as "lockdown". Mostly due to safety reasons, we are currently not allowed to:
~Leave Stony Hill unless we are in groups of three.
~Be out after dark unless we are with a trusted Jamaican.
~Stay the night anywhere but with our host family.
In some ways, this is pretty frustrating, but in other ways, it’s somewhat understandable, as Jamaica can be very dangerous.

This policy will change as we move along in our training, but for right now we’ve got to go with the flow.

Luckily for us the PC approved our trip to Port Antonio, a place we’ve wanted to get to since we’ve reached the island. Partly due to the fact that Port Antonio is known to be a beautiful place. Located on the windward side of Jamaica, it receives lots of rain and also tends to be a little bit cooler. As a result, the north-eastern section of Jamaican is quite lush with some stunning scenery. One of the other main reasons we’ve wanted to get to Pt. Antonio is that we met a man who lives there on our original flight into Jamaica. Andrew is a fellow American who has married and moved to Jamaica within the last few years. He’s somewhat of a kindred spirit, and we’ve had it in the back of our minds to catch up with him since our arrival. Plus, it’s also nice to know you have a friend/connection on island, and we want to keep that connection alive as much as possible. In addition to that, Andrew and his wife, Charmaine, own Jamaican Heights Resort. It’s a quaint little getaway, that seemed perfect for an anniversary weekend (and maybe a visiting family member's destination spot).

Unfortunately, Andrew was visiting his family back in Colorado this weekend. But we did meet Charmaine, and spent a great weekend relaxing in Portie.