So you know who turned out to be kinda a creep? Ben Franklin. And, Elizabeth, the stripper, gave me great advice, which rhymed.

The thing about a $78 million embassy is that it should not leak. I realize that there were only a couple leaks and we were in the midst of a hurricane. Would I be so far off base as to assume that if the federal government spent that amount of money on an embassy in a country that regularly gets hit by hurricanes, that they build a hurricane proof building. WTF. So at the embassy we had the first of our two swearing in ceremonies because the ambassador was hightailing it out of Jamaica ASAP. So Ryan and I got all duded up in our suits and big pimped our swearing in. This was especially funny because while Ryan and I rocked tailored suits, everybody else was in their pajamas having not showered for three days. When I went to shake hands with the ambassador she looked at my boots and asked if I was from Texas. “No ma’am! I from Kansas City, Missouri, the BBQ capital of the World!” Although I was originally was going for a pimp suit of sorts when getting my suit made, most everybody said I was more Tony Montana or a Colombian drug lord. I guess that suits me fine… pun intended.

Fast forward to after the Pegasus fire… After our fun with the fire we spent the next 8 hours in a room full of Peace Corps folk at the hotel next to the Pegasus. Our second imprisonment of the week was vastly shorter than our time in the embassy, but we were not prepared for this sentence. Our downfall would be this lack of preparedness for we had nothing to do for most of the day. The hotel staff did bring us games after a few hours. I dominated the game of ‘Life’ but that can only sustain me for so long considering I have the attention span of a goldfish. Finally they did find places for us to stay for the night and Erin and I, accompanied by Ryan and Matt, headed over to the Hilton Hotel. The lobby of the Hilton was very nice, but the rest of the hotel was a real $hithole, I was very surprised. Also those Hilton bastards refused to serve us dinner. We had to go back to the hotel where we spent all day and finally managed to get some pizza at 11:30. We were pretty tired and the four of us zonked out shortly following our meal.
The next day we were moved to the Knutsford Court Hotel. This hotel rocked. The staff was very helpful, the rooms were nice, and the meals filling (and had enough protein in them to keep me from getting headaches). Also there was a troop of British soldiers staying at the hotel that had been undergoing 6 weeks of jungle training. Many of our Peace Corps girls were quite enchanted by the boys from across the moat with their clever little accents. I thought they were good chaps until they started arguing which of our girls they were going to try to get with. I was okay with this until I realized that the girl at the top of their lists was Erin (rightfully so considering her majestical beauty and fantasical charm (I originally had not made this part about Erin sound so sarcastic as I do think she is quite attractive and charming… but she thought I was making fun of her and asked me to change it. I did so, only adding a bit of sarcasm)). I made it very clear to them that she was off limits and was meet with prompt apologies. I did play a bit of matchmaker and set up one of the Brits with a breakfast date with a girl from our group. I’m pretty sure he crashed and burned but hey you can’t say I’m not all about multinational cooperation and the globalization of dating.
The rest of our stay was fairly boring; we had our final tests (which I have major comments I wish to make about them but feel compelled to self-censure for big brother reads our blog!!) and had our final Patwa oral exam. All of which went fine and our week culminated with our ‘real’ swearing in ceremony at the Peace Corps office with all of the staff present. Ryan and I again looked stunning in our suits and Erin even got dressed up for the occasion and looked amazing. And although my favorite language trainer Dania left her home in Jamaica to study in America, she saw pictures of Ryan and me and was ‘proud’ of us and thought we looked quite ‘dapper.’

Our blog entries definitely do no justice to our experiences as of late… be sure to check out my book available fall 2009 for the best and most dramatic representations. PEACE

I understand that loyalty and patience are virtuous qualities, but sometimes you just need to grow a pair.

These pictures are of us during our captivity. Look at how um, nice, Patrick's noncreepy mustache is...

Well wouldn’t you be cranky at the thought of being shut up indefinitely with hundreds of other people during a natural disaster? I was picturing fights to the death for the last package of crackers while chaos reigned outside the walls of the embassy. In reality, there was plenty of Ramen to go around and the mountains shielded us from the worst of the hurricane. So basically we spent two chilly nights on the embassy floor watching Jamaican boys attempt to play soccer in pouring rain and high winds. Aside from a few leaks, we were highly sheltered within our ambassadorial fortress. The noise from the wind and rain didn’t really reach us. I’m glad that we are all safe, but it was a disappointing way to experience your first hurricane. The embassy was none too excited to have all of us residing in staff cubicles, so they ushered us out as quickly as possible. The evening after Dean visited we rested our hurricane weary bodies on posh beds at a fairly high-end hotel (it was all that was available, we all realized what a rare opportunity we had been given.) But, the next afternoon the hotel caught on fire and we had to leave. Yep. That was no fun. I was in the hotel at the time, preparing to leave for lunch with two friends, when our phones began ringing. People outside, Patrick included, were calling to tell us that the building was on fire, and that we should consider making a hasty exit from said building. We stood there slightly baffled for a few moments. Looked out the window to see if there was smoke, looked out in the hall to see if there was a ruckus. Nothing. So we went to the stairs, made it down one flight before smoke came billowing up the stairwell. Once again, we all stood there and contemplated our predicament. This was too much for me—I had recently read accounts about a factory fire in which a lot of people perished on the stairwell—I felt that the rather large and slow moving women in front of us were not moving away from the smoke quickly enough so I encouraged them to speed up. The girls I was with later made fun of me for yelling at people to run because there was smoke. Whatever, it sucked. Luckily, we had noticed a stairwell at the other end of the hall, so we went back up a level and over to the other stairs, yelling and banging on doors to warn people. The other stairs were smoke free and everyone exited the building with few mishaps. Thus began our week of homelessness in which we never slept in the same bed more than twice. If you ever need to stay in Kingston, give us a call because we visited 4 hotels in 5 days.

Reject a woman and she will never let it go. One of the many defects of their kind. Also, weak arms.

The highs and lows of last week were poignant to the extreme, but we have persevered and are now able to write about it. We will break up the week into multiple blog entries so make sure to read them in order.
Rewind to last Friday the 17th… We had our friend Brandi stay the night with us so that we could leave for Kingston at 4 AM. We stayed up all night because we were supposed to have 4 hours or so upon a luxury bus to rest and we stayed out until midnight as well. Well 4 o’clock comes and our taxi man is nowhere to be found. I suppose one shouldn’t expect punctuality from taxi man that has been on Jamaica Time for his whole, especially one named ‘Tex.’ After waking up our entire household trying to get Tex’s phone number and giving him a multiple calls, this dude rolls up at 4:35. Keep in mind that we needed to be at the bus park at 4:45. Well Tex was pretty determined that we would make our bus and set a new Jamaican land speed record over the currently under-construction roads in what proved to be the most harrowing car ride of my life. But to his credit, Tex did manage to get us to our destination only five minutes late and we did make our bus.
Erin is really excited to take visiting family and friends on public transportation. This little bit of sadism worries my a little but just telling you public transport stories doesn’t really do the trick and you really do need the experience. Anyway after going from the most terrifying rides to the bus park, we were rewarded with the most pleasant of bus rides to Kingston. We rode on a greyhound type bus that we had our own seat (no ‘smalling up’), could safely put our luggage in the storage space under the bus, and received a complimentary bottle of water. Our seats even reclined so that we all napped all the way to Kingston. The usual trip to Kingston takes about 4 hours, give or take a half hour. Our trip took about 2.5 hours and so we started our weeklong Hurricane, Embassy imprisonment, hotel fire, good eatin’, test-taking road from Peace Corps Trainees to Peace Corps Volunteers on less than 2.5 hours of sleep. And 2 points for those of you that can guess who was very cranky at this lack of sleep. Here’s a hint… Her name starts with an ‘E’ and ends with ‘rin Courtney Smith.’

Stay tuned for more adventures of Pato and Cranky-Pants
******SORRY FOR NO PICS. WE WILL TO POST THEM WHEN WE GET THEM FROM RYAN THIS WEEKEND******

My name's Dwight Schrute and I would like to buy a purse

So nothing too interesting has happened here. I mean, there was a hurricane, and then our hotel caught on fire, but other than that... yeah, this is just a teaser. We're going to have to spend some time writing to do this story justice. But we were in a hurricane and then a fire and we were sworn in as volunteers and we are currently in Kingston, awaiting our fate. At least until Saturday. Thanks for all your thoughts during the storm. We miss you, more later. Plus pictures. Patrick has a disgustingly creepy mustache and Matt stunk up the bathroom. Ryan wore a shower cap to breakfast. His head is shaved, which made it even better.

Erin is much better keeping current with our blog writing than I am. This can also be said for keeping up with Peace Corps paper work. The thing about the Peace Corps it truly is a product of the federal government. Seriously kiddos, the shear volume of forms, sheets, flow charts, and handouts, many of which are unnecessary, that PC gives us boggles my mind. The only time that bureaucracy of Peace Corps rears its ugly head is in the amount of paperwork. Along with Erin’s new mission of reducing her trash output she has taken it upon herself to hug trees. Now I am all about hugging trees, but she has taken to publicly hugging them in front of Peace Corps officials. During one training session we were asked to come up with a motto for the PC (currently it is: Life is calling, how far will you go?). Erin’s motto was, “Peace Corps… Killing trees for 46 years.” This is especially funny because up until that comment, Erin has been very quiet during our training sessions opting to laugh at my ridiculous comments. So the first thing she vocalizes is a grade A zinger and the training staff collectively gasped. The gasp was soon followed by an assortment of embarrassed titters. She is now reminded on an almost daily basis of her infamous zinger by PC staff. She receives calls about whether they can send us one copy of materials for the two of us to share so that we save paper and therefore trees. And sadly, we only get one copy of Newsweek to share. She really does have a point though. Between the two of us we have two full 1.5 in binders and two full 2.5 in binders. Not to mention our huge stack other folders, manuals, and handouts and that is on top of all piles of papers from before we left.
Back to the blog writing… At one point as I literally wrestled with our computer, I swore that I would not write another blog until the computer’s battery worked and I could type without being plugged in to the wall. Grrrrrr. Anyway the process of getting Apple to replace my battery is hitting some hurdles because we are in Jamaica, so if any one has an extra battery hanging around for a power book… I guess I will just stew in my contempt.
We only have a week left of training and then our final exams. Assuming we pass we will be sworn in on Aug 24. Woohoo!! I am so excited about swearing in because it will be the unveiling of my pimpin’ pinstripe suit. To compliment my suit are some rocking red low-top cowboy boots and some mirrored aviators. To complete the look I have been growing my facial hair for a few weeks and will style it appropriately for the ceremony. Right now I am thinking fu man chu, but that may change. So get excited for those pictures. Just so you don’t get too anxious awaiting those here are some pics of where we live. Enjoy.

Indians do not eat monkey brains! And if they do... sign me up! Because I am sure that they are very tasty and nutritional.

Have you ever thought about the amount of trash that we produce daily? It is disgusting. When we walk down the main street of the nearby large city in the morning you can see people clearing the trash away from the day before. It is disgusting. You would not believe how much amasses during 24 hours. I am going to start a personal crusade against adding to the amount of trash in the world. Silly humans. On a completely unrelated note, we were able to see the library at our Village this week. I am quite exited about the room. It is shaded and there are ample windows, so it is not too hot. There is plenty of wall space for children’s artwork, charts, and library rules to hang. The shelves are sturdy. There are some great books in there too. Alas, there are also some random books that will not pique the interest of any child. And the books have been languishing in open, soggy cardboard boxes for some time. Needless to say, some of the books did not survive. Many fell victim to the infamous chi-chi ants (termites). With the “help” of several boys, we were able to get all of the books off the ground and sweep out the room. Our supervisor is hoping to get the place sprayed for bugs and we are hoping to scrub the shelves and dust off the books. The boys seemed eager to sit and look at the books, and several asked to take some home. I feel that this is encouraging. They also threw the books and occasionally jumped on them, but we’ll work on that. I eat so much peanut butter when I am away from home. I wonder what changes about my diet. My freshman year at school Lindsay and I had peanut butter at least twice a day. Meg and I demolished a 3 lb jar in a month when we got to Ireland—just the two of us. I have it at least once, usually twice a day here. There is some sitting right here next to me and I am fighting my desire to stick my finger in it. Mmmm peanut butter. You both sustain and satisfy me. I succumbed. I was trying to think of something interesting to write and I needed the peanut butter to help me think. So it has been raining a lot here the past week or so. When it rains it is serious business. I need to remember to take a picture. The roads are transformed into muddy, rushing rivers, which you must wade across to get anywhere. The taxi drivers cannot see, so it takes forever to get anywhere and you are a bit worried that you either will not survive the drive, or that you will not be able to tell him where to stop. We’ve managed so far though. The rain sounds pleasant from inside, and it cools everything off considerably.

Gimme Gimme Gimme

Here are the items on our wish list. Please do not feel at all obligated to actually get any of these items. We will always update this posting with new stuff. And if you actually want to make us vibrantly happy please post what you are sending in the comments section of the post so multiple people don't send the same thing. Thanks and we love you guys.
Patrick and Erin

PLEASE SEND THINGS USING THE US POSTAL SERVICE!! FEDEX OPENS AND TAXES EVERYTHING AND THEN THE PEACE CORPS OFFICE REFUSES TO PAY AND WE CANNOT OBTAIN OUR PACKAGES. WE HAVE SUCCESSFULLY RECIEVED THINGS FROM THE US POSTAL SERVICE.

-powdered gatorade, any flavor
-Stickers or any small give away prizes (I am visualizing US Toy stuff) for use as sort of literacy scooby snacks
-Comic Books as a way to make reading interesting
-A Reading Assessment... okay teachers and library folk, we are struggling a little bit with how to gauge reading levels of our children and any tips or advice would be great, so send us an email. Also if any of you have some sort of actual assessment tool you could send, that would be great as well. Just remember we have 97 kids that will soon be increasing to 117.
-***any thing along the lines of granola bars, power bars, pop-tarts*** really anything to mix up flavors. While the flavors of Jamaica are wonderful and rich and spicy, a good ol' dose of old fashion American processed fake food hits the spot in between helpings of peas and rice.

This thing is huge, my middle name is Kurt, not Fart, and I am not a security threat!

If I am going to do something as cliché as join the Peace Corps in a ‘effort to find myself,’ wouldn’t one then expect me to do something as cliché as grow my hippie mane complete with ZZ Top beard. So in response to Erin’s astonishment to how hairy I have become, I would like to exercise my divine right to due process and free expression of democracy by calling an election. For all of our faithful blog subscribers, I purpose a vote of hairstyles. On the ballot is my Grateful Dead groupie panache or Erin’s suggested Rasta Locks. I cannot speak for Erin, but I will adhere to the decision of the general public. May I serve to remind that they only way to change hairstyle once you have locks is to shave one’s head. And besides, maybe after two years I will be able to give my hair to Locks of Love.
So on our way back from Kingston, we stayed over with some friends. I stayed with Ryan, a KU Grad, in Clarendon (another parish) and Erin stayed with Tiffanie nearby. Ryan is very, very excited about everything KU and though I find Erin and him hating on Mizzou quite often, he is still cool to hang out with and discuss how cool the Midwest is. Anyway Ryan and I went out to Juici Patti for dinner and a beer. I think Erin mentioned pattis before, they are like fried hot pockets, and Juici Patti is one of the big chains. The Juici Patti in Maypen is by far the biggest Juici Patti I have seen yet and comes complete with game room, sports bar, and pool hall upstairs. And just for frame of reference, that is like eating at a Taco Bell with all the above mentioned accouterments. That night we played Monopoly with Ryan’s host family brothers (3 of them). Monopoly here is extremely cutthroat and I was made aware of new rules that were sketchy at best. Not to brag or anything, but Ryan and I dominated. We had to call a tie between the two of us and chalk up a big victory for Team USA. After our disappointing loss in the 4x100, we have now tied it up at one all. And just for the record, I never thought we had a chance a beating our Jamaican language trainers in a 4x100 relay… had the race been a 4x400 or straight 1600 we might have fared better. We went to bed fairly late considering we had to get up early and meet the girls, but we had the Mexican version of Cinnamon Toast Crunch waiting for us at breakfast. So after punishing a large bowl Erin, Tiffanie, and Brandi meet us and we set out for Denbigh.
Denbigh is a town in Clarendon that happens to host the largest agricultural festival in the West Indes. The closest thing that we have in the States to the Denbigh festival is a state fair. First of all everybody there is certain that we are tourists and for the most part treat us as such. Not like being treated like a tourist in Montego Bay, as most people in Denbigh seem to speak mostly English to us and only chuckle mildly at my attempts to speak patois. There is a picture of me standing next to the biggest cock I have ever seen, and I am not talking about Ryan (just kidding buddy). Erin is a bit timid when it comes to taking and posing for pictures. I think this comes from the intense desire not to be viewed as a tourist. It is my opinion that in some situations since everybody thinks we are tourists anyway, you should go ahead and pose with huge bundles of green bananas and snap away. This last comment is for Jill… I really, really appreciate you sending me the air pump and I wanted to make sure that you knew that I was able to find some balls (see above picture).
Well until next time… Likle Mor!

I want to give Michael all the urine he needs.

Dang it, I just lost half of a blog. I hate when that happens! Patrick’s computer battery is shot, so you have to keep the computer plugged in at all times, which is tricky because the cord is attached magnetically and comes off when you move about too much. Neither one of us can sit still, so we are always pulling the plug, which turns off the computer, which means we lose whatever we are doing. Though I probably shouldn’t complain, as we are lucky to have a computer at all. You know what I would trade our computer for? Toilet paper. We returned to our site last night, and both of us are fairly positive that we left almost a whole roll. Strangely, we were greeted by the sad remains of an empty cardboard tube. This was upsetting and puzzling. Taking someone’s toilet paper should be a punishable offense. Most unfortunately, we arrived in on a Sunday (when shops are closed) and today, Monday, is a national holiday (when shops are closed), and Tuesday we have to stay close to home because of politics. This is the sort of thing my dad plans for. A catastrophe of this kind would never occur at the Smith household. From now on, I will defend my dad when my mom makes fun of him for stocking up on TP. Upon further rumination, we feel that the lack of toilet paper is evidence for a shower dopi (pronounced duppy). A dopi is a ghost. Our friend is warned not to shower at night because he may be attacked by the shower dopi, who will give him a cold. I wouldn’t be adverse to the idea of a shower dopi if only he would clean the shower whilst he haunted it. We are back at our site. Woohoo. It was a relief to see the ocean again. Both of us are starting to feel comfortable in our town. Do you see how hairy Patrick is becoming? One of the kids at the Village told him he needed a trim. There is a lot of horse poo on the street we take to get into the Village (where we work). They take tourists up there on horseback to see the children. This bothers me on several levels. Therefore, I feel no shame in taking pleasure while observing how uncomfortable most people look astride a horse. There was a particularly distressed looking woman this morning. You know what distresses me? The way they ask you here if you want your food for here or to go. The cashier will ask you, “ya ‘avin’ it?” Um, yes, yes I want my food, please. I feel that by simply asking me if I am having my food, they are not making it clear that they are asking where I wish to have it. Every time I stare blankly back at the cashier. The question catches me off guard. They speak so quickly and I do not expect that particular query. Why would I be ordering food if I did not want to have it? Also, just because I want to have it does not mean that I want to have it here. I wish they would just add the “ere” onto the end. That would clear up all the confusion.

Pam's advice was good, but Jan's were bigger

So we have posted a couple of blogs from earlier, so scroll down a bit before you read this one. It is the most current. Did you listen? If not, then you will be confused. Here we go. For two weeks, we were at our sunny little site. It is hot as heck out there. We bought a fan on the second day and now we spend the majority of our free time sitting in front of it. We worship the fan. The road up to our orphanage is hilly and my clothes are just demolished with dirt and sweat by the time we reach the top. Sometimes the power goes out during the (frequent) rains, and this makes us both unhappy as there is no more fan. Another great way to cool off is to visit the beach that is less than 10 minutes from our house. Woohoo beach. I will post pictures at some point. It's technically a private beach, so there are rarely more than a few people on it at once. Fantastic. There is a reef that is great for snorkeling a couple hundred yards out, perhap we'll get to that next week. Goodness there is a lot to say. I'll start with our town. It is small and more of a collection of homes, we have meet a few people here and there, but not many. We go into the large resort town nearby for most of the things we need, like chocolate milkshakes. The orphanage is at the top of the street we live on. It's actually a pretty little place on a hill. Quite warm though. We spent two weeks mostly observing the chaos that is daily life with 100 children. There was a group of American volunteers putting on a summer camp. They were extremely welcoming and helpful. They invited us to lunch and dinner at their 5 star hotel. It was insane. We were blown away by the air conditioning, let alone the giant pool, fluffy mattresses, and full service spa. Ya'll should save your money for a visit. We're picking up more Patois, more of the kid's names, and meeting more current volunteers. The picture I posted is from the Christmas card workshop that we attended with the "aunties" at the orphanage. Can you tell which ones are Patrick's? He is super proud of them. As well he should be, they are most lovely. The reindeer was my idea. One of my favorite things here is the fruit. We have what amounts to a fruit sampler platter every morning for breakfast. It's amazing. The bananas here are crazy good. We often have papaya and mango, as well as cantalope. The second week we tried nayseberries, which are not berries. They are about tennis ball size and really, really sweet. The texture is a little strange. I don't know exactly how to spell them either. My apologies. We also have sweet sop, which is a green bumpy fruit filled with little black seeds that are covered with a mild white fruit. It's labor intensive like the guineps. Currently we are back in Kingston for training. We will be here until the weekend. It has been a tedious week. It's great to see our fellow trainees though. Please accept our sincere regrets for our lack of posting as of late. We don't have a routine set yet or easy internet acess and the computer is being finicky. We'll try to do better though. We love and miss you all. Keep the emails coming, it's great to hear from everyone. Thanks to all who sent care packages, I can't tell you how fabulous it feels to get something from home!!! I hope you followed my instructions and read this post last.

If by 'me' you are inferring that I have B.O. then I would say, 'That is a poor choice of words.'

We found out our assignment. It may have been the excitement of just getting out of UWI (University of the West Indies), or something to do with a change from 12-hour days spent watching power points, or just natural excitement of an upcoming adventure, but our entire group was energized. Erin and I are located in a small village outside of Montego Bay. This is helpful for those of you who plan on visiting us because we are just a short distance from the main airport in Jamaica. You will also have access to many area hotels, resorts, eateries, and generally the touristy part of the country. Our job will be to set up an after school program at an orphanage. The main goal is to increase literacy for the orphanage’s 97 pikni dem(children… for those of you that don’t read the patwa lessons). Our other projects will include setting up a local library for the pikni dem (Mom and Jill we may be calling in your expertise on this one) and traveling to area schools to teach about HIV/AIDS and sexual health.

So you can see the ocean from our host family’s ginormous patio. It’s pretty amazing. I saw a mongoose on the way to work this morning. I was excited. Mongoose hold great significance for our training class. We were told during staging that there are no mongoose on the island, so we all take great pleasure in spotting them. I haven’t seen a snake yet. Lots of lizards. They are in our room here. Black ones, albino ones, green ones with blue tails… They are fast, but I am an expert, I may catch me one. I don’t want to traumatize them though. We bought these fast drying towels. They are great for packing. But they’re pretty much giant shammies. It’s kind of weird to shammy yourself. Also no amount of water consumed seems to have any effect on the color of our pee. Jamaica is a good place to sweat off a few pounds, man.