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.