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