Cool! Bouncy house!

Today was our first day volunteering at our secondary project, the Montego Bay Marine Park. The marine park was the first national park in Jamaica and has a ton of various projects that need revamping. The cool thing is our supervisor is really excited to let us run wild and pick the projects that best utilize our skills/interests. I am excited as the work is a bit more along the lines of development work and more what I expected to be doing when I joined PC. I love what I do at my orphanage, but the energy investment is in the 105 children and not really in expanding capacity of the organization, as one would expect in development organizations. This way we get the best of both worlds.

To Do List:
1) Mold 105 positive world citizens that can hopefully read better than they could ante-Patricio
2) Save the aquatic environment in the Montego Bay area or at least get a good start
3) Become guitar virtuoso—Eddie VanHalen, Clapton, Kenny Wayne Shepherd watch yourselves!
4) Cook dinner for Erin—Tonight may be leftover stir fry but tomorrow’s tacos with my revamped tortilla recipe will dominate
So my list may be a bit over the top, but after getting roughed up last week I have found a bit of peace and renewed energy and am ready to conquer the world again. Things are looking up. Hell, even the Royals have won 8 out of their last 10 games.

I am very excited about the new volunteers coming to Jamaica soon. I am excited to feed off of their energy, their desire to make Jamaica and the world a better place.

Teach this triple truth to all: A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things that renew humanity. --The Buddha

I’m doing my best Chubby.
Patrick

We're all homos. Homo sapiens.

I was in a bookstore in downtown MoBay and encountered a peculiar site. On one of the main shelves, prominently displayed, was the novel Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Despite this Pulitzer Prize winning book getting rave reviews from Erin (though I have struggled through parts), I was very, very surprised to find it shelved so conspicuously. For those of you that have procrastinated reading this book STOP HERE!, the following is a SPOILER… The protagonist is Calliope, who after having a lesbian-ish experience finds out she is in fact a he that has 5-alpha-reductase deficiency. So a couple of un-descended testes later, some incest, and transvestitism (though unknown to Cal), this book really hits home the complexities of gender identity. Let me pause to express just how taboo homosexuality is here. It is biblical stoning taboo—literally. Jamaican homosexuals were almost (but not) granted U.N. refugee status. So for this book to have such a blatant placement I have to assume the store itself or the shelf stocker is extremely progressive. I hesitate to fully assume the liberal leanings of the store as Middlesex was surrounded with books whose covers were adorned with Fabio’s oiled chest and whose titles included The Pirate’s Booty (that title doesn’t necessarily imply smut novel, but its cover confirmed my suspicions). So maybe there was a mix-up in the book orders, maybe someone was excited by the idea of a Pulitzer Prize winning romance novel, but I want to think the owners/staff of this bookstore were deliberate in their shelving. I am happy with the idea that they are trying to encourage their fellow countrymen to open their minds.

I was in the bookstore to solicit some presentation supplies and was just browsing to kill time waiting for them to draw up my invoice. For the past couple of days Erin and I have been running around trying to complete a grant application. We are planning an HIV/AIDS peer educator training for the children at our orphanage. This training, for 20-40 kids (depending on summer work schedules), will provide instruction on HIV and other STIs, work to improve ability to make positive life decisions, and how to impart their knowledge to their peers. We are also having the kids create HIV/AIDS awareness paintings (on nice canvas with quality paint) to be displayed at their respective schools. The idea is for our kids to then use their new skills to create projects/presentations for World AIDS Day and present them at their schools. All in all we hope to indirectly raise awareness among 3000 or so area school children. Big up to Erin as she dominated the grant application. (This is Erin, I am reading over the blog and I wish to point out that I did not dominate it. I have the ability to dominate it, but I do not feel that I utilized that ability to its fullest.) We are really excited and are hoping our grant is accepted. Keep your fingers crossed.

I would rather take your punch, than not give you a shot.
Patricio

I'm optimistic, because everyday I get a little more desperate. And desperate situations yield the quickest results.

So last night there was a cockroach in my bed. I had turned out the light and was watching my bedtime Office episode, Patrick was mostly asleep and I felt something on my foot. Immediately I began kicking and twitching epileptically, rousing the half-comatose Patricio. I leaped out of bed and turned on the light… and saw nothing. So we settled back in and five minutes later, what do I see by the warm glow of The Office? A cockroach. Moseying its nasty way down my arm. I am quite upset by this and begin bellowing—with a curious mixture of disgust and triumph—that the cockroach is not imaginary, and it is currently on my person. Patrick grudgingly rolls out of bed and turns on the light to find me alone in the bed. He sighs and pointedly begins searching through the sheets, when he spots it. Running from the bed towards the closet. Man, I felt so freaking vindicated at that point. He gallantly smashed it into a gooey pulp with my shoe. And then he went back to sleep and I stared wide-eyed around me for hours. Really the funniest part is that I am pretty sure Patrick does not believe the roach was in the bed. But I saw it. I did. It was on me. He was extremely annoyed that I kept waking him with my anti-roach flailing. Lest you underestimate me, I’m not too bothered by creepy-crawlies. Even roaches. There used to be a nest of them in the shower drain at our previous abode and it didn’t faze me. But in my bed, that is a different story. Also I was having a “difficult” evening and this just capped it off. Gross. Stay out of my bed roaches.