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.

Yankee swap is like Machiavelli meets...Christmas

Yeah, well, Americans are slow. Patrick and Ryan, another of the trainees, decided it would be a great idea to race our Jamaican trainers at the University. It was so not. Originally it was supposed to be a 4x400, but the trainers backed out unless we made it a 4x100. Tiffanie and I somehow got dragged into the scheme. None of us are sprinters, I do not know what we were thinking. I feel that the handoffs were our downfall. We would’ve lost no matter what, but it may have been less embarrassing without Patrick almost bowling Tiffanie over. Someone videotaped it. I bet it’s on youtube. As a team we got roasted, but Patrick made up some ground. It’s irrelevant really, we lost miserably. Disgrace to our country. I think that the girl I raced against felt a little insulted that we were even trying. We should’ve made them stick with a longer race. Anyway, after that we went to the beach!! Yay beach! It was crooowded. But it was gorgeous. White sands, aqua waters, partly blue skies. Lovely. I swallowed so much salt water. We had delicious vegetarian food from a stand ran by a Rasta man. So good. I had my first guinep as well. Guineps are fruit. They are pale green and grow in clusters. They’re a bit bigger than a grape. You peel the skin off and pop the whole thing in your mouth. And then you grimace because it is weird and slimy and stringy. You suck all of the pink skin off the giant pit and then spit out the pit. Then you eat another one even though you are not sure how you felt about the first one. Mostly the slightly sour taste is fun, and it gives you something to do. Like chewing sunflower seeds.

Your pencils are creating a health hazard. I could fall and pierce an organ

Peace Corps training is brutal. There is so much material to cover that we spend damn near 12 hours a day at the training area. We do get some breaks but overall the days are grueling. I understand that there is a ton of material to get through in a short time, but it doesn’t make the days go by faster. In fact at times I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog’s Day because the scenery doesn’t really change, much of the information is repeated, etc. But all of the PCV (Peace Corps volunteers) say that training is the worst part of the experience. If that’s true Erin and I should have a pretty fun time.

Also I should not say all of training has been horrible. In fact most of our nights have been split up playing football (the soccer kind) with some Jamaicans, playing poker, and hanging out with new friends. In fact last night we ordered Dominos buy one get one free pizza, drank a Guinness, and watched Boondock Saints on the wall of our dorm courtyard on a projector we borrowed from PC staff. On the subject of Guinness… it is very different here. It is still dark and delicious, but the texture and taste are both different from other Guinness I have had. Red strip makes a stout called ‘Dragon’ something or other. It is not my favorite beer but its alcohol content is like 9% or something crazy which could account for the 'different' taste. I would like to note that here in Jamaica people don't really drink to get drunk. That would be socially unnacceptable. So I would just like to elaborate that we (Erin, Patricio, and the rest of our group 78) have been drinking responsibly, mainly just sharing a 6 pack amongst a few people to cool off from the heat.

There was a lot of debate before I left as to whether or not I should bring my nice sport coat. Well I ended up with it but will probably never wear it. At the end of August we will be swearing in and I will probably be dressed in a salmon-colored three piece suit with matching snakeskin shoes. I’ll give everybody a minute to come up with the visual… Alright so maybe not the salmon color but another volunteer Ryan, from KU, and I are heading to a tailor on Saturday to have suits custom made. And the remarkable thing about this is that the guy who had this done last year said it only cost about $5500 J (which is the equivalent of about $80 US). So I am pretty excited about showcasing my primo style at the $72 million dollar US embassy. I am actually posting twice tonight because I wrote the first one the day after Erin posted. Since then Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller, aka Sista P, announced elections. Erin and I should be able to wear green again by the middle of September. Woo Hoo!!

Patwa Lesson 2: There is no plural suffix for nouns. In English we would add an ‘s’ to the end of most words. But in Patwa they follow the noun with dem to show that it is plural. Here are some examples:
carts kyaart dem children pikni dem
boys bwai dem
Hope you enjoy the Patwa. I miss you all. “And that’s all I got to say about that”
Patricio