Jamaica - January 6, 2017

Over my winter break, I had the pleasure of traveling to Petersfield, Jamaica with a group of thirteen people from my university.  We arrived as strangers, and left as family.  I journaled daily of our adventures, so free feel to keep up with my next few blog posts about the trip.

Travel day to Jamaica!!
{Airport, Accompong Maroon Festival, & Meeting Host Family}

Airport -

Sydney, Dani, and I arrived at the airport at 2:30am.  We waited for the rest of the group to arrive at the main entrance.  We all said our hellos, got our boarding passes, and went through security just fine.  Our plane was supposed to depart at 5:55am, but we ended up departing a hour later because crew had to deice the aircraft.  When we arrived in Orlando, I had a quick breakfast at McDonald's. Soon after that we got on our flight to Jamaica, and I sat by Sydney.  Flying over the sea was beautiful.  When we arrived, we went through customs.  The desk worker asked us questions like why are you here, where are you staying, do you know the address.  Sydney ended up answering the majority of the questions.  We exchanged currency, got our bags, and waited for our bus outside the airport.  The bus was not there right away, and that's the moment when I learned about island time.  Jamaicans don't focus on time.

Accompong Maroon Festival -

Our first stop was to get chicken patties, which were delicious!!!  It was a cheddar shell with meat and cheese in the middle.  The shell tasted like a Cheetz-it to me.  Our ride to Accompong Maroon Festival was supposed to take a hour and a half, but it ended up taking three hours.  I think our driver got lost.  We kept driving up this crazy tall mountain.  The roads were super narrow and drivers were crazy.  They drive extremely fast and hook their horn a lot.  They hook their horns to say hello to other vehicles.  I found it quite interesting.  When we got there, we met Mr. Brown and Mama Jay.  Mr. Brown runs the organization we were volunteering with for the week and Mama Jay is one of the host mothers in the community where we were residing.  Then, we met up with people from Stevenson University, which is near Baltimore, MD.  They had already been volunteering for a week in Jamaica and staying along week.  We went through the museum, had dinner, and walked through the venders on the streets.  I didn't purchase anything at the festival.  Right before we left, we participated in some dancing.  One of our chaperones for the week was a guy named Aneif.  He told me that the reason why the music is so loud is because they want you to be able to feel the music, and it is set to the beat of the heart.  It was a lot of fun. We left Accompong Day around 10:00pm.

Meeting Host Family -

By the time we got down the mountain, dropped the Stevenson people off at their houses, went to the community center to pick-up our luggage, and got to our host family's house it was a little after 1:30am.  When we got off the bus, we met our three brothers Nicholas (15), TJ (14), and Matthew (11).  They were really sweet.  I was amazed that the boys were still up, but they told us they could not wait to meet us.  My house mom was Mama Whyte, and there was a problem when she discovered Sydney, Jeffery, and I were staying because there was only one bedroom with three beds.  We couldn't do too much about it because of the time, and we were just so tired.  Although, it has never happened in 15 years.  We knew in the morning that we would have to figure out new living arrangements.   It was 2:00am before I fell asleep.  It was a very long day, but happy knowing we got to Jamaica safe and sound.

--Al