Day 2 of Erin's Jamaican Adventure
Feb 15/04

It's so hot and humid here that my lip balm is nearly liquid. It's rather interesting... reminds me of when I took a match to a lip balm when I was younger and dripped the melted stuff onto my lips. Definitely interesting.

So the room got fixed and now we're actually in a suite rather than just a cottage. So we ended up getting something better than we'd expected, which is quite nice.

I still can't always understand everyone though, which is definitely not so nice. Hopefully by the end of the week I'll know what they're saying more than 3% of the time. (It's actually not that bad. Usually just when people are talking to ME. When they're talking to someone else I have no problem understanding them. Which is odd.)

Today I found a GIGANTIC chess board! It's great! The pieces all come above my knees and the king and queen are nearly waist height. True I am quite short, but still, considering how big the pieces are NORMALLY I'd say this is pretty cool.

So we went swimming today. The water is SO NICE! Although there are rocks and forest on the bottom. Not everywhere, but it has a habit of sneaking up on you so that you either stub your toes suddenly, trip over a rock, or have your ankles attacked by various seaweedy plants. It was also quite windy this morning, but it helped keep you cool. Whenever the wind died down you'd nearly die you got so hot.

The beach is really nice, but of course, as with any tropical location and sand, women everywhere seem to become more liberal... THERE ARE TOPLESS WOMEN EVERYWHERE! AND NOT ALL OF THEM ARE VERY YOUNG! Which means lots of droopyness... You know, they'd probably get better tan lines WITH their bathing suits on... Cause now they'll all have funny oval shaped white spots on their stomachs... Ewwww... Also the little bar thingy that juts out over the water is playing music, except that for the last 15 minutes it's been the EXACT same music, but with different people singing and different words. It's kind of annoying because I haven't been listening to the words, so all I can hear is the same music over and over and over and over and.... I also tried to do a bit of my archaeology reading. I sort of got some done.. sort of...

Later on I was walking to the bathroom and I was stopped by one of the Jamaican dudes that works at the hotel and was chatting with him for a while. His name is Jason and he thinks I look like a model! (And here's where the Jamaican admiring started... He also wanted to teach me to speak like a Jamaican, but he didn't see me much afterwards and so either forgot about it, or decided that I didn't look like a model after all.)

So today mein mutter (after much prodding from Hali and I) participated in some of the hotel entertainment. She had to run through a bit of an obstacle course holding a serving tray with a glass of water on top of it. You had to do it as fast as you could and spilling as little water out of the cup as you could. She got 2nd place for the women, which was just 1 second slower than first place, and therefore 1 second away from winning a big bottle of rum. She was quite disappointed.

And now we have an insert which shall explain the major occurrence of Jamaican Admiration.

ARRRGGG!!! Having dreads and going to Jamaica is a bad ting mon! Apparently, if you are a girl with dreads, you're some sort of goddess to these people. (The guy's anyway. The girls don't care much.) So, ever since we got here I've been plagued by all of these guys and their flirting AND I STILL CAN'T COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND THEM ALL! They keep asking me if I'm alright and I keep having to ask them twice what they've said CAUSE I STILL CAN'T TELL! sigh.
And then today! Oh boy. Yea... So we're (Hal and I) playing table tennis (PING PONG!) and several guys came by (one who put his arm around me and "helped' me play by guiding my hand. And then CJ, (one of the lifeguards) who asked me to dance. So I said yes and we had a bit of a waltz right by the ping pong table. Then later on Hal and I were walking back after returning the ball when CJ happened upon us again. And he asked if I wanted to go for a walk and I thought he just meant a simple tour around the pool, but noooo. He was thinking about going out to a club or something like that. So I invented that I needed to meet my mum in like 10 minutes.
So we go into some sort of staff type area where he's got his street clothes and such and I was slightly worried he was just going to change in front of me. Which he did actually do, although he warned me (sort of) before hand and gave me a chance to turn around (and contemplated running veeeery far away...)
So then we talked (or rather he talked and I tried desperately to understand what he was saying so that I wouldn't agree to something really dumb... even though I'd already done that pretty much by saying yes to his "walk".) Mostly I just nodded and said 'yea' a lot. It definitely wasn't like with Aaron, when you couldn't get me to stop talking. So at first he was in rather close quarters to me and I told him that he wasn't gonna get anything more than friendship out of this.
Finally (10 minutes later) I escaped and got back to the room. Hali thought it was cute that he seemed to like me (har har) and mum thought it was just that he's got a new one each week and I was this week's featurette.
And so now, I am planning on wearing a hat to cover the dreads from now on. Some girls might like all the attention, but I absolutely hate it! I mean I really HATE it. Absolutely can't stand it. And yet, if it were to be one of the British guys doing the flirting it wouldn't really bother me. It's not that I'm racist or don't like black people or anything, but because with the Jamaicans there's always that sort of sexual undertone whereas with other people, flirting is more for fun. More of a 'hey, you're cute' instead of 'hey, you're cute. Let's go have sex.'
Stupid men. Nunnery here I come...

So at 2 this afternoon, Ted and I went for a scuba diving demo in the pool. Whee! And we're gonna go on an open water dive sometime in the week now. Yay!

NOTHING EVER DRIES HERE!!!!! Stuff is ALWAYS damp! Neurg. Although it does make paper really soft, but then pencils don't work... although pens work better. Hmm.. Compromises, compromises...

I think Ted is FAR to comfortable around us... I walked into the bedroom that mum and him are in and I found him STARK NAKED!! He was covered with a sheet enough so that I couldn't see anything scaring, but STILL! THAT'S THE SECOND TIME I'VE SEEN FAR TOO MUCH OF THAT MAN'S BODY!!! And then to make matters worse he went into the bathroom where my mum was taking a shower and said something about tag-teaming in the shower. EWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!! That was when Hal and I went outside where we wouldn't have to hear anything else that was frightening.

I learned that there's pirate blood in me! No wonder I want to live on a tall ship..

And in local news... I GOT 85% ON MY AMAT QUIZ!!!!!!! YESSS!!!!!!!!