Family Fun Fest Day

Sunday May 24, 2009
Today we are volunteering at Wavz for the family fun fest. The first group was to leave around 8:15 but it was raining so they just had to wait till the rain stopped. I used this time to get caught up with my journal that we are to write for class. I spent the whole morning after breakfast on the balcony writing and reflecting about my experiences here so far. Most of the locals are getting very familiar with us so it is nice to walk down the street and not be hassled as much. The rain finally stops and the first group leaves. This means that the second group does not need to be there until l:00 which includes me. We get ready to leave all dressed in our volunteer tee shirts that has STAFF on the back. We catch a taxi to take us directly there. We are dropped off at the front gate. After waiting we finally get through. The first thing we saw was the blow up rock climbing wall, beyond that was a small and I do mean small Farris wheel, there are three different bounce-a-bouts and a blow up water slide. The clowns are at a booth as you walk down a little further and they are doing face painting and rub on tattoos. We met up with Lynette who was going to be placing us at our stations. I was first placed in a kitchen and let me tell you it was hot….. I was just wondering if I would be able to make it for the two and a half hours that we were going to volunteer, but Dustin to the rescue. He asked the chef if he could take me because Kendra needed someone to take her place. So we walked down and I ended up at the ticket booth. I thought this would be great until all the kids started coming up yelling miss, miss, miss. I kept saying one at a time. I would here ticket for the water slide or the bounce-a-bout and some would even say for the roller coaster which really threw me because there was no roller coaster. I worked with a very sweet girl who had the patients to deal with all this. The tickets were $50 j’s each and the some of the rides required 2 tickets and some required 1. They could also get tickets for the snow cones and pop corn from us. Now I have been using Jamaican money for now over a week but trying to keep it all straight was just crazy, all the kids leaning on the table say miss, miss and trying to keep straight what they were giving you was just crazy. We would drop the money in a five gallon bucket and when someone gave you $1000 j you had to dig through all the bills trying to find a $500 j in order to make change. Plenty of money coming in for a good cause but I have to say when Libby showed up to see if I was ready it did not take me long to jump to my feet to get ready to go. However the gentlemen who relived the women I was sitting with said I needed to stay until she got back. I don’t think he wanted to deal with the kids. So back in my seat I went and waited while still selling tickets. She finally returns and I let her know that it was really nice working with her and out from the table I went. Rebekah got placed at the water slide and she said after that experience she diffidently does not want to have any kids. Then we went to get Jennifer who got placed serving food so she ended up from where Dustin had pulled me. We were given meal tickets for doing the volunteering and Jennifer said after working there she really did not want to eat anything from there. We had a few good laughs about our experience and while we were there they had Granny on stage a commedian that was just hilarious. He had the kids up there and the crowd was just going crazy but after awhile we decided it was time to leave. We started walking back on the road and finally caught a taxi. I was the same gentleman who had dropped us off. I had picked up curry goat for Cody because one of the organizers said he wanted to try it so she had given me his meal ticket. During the ride home the juice ended up down the front of me. We are dropped off at the end of our road and walk down about a block and a half back home to get to summerset. Here I am with curry down the front of my white tee shirt – not a pretty site and then the dogs are all coming after me, you see there are cat yards and dog yards here in Jamaica, Summerset is a cat yard but down the road is a dog yard. I was holding the containers up high and thank god we had Dewayne with us because he used some of his food to distract the dogs so I could go ahead. Dropped off the food and went straight into the house to change my clothes and soak my clothes. Not many places were open today to eat so Pam, Cody, Boomblast and myself walked down to De Bar to have dinner. I am so loving the Jerk Chicken here I will definitely be bring this spice home with me. We talked quite a bit to Eddie and Joseph who runs the place. It is great talking to the locals and listening to them talk patwa their native language is interesting. There are some things that I can pick up on but I am having a difficult time following it. I guess I have not yet been around it enough to be able to follow along. Back to summerset to go to bed in order to awake for another beautiful day tomorrow and my first time scuba diving. Can’t wait.