Well I finally found the girls. We ended up missing each other since they went to a Jamaican Independence Day celebration at the stadium. I found them in their room shortly after I wrote my post yesterday.

Today is the first full day of Jamaican experience. After eating the breakfast we headed to the dance conference. It’s really awesome. They are learning some local dances that they’ll perform at the street tomorrow. All of the dances are Caribeean influenced and are supposed to represent one of the islands like Cuba, Jamaica, Granada, Haiti, etc. I took a lot of shots of the dancers and the live band during today’s practice, and I can only hope for more later.

Now I’m chilling in the shade while the girls are watching a performance. Later I will take photos of them doing Ashley’s piece and they’re supposed to have strobe lights during it, yes!!

I got good at finding wi-fi spots so I should be able to use the iphone as I intended to. I leave you with a photo of a local drink called WATA, which is as you might’ve guessed just bottled water.

Finally made it into Jamaica. Started my travel at Sea-Tac, of course and headed for Dallas/Ft. Worth. A girl sitting next to me was some Latina sorrority girl from UW who was on two out of my three flights. She was headed to Dominican Republic to visit some family. We had some good conversations and that helped shorten the flight. Once we got off we both had to rush to our next flight to Miami. The flight was fairly calm so I managed to get some shut eye. The things got a lot more exciting on the Miami-Kingston flight. I was sorounded by a bunch of Jamaican women who thought I looked inocent and wanted push my buttons, needles to say that didn’t work and they got their’s pushed .

Finally I was in Kingston after 8-9 hours on the plane. Since I had at most 30 minutes between the flights I never managed to eat properly. After paying $32 for a cab from airport to Mona Lodge I was pleased to find that there was still something open on U of West Indies campus, a KFC joint. That was the best chicken I’ve ever had, probably because I was starved. After that I went onto a search for D-dog and the ladies.

In the process I managed to break a law apparently and get in trouble with campus security. While looking for girls I got a bit lost on the campus and the only thing between me and familiar territory was a small 3 foot tall fence, so naturally I jumped it. Security guards somehow found out about this and they stoped me 5-10 minutes later. They were concerned that I looked suspicious for jumping a fence, since apparently in Jamaica if you jump a fence you got something to hide. After I explained myself they were cool about it and even offered me a ride back to the lodge. I declined and went to see the party that chemistry department was throwing.

As of this writting I still didn’t locate the girls. Their rooms are right next to mine, but the girls are elsewhere. If they don’t show up soon I’ll go to bed and catch them at brekfast tomorrow.

Went for an 8K run today. The anual Seafair Torchlight run. The plan was to ride my bike down to Qwest field and do the run, then ride back. Unfortunatelly I got a flat tire on the bike and was unable to fix it since the tire bead got all screwed up. I guess I’ll have to buy some new tires, cevlar this time, since I had an unusual amount of flats this year.

So since the bike was out of commision I decided to bus to downtown on 41 and then catch the new light rail in the downtown tunnel. It was my first ride on the rail. I was pleasntly surprised how smooth the ride is. The rail is very quiet and acceleration and decelration are very gradual and smooth. I wasable to stand without the assistance of the poles. I can’t wait for them to expand the service.

Back to the run. It was very hot. I was completely wiped out at mile 2 and at mile 4 I had to walk for about 2 blocks. This has never happened to me. It did not help that I was carrying my backpack with water, food and change of close. I finished the run in about 45 minutes, which is my regular jogging time and as such I was pretty dissapointed. I did manage to see a LOT of friendly faces there and it looks like I might try and get a regular running crew going. I’m waiting for an official time but I’m sure my clock was accurate enough. This race proved to me that I really have to mix in some drills with my regular jogging if I’m going to improve my times.

Been to a farm again .  And I should be going to see some baby tigers soon too.  I was extremely busy with work and a whole BUNCH of photo shoots.  Enertia had a 10th year annyversary, so I did five photoshoots for that, then Passion had a mini show at the starting line of Livestrong.  Besides that I went to Mt. Rainer and managed to sled in July , that was my 4th of July weekend.

As far as schoolwork I stoped writting about it since I got a hold of another book by prof. James Callen from U of Wis-Mad.  and have been trying to absorb some of the stuff and understand it a bit better.  This book seems pretty good and it’s a lot more detailed than the previous one.  Most of the equations are derived right then and there so it takes a bit longer to understand everything.  I will be posting more as I go along.

p.s.

Jamaica trip is coming up in just few weeks.  I’m super psyched about it.

Well I haven’t been writting much since I was very busy with a take-home midterm we got, plus we had bunch of Navy guys come in for a review at work, so I had to spend a lot of time on that as well.  Now the things are quiet again.  I turned in the midterm today and took the day off, so decided to go to Issana’s work place. It’s a little farm in Bellevue next to Kelsey Creek Park.  It’s free admission and anyone can just walk in and take a look at the animals, most of which you can pet as well.  I did some picture taking there so check it out in my photos section or click here.

Tomorrow I’m off to a cheese festival and then I should be making some Bosnian pies.  I hope they come out good, it will be my first time making my own philo dough.  I should also continue my plasma posts tomorrow.