Day 1

Day One
we arrive at the charlotte air port and say our good byes, go through customs, and sit and wait for our plane to arrive. I sat beside Caleb from charlotte to miami, read and watched out the window most of the way. Miami was beautiful. blueblue waters and big buildings everwhere. we ate chinese food and shopped, then played ninja and spoons until the second plane arrived. Miami to Kingston i dont remember who i was beside, but everyone was closer together. In the Jamaica airport a lady came over the loud speaker every once and a while to say "please do not leave any bags unattended. They will be confiscated and destroyed." nice welcome. we had some trouble getting through their customs, getting the address of where we were staying, but we got through. rode a bus, which we packed like sardines, through kingston. mountains on one side, ocean on the other. beautiful. about thirty minutes through the city we stopped for Jamaican Patties. like a fried beef taco stuffed inside a pieces of delicious bread. good, but different. we loaded the bus again and road 2 hours on a small road over a mountain, where the driver had to honk before going around a corner so we would run into someone we couldn't see. when we finally arrived, we were at a school called Marcus Garvey Technical School. barbed wire around a big cement wall circled the entire place. we unloaded and stared at the dark school with bars for doors and windows. we stayed in classrooms, girls on the bottom floor and boys on the top. we blew up our matresses and set our things on the desks stacked around the room to make it look a little more cozy. we had no idea what kind of things were around when we went to sleep that night, we just heard music from a bar a little ways off and dogs barking their heads off. i could hardly sleep, and i was scared out of my mind. the toilets had no toilet seats. the bathrooms had no toilet paper. we couldn't lock our door. we had no windows. we had no air conditioning. we had no electricity because a storm had blown it out that after noon. our particular room had no light bulbs, or light switch for that matter. wonderful first day, huh?