Day 12 - Wednesday July 15

For some reason I woke up pretty early on Wednesday morning and unfortunately for me, I couldn't get back to sleep. With my sleepy head I got out of bed (as silently as possible since Robyn and the rest of the house were still asleep) and went to the bathroom. I turned on the lights and to my horror I saw a cockroach crawling over the floor, yuck! I turned off the lights again and quickly got back into my bed. Now I definitely couldn't get back to sleep. A little while later we got into the taxi to go off to work. We started off with making the last few molds for the bathroom and as soon as they were installed, we started mixing cement again and filled the molds with it. We were then given a break and Shelly brought us some Jamaican pudding (which is nothing like the pudding we know) and some guava juice (which was really good). Since Allison was leaving the next day, it was her last day of work that day and the guys saw this as a perfect opportunity to get her really dirty before she left. They poured water all over her, covered her in sand (and even tried to bury her in the sand, but she managed to escape) and they wanted to cover her with cement, but they got stopped by our supervisors. Despite the fact that Allison did not voluntarily want to get buried, Thomas did want to get buried. However, they dug him in a little too deep so it was really hard for him to get out and we had to give him a hand. After all the foolishness was done, we got back to mixing the cement and filling the molds. By then it was time for lunch. Shelly had prepared us some curry chicken and rice and we got some pineapple juice. After lunch we all got together to take a group picture in front of the bathroom, before Allison would be gone. And of course, the picture would not have been complete without Romario on there (our supervisor), Shelly (the cook) and Mr. Walker (who taught us how to do much of the construction work). After the photoshoot we had to get back to work. We did some more digging that afternoon and to our surprise a group of Journalism volunteers came over to our placement and filmed us as we were digging and asked us a few questions about our work. Around 2:30 PM, we started to clean up and got changed to drive back to the Projects Abroad office. When we reached the office, it smelled soooo good. This was not for nothing because today was cooking class! We learned how to cook Hominy Porridge, Tie-A-Leaf (Blue Draws), Saltfish Fritters, Escoveiched Fish, Turn Cornmeal and lemonade. Personally, I only liked the Escoveiched Fish and the Saltfish Fritters, but it was nice to see how differently they cook in Jamaica compared to my home country and how many different spices and herbs they use for their cooking. After the cooking class, we got back into our taxis, but not before we said our final goodbye to Allison. It was sad to say goodbye to her, because I would probably never see her again (since she lives in California) and we had so much fun and got to know each other pretty well during these two weeks, that just made it hard to say goodbye. When we got home, Unika had made us mashed potatoes, vegetables and pink salmon. Unika told us that the next day we would have a farewell dinner, so we would not be eating home and we talked some more about the weekend. After dinner, we took a walk to the house where we would have the farewell dinner (just so we knew where we had to go) and Unika showed us where she had lived before. When we got back home, Robyn and I took a little rest in our room, before we went to bed.

#Placement #Mixingcement #Burry #Allisonslastday #Groupphoto #Cookingclass