Teachers for a Day

We spent the entire day helping with the 3-6 year olds at St. Ann Infant School.  The first part of the day, we ran nine different stations, including puppet-making, story time, and making beaded bracelets.

After our patty lunch, we assisted the teachers in completing developmental testing for the students. We checked their gross motor skills to see how well they could balance, jump, and play catch.

On the way home from the school, the kids asked to make a quick stop by the infirmary to say hi. Over an hour later, it was finally time to head back to the resort. 

Tomorrow, we will spend the entire day at the infirmary. We will complete building nurses lockers and have a final day with the residents. 

Infirmary and Blue Hole

We spent the morning at the infirmary continuing our work there. We are making great progress on building a set of lockers for the nurses, some of the students painted a mini-mural for the women's wing of the infirmary, and we continue to get closer with our new friends every day.  

We spent the afternoon at Blue Hole, climbing waterfalls and getting to jump off some pretty high places!  Pictures will follow when I can get my hands on some of the GoPro footage from the day. 

Pictures from the Infirmary Today

Day at the Infirmary

Yesterday at the infirmary, we continued getting to know the residents by singing songs with them and taking plenty of pictures.

Today, we will return to the infirmary with the hopes of building some cabinets for the nurses.

Three Little Birds...

Today we had to improvise around some more rain so decided to see a landmark involving one of Jamaica's most legendary celebrities. We took a drive nearly 40 miles and two hours to a place in the Jamaican mountains less than 12 miles away. Our destination was Nine Mile, the birthplace and resting place of Bob Marley. It was fascinating getting to see the humble origins of one of the most influential musicians to ever live. We stopped in Ocho Rios on our way back for a late lunch. Tomorrow, we will be heading back to the infirmary and will hopefully get some sunny weather!

Pictures to follow!

Better Than Snow Days!

The past two days in Jamaica have been super busy, exciting, productive, and rainy!

We spent yesterday at St. Ann's Infant School painting a mural on their play area.  We had a special request for cartoon characters, so we picked the most colorful ones we could find and got to work.  Our students did a great job and really let their inner-artists shine. 

We were a little worried we might get rained on, so we worked double-time to paint. That didn't mean there wasn't a chance for some of our students to jump in a local soccer game. To let you know how that went, our students were marking success on who fell the least number of times...

Today, we took a trip to the St. Ann Bay Infirmary, where we spent some time getting to know the residents.  Some of us made beaded bracelets for our new friends while others sat and played games. We will be spending more time at the infirmary over the next week getting to know these wonderful people even more. 

The plan was to visit a waterfall this afternoon, but unfortunately it has rained nearly all day. We can't complain too much, since it has been in the high 70's all day and we're hundreds of miles away from the nearest snowflake!

Packing List

Packing List

• Toiletries
• Daily Medicines with instructions
• Water Bottle
• Sunscreen
• Bug Spray – Deet preferred
• Sneakers
• T-shirts and shorts you don’t mind getting dirty
• Dressier clothes for dinner (khakis, sundress)
• 1 pair of pants or skirt/dress for dinner/church
• Bathing suit
• Baby wipes/cooling cloths
• Children's books, adult diapers, or trash bags