Living like a local in foreign country

Well I've been trying to catch up on blogs today after a brief hiatus, but I figure it's about time to fill you in on my most recent adventure.

I'm sure I mentioned multiple times that about 3 weeks ago I decided to go to Jamaica with my friend Sugar (who I met - but knew of before - in October). I was a bit more comfortable this time, because I was not going to a new city, and I knew where I was going and who I would see, etc.

I left on Wednesday night. This was after having packed all night Saturday and not having looked in my suitcase up until that point. That's a lie, actually. I kept adding little knick knacks here and there. Like a lock for one of the pockets in the bag so my phone wouldn't get stolen like last time. I spent about $200 at Duane Reade on Sunday (and I totally didn't know that Duane Reade wasn't a national chain). I also was making a fuss about getting the airport. JBike was going to take me, but then he would've had to take my car and blah blah blah, all of this random stuff that made it difficult. So after whining for two hours about this, my dad said "Stop this. Here's $80 for your cabs. Now stfu."

Thanks pop!

So that was settled. I made it to the airport in 20 minutes, in the rain, and almost got into a huge accident on the Belt.

I made it through check out and security in 10 minutes. I was therefore 2.5 hours early, when I had only intended on being there 1.5 hours early. Honestly though, thank goodness for online check in, because there was a line for regular check in with at least 50 people on it. I got to skip that because of the internet. Love.

Almost passed out in the airport waiting.

Ended up with a window seat (which I wanted) even though I opted for an aisle seat closer to the front of the plane. Funny how things work out!

I think we got delayed. I wouldn't be surprised. Oh yes, I remember now. There was an entire force of wheelchairs. I'm talking at least 15 people, and they didn't pre-board them. They didn't pre-board small children either. It was the worst fucking idea EVER. We were all stuck on the gangway as the wheelchairs pretty much played bumper cars with the strollers that had to be checked at the plane entrance. A middle aged Jamaican man was hitting on me while this was going on because I was very festive wearing a green hoodie and red and yellow scarves. It was only partially embarrassing, because no one really wants that kind of attention in the airport at 2am, and I had already gotten it from the bag drop off guy. I basically turned up my nose and felt righteous when I said it wasn't the first time I had gone to Jamaica.

I'm lying again. I was really cordial and flattered. He looked for me on the plane and tried to clear a path for me. I b-lined for my seat and tried to sleep.

Sleeping didn't go that great. I mean, I think I must've slept most of the time, but it wasn't like last time. I was awake for quite a bit actually. I was sitting behind a kid who must've been autistic or something. His shrieking really pissed me off at some point, and his insistence on playing his videogame at a loud volume didn't help. I tried to relax though, and did.

I got robbed again by JUTA. Doubly so, actually. I changed $40 USD into JMD at the airport cambio, which was a bad idea, because I ended up getting just over $3,000 JMD. The cab ended up being $3,000. I should've just stuck with the damn USD. Stupid stupid.

Anyway, I got to the bus station and hung out chatting on the free wifi until the bus came. I slept through a good portion of the bus I believe. I don't really remember. I got to Ocho Rios just before noon, as expected. No one came to meet me at the bus, which I could've figured. I dragged my bag down to the condo and try to get in contact with Sugar so security would let me through. I finally got the security lady to call her and they let me in where Max met me in front of the building and I scolded him for not meeting me at the station.

Shortly thereafter, we donned out bathing suits and made our way to the beach. The drinking began around 1. I drank about 4 beers in 20 minutes. Hello Red Stripe.

Then I went to go get Sugar a mixed drink with my Iced Tea Vodka and Peach Snapple Iced Tea. Here's what I didn't know. Sugar doesn't like Peach. I drank both of the drinks in about 15 minutes.

So now we're almost 45 minutes into the drinking and we decide to go back to the condo because I want to play beer pong. However, I do not have beer left, so the only logical thing to do is use vodka, right? Wrong. Very, very wrong. We had met this guy Pitbull on the beach, who was a friend of a friend or whatever. I don't really remember, but he was the one playing with me.

I broke out my solo cups and ping pong balls (yes, I brought them from home for this exact purpose). We stacked the tables on each other and let the games begin.

Pitbull was a fucking natural. He got three in a row. I took the shots (which apparently were quite large) and then I blacked out.

I woke up at around 1am.

Turns out I had been more drunk than I had ever been before in my life. I threw up everywhere - on all of the towels and my shirt. Pitbull had tried to wake me up with a cold shower. Well actually, he bathed me. Yeah, he washed my hair and soaped me up in my bathing suit.

I was not responsive. Almost choked on my own vom too, so I heard. Thanks guys for turning me on my side when I started to dry heave on my back.

When I woke up, two things happened. I told Sugar I was going to get ready to go out (which she told me she would not do - I should've insisted harder), and it hurt for me to smile.

APPARENTLY, I was sitting on one of the couches during vodka pong and I tried to get up. Instead of getting up, I went down...and hit my face on the floor.

That's a little sample of what my face looked like the next day. Yeah, it looked/looks like I was the victim of domestic abuse. I told people this too though, as I laughed about it the next day.

Basically, Thursday was a dead day because I was unconscious by 6pm.

Friday, however, I vowed that day drinking would not occur again. Pitbull works on a yacht. We hung out there for the day.

It was beautiful. I love these net things they have on the boats, except that Sugar knocked my water bottle through the net into the water below. Sug hasn't uploaded her picture where I was jumping off the boat yet though, so I don't really have many pictures of me on the boat.

We just listened to music, talked, lounged, ate beef patties and coco bread and relaxed. Jade came to hang out with us at some point and that was pleasant.

I don't know if I talked about Jade from the last trip, but I adore the guy. We have a no drama understanding. It was a very interesting evening though, because both Pitbull and Jade were after me that day when we went back to the condo.

Jade kept talking about October. Both of them kept trying to pull me close and kiss me when the other wasn't looking. Pitbull gave me a cleavage hickey. It was really confusing, but whatever. They started drinking heavy and tried to get me to join, which I didn't really do so much. It was an awkward "lust" triangle. I can't even explain it, because they both knew I was flirting with the other one too. I was doing it in front of them. They didn't care that I had just kissed the other. Jade knew I was going home with him, I think that's why.

Anyway.

We went to this bar that night to get food and of course I forget my camera battery. Sugar was drunk, Pitbull was drunk, Jade had left to go shower and change and whatever. He came back with his roommate and his whole crew basically and we posted up outside of the bar against the car drinking and such.

They decided to do "crocodiles" that night. I didn't want one, but somehow I was convinced to do half a pill that night, and it did nothing for me. Sugar, however, was teeth all a-chatter. I had to force her to chew gum on both sides of her mouth and escort her to the restroom. On the way, I ran into the kid who I had originally thought stole my phone. I went to go talk to him after putting Sugar back where she needed to be.

Kid might pay for me to go back for New Years. Max apologized to him for beating him up. Everyone asked about my face, it was just an interesting time. We meted out whatever issues we had.

When I got back to the car I cut Pitbull off and shoved a water bottle into his hand. He was a mess.

We were there until closing, not having made it to any of the clubs, and hardly having danced. We hung out at Jade's until around 5am. I was EXHAUSTED, but I got to cuddle with these little gems:

Willow and Plus One (or so I deemed her, because she has no name yet). After just kind of hanging out with everyone, Jade and I "went to bed".

I spent all of Saturday at the house, hanging out with the puppies.

Plus One

I went back to the apartment in the afternoon and got ready to go out. We were supposed to go to Margaritaville, but I don't know why we went so late. We ended up having to pay, and we had waited for Max to get there. It was around 2 when we went. Max wasn't feeling well and the drinks were so expensive, so when I went to go get another drink back at the room, Max and Sugar left too. 15 minutes later, when we went back to MVille, it was pretty much dead.

Pitbull and I took it to the pool.

Sunday we hung around. We were supposed to go on the Yacht, or this guy Kevin's boat, but both options fell through, which pissed me off. So Pitbull and I went to the beach.

We were there around sunset. After the ocean, we took it to the shower. Then we went to Jade's for dinner.

 Hung out at Jade's while the boys played poker until 5am, and then Jade and I took it to bed.

Woke up around 9, said by the Jade and his roommate took me and Pitbull back down to the condo. One of Jade's friends' mom is a politician

Shahine Robinson

And it was nomination day on Monday. So her son - Jade's friend - had brought tshirts for the rally. I took one and was wearing it all day. I got a lot of questions, looks and comments about that shirt throughout the day. It was actually kind of funny. SHOWA!

Jade was supposed to come back down to say hi before I left, but his roommate got stuck in traffic and he didn't come. Pitbull took me to the bus, we ate lunch, and off I went. The cab was cheaper on the way back to the airport. I was there later than I anticipated, but there were no lines and so I ended up being super early. Stopped at duty free, got some free wine samples, coffee and food. Hung out by myself and used the wifi until my flight. The flight was nearly empty and I had an empty seat next to me.

Ackee Wine, Sorrel Blush and Rum Wine

It was a really good flight and I made it home by like 12:30.

It was a very uneventful trip and I'm a little annoyed we didn't do more, but I'm not upset and there wasn't much drama, which is always nice.

Oh, Baby Hustla's baby mama texted me over the weekend. He lied about having a kid. That's going nowhere.

I saw Playboy last night. Good times, good times. He left his watch at my house. I'm trying to decide if it was on purpose. I doubt he's going to have feelings at any point, but it was a little odd, that's for sure.

I'm still undecided on how I feel about Jamaica. I love it, but I don't know if I quite love it the way other people do...although I might just be trying to convince myself that's the case.

California next week!

Another admittance of failure

I'm really awful at this blogging thing, so here's what's been going on with me lately that I may or may not embellish upon later.

Work was hell last week. Actually for two weeks it wasn't the most spectacular place. My boss was gone and I had 9 grants due in two days, 7 of which were absurd and required hardcopies and CDs and FedExing. I actually thanked the FedExing gods on Wednesday night because as I caught the last FedEx pickup JUST as he was leaving the building (that I had literally thrown shit across the room to my desk, ran down 6 flights of stairs, jaywalked dangerously, hailed a cab and gotten to the pick up place all in 12 minutes to catch). I've noticed the FedEx gods are fickle though, as they did not pickup my package from the dropoff the night before causing my coworker to hand deliver a grant that was due on Wednesday to the MetLife building as my head spun and almost imploded from the 7 other grants I had to deal with.

This whole grant situation is quite stress inducing because NO ONE knows how to prepare for a deadline, and they have no regard for my workload or that of our grants office. In turn, the grants office HATES my guts because I stop paying attention to little details and end up sending them versions with STUPID mistakes, which makes me look like a complete fool.

Also, the grants office is 8 blocks away, which really blows when things need to have "per ink" signatures because it requires so much back and forth, and if my coworker didn't go pick up all of the signature pages I needed on Wednesday, I would've cried myself into oblivion and no one's grants would have arrived at their destination.

So I was at work until 8:30 on Wednesday. That's after dropping off the signature pages at the grants office at 7pm on Tuesday. Then I was at work until 7:30pm on Thursday because another of the doctors likes to push the deadlines and so I had to wait for her to submit her grant. All in all, I had worked 35 hours by Thursday and bitch didn't come to work on Friday. CHA CHING.

Guess what I did on Friday with my time off?

ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY...nothing.

I did nothing.

I took a whole day off to do nothing. I did go out on Friday night for the Mexican's roommate's boyfriend's bday. I wore wedges (so my feet hated me) and vomited Sangria up at a wine bar before the night even started. We went to this gay club. It was entertaining for the two hours we were there, but my feet hurt and I wasn't drunk and I was ready to go home. So guess what I did on Saturday because I went out on Friday night? Nothing.

Yup. I did nothing again. I packed my bag for Jamaica. Cried in my head a little because I overpacked for the billionth time. I literally looked at the items in my bag and mentally noted the stuff that would never even be unfolded because I brought too much. However, I did get the essentials in my overhead compartment carryon. These essentials are 20 solo cups, 6 ping pong balls and a deck of cards. Yup, I'm going to figure out how the fuck we can play beer pong without a long table in Jamaica. I'm going to figure it out. I swear. There will be pictures.

Did I tell you that I'm going back to Jamaica on Thursday? Yeah...that's right, I'm a glutton for punishment. It should be quite entertaining though and I'm pretty excited about it. I'm ready to be done with the next few days though.

Jesus. I just realized I haven't updated since before Thanksgiving. So here's how that shizz went.

My mom started cooking almost two weeks in advance (I might've mentioned that). I started my cooking about three days before.

Mind you, we do Thanksgiving at our house on Saturday so we can invite friends who spend Thursday with their family. We also go to my Uncle's house on the Upper West Side for actual Thanksgiving, because they can never make it to our house due to my Aunt's family having some annual shindig. After my Uncle's Thanksgiving I took my car, leaving my parents to take the train home, and made my way over to the Mexican's for their Thanksgiving. Their party was lovely. I carved the turkey (which was the best ever) and The Mexican got schwasted, everyone was happy. It was a Merry Thanksgiving. Great success.
 

Here is what I contributed to Thanksgiving:

• Mac and Cheese (I think I used about 7 cheeses)
• Bacon and Jalapeno Mac and Cheese (Same base as above) - took to the Mexican's and abandoned
• Bacon wrapped stuffed jalapenos (with herb cream cheese)
• Bacon wrapped waterchestnuts (with sriracha aioli)
• Bacon wrapped dates (stuffed with marscapone and almond slivers dipped in soy and brown sugar)
• Spinach, artichoke and crab dip (with mozzarella melted atop - very much like a restaurant..but better)
• Garlic Mashed Potatoes that are glorious and I don't even like potatoes
• Brussel Sprouts two ways (baked and crispy, and creamy mustard)
• Salad (with home made dressings)
• Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Pumpkin Cranberry Cookies
• Gingersnaps and pumpkin dip
• Sangria

Here's what my mother contributed to Thanksgiving:

• Her famous spinach that I always always want
• 6 types of stuffing (cornbread and sausage, sausage and sausage, water chestnut and chinese sausage, some kind of vegetarian one, oyster, wild rice with something or other)
• Gallatine (turkey stuffed with duck stuffed with chicken stuffed with sausage - no bones)
• Turkey
• Curry Pumpkin Soup
• Homemade chicken liver pate
• Cornbread
• Mozzarepas
• Mushrooms and Onions
• Sweet noodle kugel with peaches
• Stuffed mushrooms
• Sweet potato casserole
• Pumpkin pie
• Apple Pie
• Pear Tart
• Cheesecake
• .....I know I'm missing stuff, and some other people brought things as well but yeah...there was a shit ton of food and I remained mostly stress free. My mom and I didn't kill each other, and I was semi-social.

Here's what my dad contributed to Thanksgiving:

• Labels - his one and only job was to label the food, he failed. I labeled most of the stuff. I guess he also did everything else my mom told him to, so he contributed SOMETHING. He went to the store a lot for us.

I didn't go to my college friend's leftover party on Friday though. I pretty much hibernated until Monday actually.

In other news, let me tell you about the new guys in my life.

You see, Compas is pretty much gone. He got the hint that I wasn't interested. I'm an ass. I've moved on.
HWizard has been out of town for quite a bit, so that's all blah - but should be fine. Steel Pans works like a fucking fiend and has to wake up at the ass crack of dawn, but after our little tiff over money things are fine and he comes by for quickies when he can. I spent the day after Thanksgiving with JBike, and saw him on Saturday. He's finally working so maybe my money will come back to me soon!

I decided last weekend it was time to really get on my meeting people ish.

So I've been talking to this guy that we'll call Big Blue, because he's a Giants fan. GAG. But whatever, we talk about football and it's sweet. I went to watch the games with him yesterday in the Bronx and it was rather pleasant. He invited me to dinner on Friday, but I couldn't get my shit together in time to go before going out with the Mexican, so Sunday it was. We spent the day watching the games and rooting against each other eating pizza. It was lovely.

After I saw Big Blue, I went to go see this guy I will call Baby Hustla...because he's 21 (JUST turned 21 on Nov. 6) and well...he's a hustler folks. That's right, I'm talking to a goddamn pubescent drug dealer.

Whatever. He's an idiot. He has a face tattoo (which he thinks is fine because it's a cross and he loves Jesus), he also has some bible verse tattooed across his whole chest and kind of up his neck. He has a baby face, but is at least taller than me. His family is from Jamaica, although he is not. He's been shot twice, and recently. Everything about him screams AWFUL IDEA, but he's entertaining. We cuddled, he tried to get in my pants, and I didn't do it! He did bite my fucking throat though. Thanks for the hickey, asshole. He said he wanted me to remember him every time I looked in the mirror. I nearly punched him in the face.

All of that being said, I will most likely see him again because I'm a fucking fool and I think it'll be good sex. Also, he makes me feel smart because he says some of the dumbest shit I've ever heard and who doesn't need an intelligence ego boost from time to time?

The most important new boy I will call Playboy...because that's what he is. He admittedly doesn't care much about girls' feelings. However, he's been to my house twice now (Thursday and Friday) and all we did was cuddle and well, I let him get to second base, but seriously it was precious. He's a really sweet guy - so far - and we're really comfortable with each other. Great cuddler. He does give me slight panic attacks when he wakes up, because randomly he'll wake up, make some random movement like pulling me close or basically waking up saying that it's time for him to go. Motherf-er, RELAX. I told him that, because it freaks me the fuck out when he does that. Also, his car was blocking my mom's in, so I knew he had to be out by 8, so I didn't sleep so well on Thursday.

Look, it's a work in progress, but I'm just proud of myself for keeping my pants on lately. Trying to form bonds of substance...although not one of these guys will end up going anywhere, so sad. They're all so damn cute though.

So damn cute...

Here's a fun little tidbit about today though. So I went to get the salad dressing from the fridge, and someone put it in there without screwing on the top and it slipped onto the ground and EXPLODED all over me. My shirt is currently drying. Thank goodness for layers. I smell a bit like balsamic vinaigrette and I had the stuff all over my face. I keep it classy blogosphere, I keep it classy.