I AM A BADASS

Life is good. As I say often, life is hard, but so so good.

A lot can happen in a day...or a weekend even. Let me start with Thursday.

Thursday a friend comes up and we get a call from the manager of the Rockhouse. He gets me, and four other Peace Corps volunteers from the area to come and have dinner on the house. My friend Nick and I end up getting to stay in one of the rooms. It was awesome. By 3pm we were poolside being served free drinks and talking about life in the Peace Corps. I think I was a little too excited because I downed three delicious margaritas after only haven eaten yogurt for breakfast. Lets just say I didn't make it to dinner, but I heard it was awesome! The next morning was breakfast on the house served to our room, followed by a couple hours poolside and then some amazing snorkeling. We snorkeled in and out and around a ton of caves and saw some pretty cool stuff. Two high points, first high point: Seeing a manta ray that had a wingspan of a good 5-6 feet. It was totally awesome and we tried to follow it for a while but it was too fast for us. Second high point: We had to navigate through a jellyfish land mine to get back to the hotel. These aren't little cute jellyfish either. They are big fuckers! Bright and purple and the size of my head. We made it unscathed. I don't remember what was next...oh..we met Grace my bffj and we relaxed for a but at my place before heading up to Brian and Yvonnes (married PC couple in Negril) for dinner, drinks, stories, and games.

Saturday: Today...now tonight. Saturday was awesome. Relaxed, napped, ate, but two very cool things happened as well. First cool thing: Well cool, scary, exciting anyways. I got attacked by a big honking fish! I was swimming with Tom after cliff jumping and we had snorkel gear tossed down to us. We are swimming and looking around and I suddenly feel this pinch on my leg. I knew it wasn't a jellyfish because it didn't sting and burn. I look underwater and there is this damned dark yellow fish about 2 feet long and 4 inches thick with a big flat snout swimming right for me. I starts biting me all over and I am kicking and screaming and trying to punch it and missing every time. Tom doesn't know what the hell is going on so he looks under the water and sees this thing having its way with me. I finally got it to swim away and it went after Tom!!! He was able to shoo it away and it came right back for me. This wasn't a curious cute fish. This was a scary as shit fish that was on the attack. I was able to pester it away and it swam off but I didn't know if it was going to come back so I swam out of the water. But even getting out of the water was a hassle because there was no ladder. I had Andy reaching down for me and I had to take of the snorkel gear and throw it up but I didn't throw it high enough and it sank into the water. Tom had to jump in the water to fetch them. So it took a while but I finally got out of the water and not a mark on me! Unscathed...so weird. I got bit so many times. Ok, second cool thing: we all went to LTU a local bar to watch the baseball game but I lost interest in about 34 seconds and went to talk to Bill, the owner. We chatted for a while and he had asked me on another encounter to round up some volunteers to work at this Donkey Race event in February to paint faces. I said sure but after thinking about it I realized I don't want to volunteer, I want to race! So tonight I told him I want to race a donkey and he said it wasn't possible, but by the end of the night, he said I could race his donkey. He told me the Jamaican men on the donkeys were rough and tough and I said I can take em!!! That's it out of me. It is a three day weekend and it is only Saturday. Two days left...yay!