Jamaica Arrival

Hello all!

We just wanted to assure you that we made it Jamaica safe and sound although Hurricane Dennis tried to keep us away. We were able to stick to our original itinerary and we flew into Kingston on Friday at 2:00 pm. We have been staying at the University of the West Indies since Friday and tomorrow we depart for our home-stay families at our sector training sites. We were both assigned to the same sector, Environment and we will be working on the Green Initiative Project - Kaelyn as a Small Business Advisor and Shane as an Environmental Promoter. We will have this training in Ewarton which is in the St. Catherine parish - which is pretty much right in the center of Jamaica. There are 21 volunteers in our sector group out of the 62 total volunteers in Group 76. We will be staying with the same host family but we won't know any specifics about our families until tomorrow. We will be with our host families until August 26th when we are sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers (right now we are just Trainees). After that we move out to our specific site assignment where will start our two years of service - but right now we have zero information about what or where those assignments are. They had all the volunteers get cell phones, which are very prevalent on the island and needed for easy contact and safety purposes.

There was some confusion when we got here about our address for sending letters and packages (padded envelopes or boxes) and we thought we should clarify. If things are sent to the below address through regular mail (US Post Office and not UPS or FedEx) we will receive them duty free and without any hassle.

Kaelyn and Shane McCall
c/o Suchet Loois, Peace Corps Country Director
U.S. Peace Corps
8 Worthington Avenue,
Kingston 5
Jamaica, W.I.

While we are in training we may or may not have regular email access but we will definitely have cell phone service and be receiving mail. Once we move out to our permanent sites we are going to sign up for internet service through the cell phone company so we will have regular email access. We haven't seen any postcards for sale yet but will send some when we find them. We have been enjoying lots of new and exciting fresh fruits, making some new friends, and learning to play Jamaican dominoes.

Love you all,
Kaelyn and Shane