After spending the night in the airport hotel (due to the impending snow storm) we rose before the sun and took the shuttle to the airport. We made it through security with little fuss, and arrived at our gate just as the sun was starting to rise. Our gate happened to face due east, which gave us the perfect view of God’s way of saying “good morning” to us.

Although we heard reports of snow starting to fall heavily in York, our flight took off and was high above the clouds before the snow hit Baltimore. BWI started canceling flights not long after ours departed and we are so grateful we managed to just barely miss the storm.

Once in Jamaica, we stopped for lunch right on the coast, enjoying the spectacular view of the turquoise water and appreciating the delightful ocean breeze. After lunch it was time to head up the mountains to where we’re staying in Mandeville. The best way I can describe the van trip is to equate it to an old-fashioned wooden roller coaster. However, despite the bumpiness and nerve-racking-ness (and yes I believe I just made up that word), of the trip, it gave us a beautiful whirlwind tour of this part of Jamaica. One of the things we were marveling at was the gorgeous wrought iron work on many of the buildings, as well as the vivid colors and beautiful stone (and occasionally mosaic) walls that surrounded the nicer houses. We also found it quite fascinating that along our trip, the bigger and definitely higher end houses were mingled right among the run-down and much poorer houses.

We saw a great deal of interesting things during our three hour van trip, including fields of sugar cane (which is what I called Jamaica’s version of corn fields, as the fields of sugar cane looked a little bit like fields of corn), a number of dogs and goats wandering around (which we were informed are not stray dogs or wild goats, as they all do have owners; they just roam freely all day and return to their home at nightfall), and a great deal of people, from all ages, walking along the road.

We are all exhausted from our long day of traveling, but we are excited for what tomorrow will bring!

-Mary Kate