Jouvert. Carnival. Bolt. Recording Studio. AHH!

Excitement was in the air this week as Carnival weekend approached!  Makeup, accessories etc. were subject of every conversation, as everyone prepared themselves for the fun ahead :)

Wednesday, after a full day of working, Ashley, Erica, Coley and I went to watch the season finale of "The Contender" - Jamaica's reality tv boxing show.

at the Contender!

 Our friend Sanjay helps produce it, and set us up with some awesome VIP tickets so we could catch the event from the front row.  Wray + Nephew, the sponsors, decided to throw in an additional million dollars for the final episode so it was QUITE the event.  In fact, it almost ended up a stage show!  One of the contestants (my favorite, who ended up winning!) Rikardo Smith was led out by Vybz Kartel himself, belting his infamous "Touch a Button Nuh."

Di Teacha

Soon after, I-Octane gave an amazing performance, with all his hot tunes and a lot of high energy :)

I-Octane!

And of course, no show is complete without Mavado!  He performed an amazing set that we enjoyed standing atop chairs right next to the stage.  It was such an awesome experience... boxing + live music, who needs anything more?!

<3 Mavado

Friday was our start to Carnival weekend... Ashley and I desperately wanted tickets to LIME's Jouvert... another paint party where the famous soca artist Michal Montano was set to perform.  Tickets were rather expensive so we did what we do best: looked for a free way in.  Sure enough, Facebook provided the perfect forum!  Pepsi Jamaica announced they were having a contest to give away two tickets - we just had to submit in 20 words or less why we wanted to go.

So in approximately 4 minutes, before the hard deadline, Ashley and I submitted the following entries (her's is under Ashlyn):

And the outcome??  Well out of many responses...

WOOOO!  So Erica, Ashley and I head over that evening with our friends Simone and Carolyn for an awesome night of dancing to Michal Montano and Beenie Man, covered once again in paint!  To give you a sense of timing... we got to the show around 2am as Beenie Man was singing his infamous "I'm okayyyyy"... Michal went on around 3am... and at about 4:30am, the road march started!  Yes, ROAD MARCH!

Beenie!

Michal!

Essentially, everyone at the various Jouvert events all over Kingston met up to dance alongside huge trucks with sound systems, blasting soca music.  So we danced along with hundreds of people, covered in paint, until about 7am as the sun rose... an AMAZING experience :)  Thank you, Pepsi, for the free tickets!

Sadly, don't have any more pics of this road march, but we DID come across a picture of beach jouvert (similar, paint-covered experience) in the newspaper... crazy!

In the Observer!

We woke up shortly after, at about 8:30am for a rather sad event.  Angella Harvey, the Fulbright coordinator at the U.S. Embassy, recently passed away in a very sudden manner soon after the Fulbright Enrichment Week.  We were all shocked - she was so young and seemed healthy.  We attended her memorial on Saturday morning and listened as her friends and family told stories from her childhood.  We will always remember her for her outgoing personality and constant smiling :)

After the funeral, Ashley, Jasmine and I met Erica downtown at the National Gallery - one of the places on my list!  It is Jamaica's art gallery, full of sculptures and paintings.  My favorite, though, is the one she did with the face of our friend Case!  It was absolutely gorgeous in person and literally took my breath away...  We spent the rest of the afternoon shopping downtown, enjoying some s40 bonding time - it had been so long since the four of us had been together!  Though extremely sleep-deprived, we enjoyed shopping for fresh veggies and fruit in the open-air market downtown, which we used to make some delicious vegetable curry.  Yum.

s40 @ National Gallery

CASE!!!!  With us in front :)

Excitement was definitely in the air Sunday morning, just in time for the road march!  Now, this is not a joke... it literally starts at 10am and goes until 8pm... a full day of marching, dancing, drinking and laughing :)



The four of us head over to our friends' Simone/Mel/Kimiko/Carolyn's apartment to get ready for the big day!  As we ate yummy porridge and plantains and listened to some soca hits, we covered our faces in facepaint, glued on gems and feathers, and did the last-minute situps...

And soon enough, we, along with hundreds of Jamaicans, touched d road...!

s40 pon di road!!!!!!!

Found some friends along the way...

We found our neighbor Sadiki!

My Carnival Mentor, Kerry-Ann!

Found my friend Nalini (love the colors in this pic!)

Me, Laura, Erica!

Kam, me, E and Saran getting dinner at Mas Camp!  Love the Stewarts!

AND even some local celebrities (see below... Yendi Phillips, the gorgeous 2010 Miss Jamaica / runner-up for Miss Universe!).  Could she BE any more beautiful?!  I think not.

Me, Jazz, and YENDI!

We even found soca performer, Michal Montano (yes!  who we JUST saw perform!).  He loved us :)

Carolyn, me, Ash and E with Michal!

Sadly, we got caught in quite the monsoon... thank goodness for banana trees, our makeshift umbrellas...

Hiding out under the palm tree...

Jazzy and me, loving the palm...

But the rain didn't stop us... we kept dancing :)

E and me!

Carolyn, E, Ash, Simone, Kimiko and me!

The day was TOO fun... and made returning to reality Monday a little difficult :)  Monday, I spent the day at the National Public Health Lab, going through over 4000 medical records.  I tried to get a shot of my working quarters... a tiny closet-like space with walls high of medical records... yikes!  My goal was to sort through all the biopsy data from Kingston's Public Hospital to understand what the cervical cancer disease profile looked like in Jamaica.  It was definitely taxing, but SO interesting to read through these various patient cases.  Hopefully the data will be helpful as I wrap up my findings :)

Too.many.records

And just when you think this blog post has been TOO exciting, it's time to talk about... finally crossing off the #1 thing on my bucket list.  YUP - Meeting USAIN BOLT!

As my avid readers know, meeting Bolt has been the #1 thing I have wanted to do in Jamaica!  Obviously, it is exciting to simply meet a very accomplished athlete (3-time gold medal winner in one Olympics / 2-time world record holder).  But more than that, I feel that during my time in Jamaica, I've been able to talk to such a variety of individuals (from youth to taxi drivers) about how inspiring he is.  He truly has brought such glory to Jamaica!  Plus, I had so many questions for him!

Because Bolt is around my age (a Leo!  August 86!) and Kingston is the smallest place ever, many of my friends are close with him as well.  So my friend decided to just carry me to the University track on Tuesday afternoon to go meet Bolt.  Eek! Please note – there is a GIANT Puma Ad of him on the track where he practices AND the track was essentially built for him. No big deal... He is such a superstar!

Playing checkers by UWI pool with my friend Garth

My friend and I waited for him to finish his practice (playing checkers and eating june plums in the meantime), after which we all decided to get dinner and watch the Celtics game.  Good thing I am totally up to speed on my NBA playoffs knowledge... definitely made the game more interesting (though they lost, darn!).  The best part of watching the game, though, was when I asked him WHY he was a Celtics fan (Jamaicans don’t really love Boston…in fact he asked me why the heck I’m moving there this fall).  Apparently, he is really a huge Kevin Garnett fan!  He was telling me that KG is just an awesome role model and really inspiring in his interviews.  I just thought it was so amazing to hear how one all-star athlete is so driven by another!  Since I have always thought of Bolt as a role model for so many Jamaicans, it was cool to see it come full circle.

Pon Bolt's bike

Next, Bolt had a quick business meeting while I just watched basketball. One of them looked SO familiar... it was Jamaican artist Shaggy!  Again, crazy.  The rest of the evening was just as random... hung out with him as his barber cut his hair; sat on his ATV dirt bikes; and watched a lot of TV.

I loved that I got to ask him all my burning questions... of course, I asked him what his best running experience was.  He told me that obviously Beijing 2008 was awesome and just a really fun experience of meeting people etc.  But he said one of the coolest experiences was in Berlin (right after he set the world record).  He was in the Puma store and apparently the streets and store filled up SO much that the police had to force him to leave the area.  He was telling me he’d never seen that kind of sight and how amazing it was.   Gotta say, it was really awesome to hear him tell me the whole story… it was so humbling and made me want to pinch his cheeks (but I did not).

He then asked me about my favorite experience in Jamaica. I told him about climbing the Blue Mountains at night (which he’d never done) and how beautiful it was at the top. Then I told him about when I stayed on a farm in the mountains overlooking the ocean and built a mud hut! He didn’t believe me so… I went to his computer and pulled up my blog :)

Me and Bolt watching bball on the couch... ahh!

Overall, was a great evening of just getting to know one of the biggest superstars in the world!  He was just a really nice guy and I can see why everyone in Jamaica really admires him!

Just when the week couldn't get more exciting... it DID!  Wednesday, I dragged my friend Sanjay to see a Jamaican play titled "Big Tree, Small Axe" which was playing by my apartment - another thing on my bucket list.  I really enjoyed watching the dramatic acting... reminded me a little of all the characters I have met in Jamaica!  And I'm proud to say that I understood probably 90% of the discussion... guess my patois IS getting better (and luckily Sanjay helped out with the other 10%)!  Anyways, it was quite the drama and a little out-there at times, but overall, I enjoyed the show!

Now this is where the night gets crazy... after the show, Sanjay and I were hungry so we went looking for food.  Sanjay asked if we could stop by the recording studio.  Though he is mostly a big TV personality now, he's had some big songs in Jamaica over the past few years and is re-entering the music scene with some awesome singles.  I'm so excited for him to rock it again!

Anyways, we stopped by the studio, which was in the back of a house.  A pretty girl openned the door and after Sanjay says hi, I obviously introduced myself:

Me:  Hi!  I'm Anita! Nice to meet you!
Her: Hi Anita, I'm TIFA.

AHHH!  TIFA!!!  She's a HUGE female Jamaican artist and I am a HUGE fan!  Clearly, I was in celebrity-shock but def tried to play it cool.  Eek!  Anyways, she was so nice and beautiful and we chatted for a little bit.  Then, Sanjay, me and a male friend of his sat outside in the backyard and his friend started playing me some new chunes.  He played one unreleased awesome song and when I asked Sanjay who sang it, he said the friend who was sitting with the laptop, "Wayne."  So I looked closely at the computer at it said... "WAYNE MARSHALL."

AHHH!  Wayne Marshall!  He's a HUGEEEE male Jamaican artist and I was currently sitting next to him listening to his unreleased music!  Insane... celebrity-shock one more time.  I told Wayne it was my first time at a recording studio, so he started teaching me all these terms and about the process and even performed a song off his phone that he had written for another artist.  MAAAADDDD.  Such a nice and extremely, extremely lyrically-talented guy... I remain a HUGE fan!  In fact, his new single "Swaggin" (which Sanjay got me a copy of!) is currently my favorite chune... obsessed!

Next, we actually went into the studio!  I listened as a few guys (including Sanjay) helped record a new promo.  Also, we listened to some music by the director of the documentary "Better Mus Come" (which I had seen/discussed in an older post) who randomly showed up to the studio (with baklava!).  Anyways, everyone was SO nice and I really learned a lot about the whole recording process.  Again, an amazing experience that I wish I had had my camera for!

Bolt!  Track & Records

Thursday night, I had a lovely girl-date with my friend Rani!  We had a delicioussss dinner in Marketplace at China Express, sitting in the beautiful outdoor area.  We even randomly met a whole group of stunt bikers (like they do tricks on bikes), including the woman (yess!  girl power!!) who is supposedly the best in the world right now... she was kind enough to give both of us a signed poster :)  After, we had a drink at the Usain Bolt's brand-new bar, "Tracks & Records."  This bar, by the way, is SO digitally-advanced... TVs and touch screens to order food everywhere.  Honestly, I felt like I was in Manhattan or someplace extremely chic!  It was just so nice to catch up with Rani - she is such a sweet girl, always with great advice and stories, and has become such a good friend.  As fun as it was, it made me SO sad to be leaving Jamaica!  I truly hope that with things like Facebook, we can all stay in touch :)  After dinner, Jasmine and I decided we wanted a night out of dancing, so we hit all the spots... Happy Thursdays... Fiction... and the Building.  Definitely made for a 5am sort of night, but an awesome dance session :)

Guess the "21 days of fun" of May have been off to QUITE the start!  Stay tuned for the remaining few weeks... bound to be similarly exciting :)