So, my living situation has much improved this week: I moved from Kingston into the mountains just outside of the city. The climate up here is much nicer, there is no air and noise pollution and it doesn't take me an average of ten minutes to cross the street outside my house - rather I tend to walk in the middle of the road here with an average of 50 cars passing per day…

The magic word is WWOOF again: there is a total of 1 (one) WWOOFing places here in Jamaica and I am staying here now, helping on the farm, in the guest house, in the café and with whatever needs to be done at any time. This means that I finally don't have to worry about what to do all day long. I wake up in the morning, take a little walk or run in the peace and beauty of the mountains here and then get to work. And in the evening I am actually tired from what I've done all day! The farm and all the houses are built into a steep slope so it is really interesting how it all works. The vegetables are grown on terraces built into the slope and moving things from one place to another is a rather interesting challenge. People here are very nice and luckily they have some experience in working with white people, so I am not treated like a natural wonder but just like another worker, which is very nice. I also get food and lodging in return for my work so I don't have to worry about money any more, which is also very helpful. Also the vegetarian food here is delicious: it is real vegetarian food, with real - homegrown - vegetables.

I also finally manage to sleep at night, as it is very quiet up here (that is apart from the noise the cykadas make). Down in Kingston I woke up an average of 15 times per night because a loud car was passing on the road, people were talking down by the entrance of my building or because of the TV of a neighbor. Also it rains more here than it does in Kingston. I don't have to watch the clouds build up and the rain fall in the mountains any more without getting a drop of it. Mind you, it was getting better in Kingston now, too. It had actually been raining several times in the past two weeks.

From where I work now, I feel like I can see half the island. I can see all the way to the sea (although the city of Kingston is graciously blocked from view by a mountain ridge) and the mountains on the other side. There is a lot of interesting creatures living up here. Smooth-billed anis seem to be doing a good job replacing mammals on this island: they make similar noises and use similar habitats as cats… I see some lizards and geckos here. Also, of course, lots of butterflies and all kinds of other birds (which I won't bore you with again. You can check them on ebird if you want to).

In the weekend I still stay in Kingston to go to the floorball trainings. My happiness with the project has not significantly improved in the past few days, but because of my new arrangements I care much less about all that goes wrong there.

One more personal note because I have had a discussion about that a while ago and I was forced to change my mind about it last week: I have not had a job for the last three months and I did never like that part. I was not really bored but I felt like I had nothing useful to do, which is not a nice feeling. So for the last three months I have been waiting to finally get back to work in a real job (whether it was for money or not didn't matter, what mattered was the part of getting up in the morning in order to do something in the day). Not for a second did I doubt that I did not want to continue like I did for those months. Of course, when I first moved to Kingston, I found myself things to do, new parts of the city to explore and I spent hours on the internet, chatting with friends or just following the news from Europe. Not until when I finally got the chance to work again, I found that maybe I did, after all, like that arrangement. And just before I was to start working up here, I suddenly had doubts as to whether I couldn't just stay in Kingston and continue with what I was doing. And I seriously thought about it, which I had never expected! However, the minute I got to work here, I was so glad that I had not taken the easy way and stayed in Kingston, because the feeling of finally doing something useful again as well as the new way of enjoying your spare time, when you know it is precious rather than abundant is absolutely worth it. But finally I do understand that some people may find it hard to start a new job after being unemployed for a while, because I myself had never expected that from me but then I did find it hard - but only until I really did it.

Now, my new job also means, however, that I am no longer bored day in day out, so will have other things to do than writing blogs. If you don't get an update any time soon, it's probably because I am too busy enjoying life in paradise. Hope you can do the same!

And just a note on the side: I will put a few pictures on here, but basically the mountains here look the same everywhere, and I have already put some pictures of them. And the view here, it is really hard to capture in pictures, so it's not really worth trying…