Some issues...

issue #1
The infamous Blue Mountain coffee is nowhere to be found here in Kingston! Instead, some cafes will serve us instant coffee, not freshly brewed kind. I mistakely bought a coffee bean bag (Ungrounded) and now am stuck with it. Decidedly, I'll toss this bag of BM beans to Sandra who requested it. THere are other 2 volunteers who are also coffee addicts and we all suffer together through coffee-withdrawal. I recently formed my own method of brewing another bag of (grounded!) coffee to serve a single-cup. It takes longer than a typical coffee-maker back home... so you can figure i'm currently homesick. :/

issue #2
$1 USD = $67 Jamaican Dollar.
This may be true but it misleads us profusely!
It aint cheap to live here (we technically moved here in the dorms for one month after paying our "bills" such as food, laundry, cooking equipments, bedsheets, etc.)! Most of the food and gifts are in the same value as it is in America! It sometimes makes us (the volunteers) wonder how the people get by here. I often feel like I'm in the South of USA, such as Mississippi or East St. Louis, not in a 3rd-world country!

issue #3
"Dumb" is often used here as a word substitution for "deaf."
After discussing with other volunteers (Deaf and hearie) and Deaf visitors from America, we agreed it that term is almost as bad as being called or saying the "n" word for black people. It puts a rock in our stomach to hear that archaic term and boils us up to try to enlighten whoever calls us/them "dumb" to the corrected term--DEAF! I recently learned the reason--it is the British way to say it. Our Jamaican roommate explained to us that it does not mean as in "stupid" but just mute. Well, Deafness and muteness are still *not* the same thing.