Who are Jo and Leisa?

Kaya from Earning by the Sea has kindly tagged us in a Blogger Q&A. We will tag three friends at the end of this post.

 

It’s the first post of this type on Joleisa- Penny Pinchers’ Paradise so I hope you enjoy it! We do feel a bit ‘vulnerable’ but here goes:

The answers will be from us both. In the first photograph, Jo is on your right and Leisa is on your left. We are identical. We are very similar in a lot of respects. Read on and you’ll see.

 

When was the last time you cried?

For me (Jo), it was Mother’s day. My only son was in Australia so I didn’t think that a 19-year-old boy (man) would remember Mothers’ Day amidst all the fun he was having. Well, it happened that he did remember! Not only did he remember but he arranged for a lovely bouquet of flowers to be delivered to me on Mothers’ Day. It was then that the salty, hot liquid ran down my face. It was only just a bit though.

Leisa can’t remember the last time she cried.

 

If you were another person, would you be a friend of yourself?

Yes! We are such good friends to each other and to our friends. Truth be told, we are happy with each others’ company but we know we do need to include and embrace others.

I sometimes think about how utterly devastated I would be if something were to happen to my twin. I honestly hate to think about it… But back to the question at hand.

Yes, we are good at maintaining friendships as long as it is a two-way street. We have valued friends all over the world.

Our friend Dahlia and her family. This was more than 10 years ago and we still manage to talk at least 5 times per week. She lives in Connecticut and we live in Birmingham.

Our college friend Sandra … and we still keep in touch at least once or twice a week even though we live on different continents.

Do you use sarcasm a lot?

Well, mostly no. We do with kids whether at home or in the classroom. What do you say to a child at school who asks if we go home (to Jamaica) after school? Well, there was one whole class that thought that both Bob Marley and Usain Bolt are our neighbours as they had been told that Jamaica is a very small country.

 

What’s the first thing you notice about people?

We both always look at peoples’ faces to see their facial expressions. From that, we can tell if they are kind, caring, friendly, nervous, or overconfident showoffs. We usually act off that too. So we love to see smiling, friendly eyes.

Scary movie or happy endings?

We are not movie fans, generally speaking. A day at the movies usually find us both at the very back and fast asleep!

If it’s a really good comedy, we will give it a good go. We prefer real-life documentary stuff rather than make believe stuff.

Even the lovely movie Peter Rabbit which is the last film we saw with the kids saw us both snoring for a little bit.

Favourite smells?

For both of us, anything associated with our favourite time of the year, Christmas:

Jamaican Christmas cake

Cinnamon

Citrus

What’s the furthest you’ve ever been from home?

We are both travel fanatics (maybe we would do better blogging about that) and originally from Jamaica. Not sure of the distances but one or both of us have been to:

The USA

Holland

Turkey

Turks and Caicos Islands

Cayman Islands

Italy

Sweden

France

Spain

Poland

So where do you reckon is the farthest from home?

Do you have any special talents?

We love doing arty crafty stuff like card making, sewing, painting, cooking, baking etc.

When we were about 9 years old, our mom sent us across to the neighbour’s house to learn how to crochet. After over 35 years or so, we took up crocheting again and there is nothing better to relax with. We cant even read the patterns but we can create runners, blankets, scarves, dresses, bags etc with crochet.

Being twins, we are always asked if we can feel things for each other. We actually don’t feel each others’ pain physically, but we know and feel when the other is sad or down.

Don’t ask me how we know, but we do. And we don’t have to be in the same place.

 

Where were you born?

Linstead, St Catherine, Jamaica. It is the land of the fastest man and woman on earth, and the Reggae legend, Bob Marley. Jamaica is a tiny island in the Caribbean sea. It is one of the grooviest places on earth.

What are your hobbies?

We used to enjoy reading but there isn’t much time for them anymore. We also like walking, long coach trips, and catching up with friends over the world via Skype, Facetime and Whatsapp.

What did you want to be when you grew up?

Early in life when we were little, all little girls said they wanted to be air hostesses! We didn’t even know what that was but we wanted to be that too! Later on, we wanted to be teachers and that’s what we ended up doing. Even though we don’t teach anymore, we are so happy that we did dedicate most of our lives to the profession and to training and educating some of the world’s brightest (and those not so bright too).

How many countries have you been to?

See above.

What was your favourite/worst subject in School?

We both loved English, I loved writing stories and we had such a wild imagination!  We never really did well in Maths. The PE teacher thought we were ‘lazy’ and wrote it in our reports every term or so. We were fat and found it hard to move fast, lol.

What is your Favourite drink?

Our favourite hot drink is hot chocolate We also love herbal teas like mint, ginger and Jo loves chamomile. One of us is a Coco-Cola addict! We don’t drink alcoholic drinks.

What would you (or have you) name your children?

Our children are Shalee and Romario. Like those names? They are 19 and 17 years old and are model kids, lol. They do well and make us proud. We can’t think of any other names that would suit them.

.

Who are some of your favourite YouTubers?

We are really only just getting into the YouTube scene so we haven’t got favourites yet. For the time being, we like watching other money bloggers and have subscribed to some of them. You can check out our channel here. Please do encourage and support us by giving us a like and or subscribe to see more of what we are up to in terms of living a frugal lifestyle.

 

Favourite memory from childhood?

We have far too many! Let’s list a few:

Going for a swim in the river near to our house

Playing ball games with friends until it got too dark to see the ball

Looking through grandma’s stuff when she opened the ‘trunk’ of her bed.

Going to Grand Market the night before Christmas day in the yearly new dress

Riding in daddy’s car. Most other kids (our friends) either didn’t know their dad or he didn’t have a car

 

How would you describe your fashion sense?

We wear clothes that match our age and are fairly modest. We wouldn’t say we are fashionable at all. And yes, we do wear each other’s clothes most time. We can stay at each other’s house for months at a time without bringing any clothes over! That’s a perk of being a twin! Jealous?

I keep telling Leisa that we have way too many clothes so last year she made a solemn pledge about that that you can read here.

Tell us one of your bad habits!

This is a habit we have no control over We both snore loudly. Annoyingly loudly. We also both have this habit of laughing at a joke that no one else even gets, even though we may be in a group! It can be difficult to explain to someone that we aren’t necessarily laughing at them. We really can’t help ourselves in that regard.

I’m tagging Jess, Julie and Michele to take part in this next so you can read more about them and their lives, get to know them better and read their blogs. I can’t wait to read their posts!