Halfway Done With Haiti!

Week three was more uneventful than the others have been which is not something I am complaining about. It meant nobody was getting sick (which almost all of us have had the stomach flu or some other fun illness), it meant no protests or riots were happening (that happens a lot too but our translators keep us away from those so we are very safe), and no new awkward experiences (like trying to go to the Haitian equivalent of Time Square on New Year's Eve. Everyone just stopped and stared at the white people). We did get one of our team members back though! She had left us before we came to Haiti due to the several illnesses she was trying to fight off. It was fun getting to welcome a team member back after we had been without her for a couple weeks. The end of week three does mean we are more than halfway done with our time in Haiti. It is crazy to think how fast everything seems to be going. We do spend the least amount of time in Haiti but it still feels like we've been here forever but then again, not long at all. That's kind of how everything is. Like part of me feels like I've known my team for years but really it's just been over a month.

For the most part, we have a very relaxed schedule in Haiti. It really is like we live here, we just do as we please. We do have some classes that we teach. Mondays and Thursdays we teach English to elementary age children so it's a lot of "head, shoulders, knees, and toes" lessons and songs. The kids do seem to have so much fun and a true love of learning from us. Fridays and Saturdays we teach English to young adults. Many of them know a pretty decent amount of English so we get to work on things like sentence structure and grammatical stuff. Saturday mornings we also help lead kids club at a local church which is just like a children's church. That is challenging because a lot of the songs and games that we usually play with little kids require English and we don't know enough Creole to translate those games over. They are a big fan of the Macarena so we fill up lots of time with that!

Haiti has been fun and full of new experiences but it has also brought some challenges. The one that has probably been the hardest for me is the inability to properly communicate with Mona and the other families that live in our area. We definitely saw this when we attempted to do laundry last week. Imagine someone giving you three different soaps and telling you that you use certain soaps with the lights and the others with the darks and you sometimes rinse in between switching soaps but other times you don't. Now imagine they can't use words. Gesturing is the only effective communication. That and the words "No, no!" Now imagine getting that from six different people who made do things slightly differently. That's laundry at our house. I do love all of the moms in our area but it's overwhelming when they all try acting like moms toward us. It was slightly humorous but it quickly became frustrating because we literally had no idea what was going on.

We have definitely still had some great experiences this past week:
-We found this bakery that has hot bread that kind of tastes like a thick pretzel. It's addicting! Plus it's only like 15 cents for a little individual loaf.
-We got to go to this really pretty area up in the mountains to go watch our translators and some locals play soccer. The ride there was long and terrifying bumping along on our tiny motos. But definitely worth the near death experience.
-One of our host sisters will bring us chocolate cheetos! Yes, it's a real thing.
-There is a place here that sells hamburgers! Definitely hit that up this week. Got me thinking about how excited I am for 4th of July hamburgers (family: that was a hint for you)
-Every morning, my roommates and I tell stories about all of the weird stuff we did in our sleep the night before. Apparently Tiffany and I have gotten so close we were having a conversation in our sleep.
-There was a rooster right next to our room that we named Dinner because he would wake us up every 15 minutes starting at 3am and we just wanted to eat him so we could sleep... and this week someone decided to have Dinner for dinner. We sleep much better now.
-Friday night we had gotten snuggled in bed were awaken by Wilson knocking on our door saying "Girls, did you brush your teeth?". He knows that we love rice and had been given some by one of the ladies in our area and wanted us to eat some. Then Monday morning we woke up and saw for breakfast Mona had bought us rolls and peanut butter. We had all been talking about how much we missed peanut butter and apparently Wilson told Mona we wanted some. Wilson would make a great American boyfriend because he understands that food is a girl's best friend. I think it really makes him happy to see us so happy when we get surprised with food we like. We got a good one, he loves us!
-My chaco tan is coming in nice. Still struggling with being in love with the chaco part but the fact there is a tan at all makes me feel pretty good.
-Also, if any of you gave me a letter with your donation or my last day at church or at any other time, I have those with me! And I read one a day just because I like being reminded people are praying for me.

My time with God everyday is definitely the biggest thing that has kept me going. I'm reading through 1 Corinthians and I found this really awesome verse in chapter 8 verse 6 "yet for us there is one God, the Father. All things are from Him and we exist for Him. And there is one Lord, Jesus Christ. All things are through Him, and we exist through Him."