June Team - Day 1

So, we have just completed our first full day in Haiti and boy has it been eventful!
To start, we were serenaded at 11PM, 12PM, 3AM and 5AM (these were the times that I heard) by either the roosters or lone hound who barked at nothing in particular. Since the rest of the team also lost sleep to the wacky rooster time clock, we have named two of them Willy and Kenny and we would have no qualms eating them any time some! We did catch one break last night, it was not incredibly hot, at least not for those of us in the front bedroom (Karen would probably disagree with me though!)
First thing this morning we went to the orphanage to see the opening of school. While we were waiting for things to get going, one of the wooden box that the workers had built to encase the upright columns of rebar, came loose while a team of men were trying to nail it in place. The 15foot box fell over and hit Cathy Jones (from the House of Hope) on the head and grazing Renee’s left upper arm causing a scape and bruising. Cathy was stunned for a few minutes but appears to have survived the assault with only a bump on the head and a stiff neck. It was lucky that none of the children were standing near them at the time!
After our return from the orphanage, the team spent several hours unpacking and organizing all of the items that we brought down here. A big portion of what we tried to do was to separate those things that we want to take to the second orphanage when we make our trip over there later this week. Several of us spent a couple of hours stenciling backpacks for both orphanages. The stenciled outlines of various items such as flowers, fish, rainbows etc. will allow the kids to color and decorate their individual backpacks. They turned out pretty cute so we can’t wait to see them finished!
We went to the orphanage after lunch and started our first concerted ESL lesson. We arranged the girls by age and each team member helped Karen and Renee with the lessons- Renee taking the younger girls and Karen taking lead with the older ones. Several different lessons were covered during the couple of hours we were there. It was pretty hectic and the older girls became quite competitive when we tried to play the “Memory” card game with them. Every type of “cheating” technique was tried during the game!
The girls treated us to a chorus of several songs, all song in English. They were really good and even the little ones had all of the movements down perfectly! We made videos of their performance and hopefully Renee will be able to post them for you to enjoy too!
On our return to Marie’s, we brought one of the girl’s with us as she had an abrasion on her forehead that appeared to be infected. Karen and Catrina took lead on the medical response and they were able to clean out the wound, apply ointment and bandage it up. We will be keeping close watch on the injury site over the few days to make sure it heals up properly.
For dinner tonight we were invited over to the House of Hope for bratwurst, potato salad, pasta salad, sauerkraut, carrot cake, brownies and ICE COLD Pepsi, Teem, Coke. A good time was had by all and we ended the night singing worship songs accompanied by guitar under the flashing lightening in the sky.
Well that’s about it for our first day here. The yappy dog has just arrived outside our window and Ethan is trying to entertain him by chasing him with a laser light. At least this is keeping him quiet! Guess we will have to have Ethan stand out on the balcony all night! As for Willy and Kenny our musical roosters, hopefully they have developed a case of laryngitis!

Lori