09/10/08

Today was a little rougher than the past few days. I am a little amazed at how much more difficult some material is for students to learn than I had expected. Further, what makes it more difficult yet is that when I teach this stuff I cannot use every example I think of as a different way of explaining since my examples may reference something that people in the States are familiar with, but people in Haiti are not. Another concern I have is the language barrier. Though I can speak English to the students, sometimes I wonder if some of them don’t understand because of a few words I may have used that they are unfamiliar with. The good news is that most of my students are getting A’s and B’s, so I must be getting across to most of them. I would just like to make sure that the others don’t fall behind.

Regarding all of the hurricanes, we didn’t have much damage here directly, however we are seeing a few side effects to the damage around the country. For starters, there is a bridge out in Gonaives between Port au Prince and here so we cannot get lettuce and eggs. This isn’t really a big deal at all, however I heard today that we have five days worth of diesel fuel left and are unsure of when we can get more because of the bridge that is out. If we don’t get any, then we won’t have electricity, which means no water, no refrigeration, lights, etc. We can still buy bottled water, but no water to do dishes, laundry, showers, and toilets! I hope we can get diesel soon for our generators! Fortunately, we have a gas powered stove so we can still cook when the power is out.