Sonlight Ministries

End Of The Year!

2010-05-28T17:05:00.005-05:00

Today is the last full day I will be in Haiti and this is my last blog entry. I fly out tomorrow, Saturday, May 29th.

Our graduation went well last Sunday. It is always great to see the students who have worked so hard finally at the transition to their next stage in life. Some of them are excited and some were scared. I know it can be a little tough as many don't know if they will be going off to college or if they will be able to find jobs right away. Our graduates usually don't have too much trouble as they have received a great education and are trilingual by the time they graduate. It's great to look at all of the graduates and to know that they are so much better off because of the teaching hey have been given. Not only with their academic studies, but also with their walks with Christ. Every graduate this year had been baptized except for one. Riccardo asked Mr. Thom if he could be baptized before school was out. He knew that he was going to be leaving this Christian environment and wanted to make the decision before he parted. It was very refreshing to know that he wanted to make that choice before he left. I recorded the baptism on Mr. Thom's video recorder, so I didn't get any pictures. I do have some pictures from the graduation which are below.

Graduates

Students from High School and 8th Grade singing during the ceremony

Nephtalie Elmeus giving a speach with Marc Rocher translating in Creole

Graduates

Roger & Norma speaking with Marc Cadet translating

Roger giving a speech with last year's graduate, Madley Rocher, translating

The past two years have been incredible and I am hoping that one day I might be able to return. I don't know at the moment, but I do know that I will always be connected to Sonlight. I am certain that I will be back to visit on short term trips, but at the moment, I don't know if I will be able to return for a long term commitment again. Thank you for following my blog over the past two years, for your support, your encouraging and funny comments, as well as all of your love for this ministry. Please keep in touch.

Blessings,
Doug

05/23/10

2010-05-23T10:04:00.003-05:00

This past week has been fairly busy. I have had some accounting to catch up on, grades are soon to be due, and other various projects have come up as we are preparing for graduation today (Sunday at 3PM). I will try to write more about the graduation later this week. We will also have another graduation this Wednesday for the Bible College.

One thing that I am excited about from this past week is a project that I have been researching a bit. As you know from many of my blogs, we have two diesel generators here which provide all of our electricity. In the course of a year, we go through quite a bit of fuel and the costs are very high. We have talked quite a bit about an alternative source, at least something that can offset our fuel costs a bit. We may not be ready to convert completely over to a different system, but we would like to reduce the costs. We are right on the coast (the school is about 30 yards or so from the ocean) so we get quite a bit of wind. I have been doing a bit of research to figure out the correct sized wind generator for us. I had contacted a few companies who have software that will generate wind averages based off of our location. Unfortunately, these aren't as accurate as we would need considering they are computer generated. So, to get accurate measurements, we have purchased an anemometer (which measures the wind speeds and direction). This will log all of our wind speeds and store it within the unit. Periodically, we can connect a laptop and download the data from it. Roger and Grant installed it on top of the school. It is about 20 feet above the roof and therefore about 50 feet off of the ground. This will allow us to get great wind averages so we can figure out if it is feasible to purchase a wind generator. It may turn out to be too costly for the benefit, but there are many days where we get great amounts of wind, so hopefully this will be a good option for us. Below is a picture I took of the anemometer on the roof. It is attached to a pole that is connected to one of our internet satellites.

05/16/10

2010-05-16T09:49:00.001-05:00

This past week was fairly uneventful. We had a group in from Illinois and a group from Colorado. They were the last two groups to visit for the year as we only have two weeks left! Time has been going by very quickly these past few weeks. This week is the last week for the Seniors with their graduation next Sunday afternoon. They have one week less than everyone else because if they went through to the very end we wouldn't have time to have a ceremony for them. We are usually busy the last week of school as we are putting things away, tearing down our classrooms and putting everything away in storage for next year. We also spend a lot of time packing things up in our house. We have to make sure that all of our dry goods are packed well so we don't get bugs or mice in our food. We also have to cover everything up to keep the dust off as the house will sit empty for about two and a half months. On top of that, we also have to pack all of our bags for our return trip home. Having graduation on the last Friday would be a bit too much to handle and most likely wouldn't go well. We would be rushed to put it together and would have to put everything away completely in order to fly out first thing Saturday morning (we get up at 4:30AM).

After graduation this next Sunday, we will finish up our last week of classes (which only go through Thursday). Friday the 28th is a workday and then we return on Saturday! I am excited to see everyone. It doesn't seem like school lasted very long this year, however, I will say that it seems like it has been a long time since I have seen my friends and family. It will be good to be back home to see you all.

05/09/10

2010-05-09T10:21:00.000-05:00

As I have sat down to write in my blog this year, I have noticed that I don't have quite as much to write as I did last year. I know that part of this is due to callousness. I tend to see odd things often and don't think much of them after a while. Certain things may not stick out as they did before. However, just this week I was reminded of something that is hilarious. Sometimes Haitians give their kids some crazy names. Now, I am not here to make fun of names that are unfamiliar to me, names that I haven't heard of before, or anything like that. Yes, I think it is strange when someone has twins and they name them Mike and Michael. I don't quite get it. I asked someone once why they do that. I'm thinking, "They're twins so people are already going to get their names mixed up." The answer I got was, "They're twins!" as in, "Why wouldn't you?". So, that is a bit strange to me, but that isn't what I want to write about either. The thing that I was reminded of today is that some kids here have the names of famous people. That's right. This week, Brad Pitt enrolled as a preschooler. I'm not talking about first name "Brad", last name "Pitt". I'm talking about a student with the first name of "Brad Pitt". Yes, both words are his first name. I don't know how I forgot to write about this before because we have a Beyonce and Jay-Z in our school already. Why not Brad Pitt? I heard that Maria Carey lives in our neighborhood, but doesn't go to our school. This is the daughter of one of our aides at Sonlight from what I heard. Maybe she will go to our school in a few years. I assume she is too young, but as I said, I am not quite sure who this is. I think those are the only "celebrities" we have in our school, but I'll be sure to let you know if there are any others that I missed. Sorry that I haven't mentioned this before as it is quite commical. Oh, and sorry to say, you cannot sponsor Brad Pitt if you were thinking about it. One of the teachers here has already put the request in. I wish I had thought about that sooner! Come to think of it, I think Brad Pitt should sponsor Brad Pitt.

05/02/10

2010-05-02T10:28:00.000-05:00

The weather this past week has changed significantly. We've finally hit the point where the weather from here on out is going to be as hot as blazes! I know it's hot when my students are praying for rain to cool it down. These are the same students who wear down jackets when it's 75 degrees! The trouble isn't the heat itself, but more the humidity and lack of wind. Fortunately, both generators are working so we are able to run our air-conditioners! We don't have them in school, but fortunately for me, my room doesn't get the hottest. I have a big almond tree growing outside of my window so it blocks the morning sun for the most part.

Other than it being hot, school has been going well. I am tutoring a few more students so that has been fun. It's always helpful to work with students one-on-one, especially when you can tell that they want to learn and you can see their gains. Some students are asking only because it's the end of the year. The problem with this is that I have to reinforce to them that this extra push toward the end needs to continue next year. For example, if a student isn't doing too well and they try really hard at the end and do well (where the material is the most difficult) it's proof that they have the knowledge to go on to the next year. However, if a student only makes that push toward the end of the year, but doesn't continue to work as hard the next year, then they are most likely going to struggle early on.

Other than having a few new students for tutoring, school has been going on about the same as normal. I am amazed that we only have four more weeks left. Not quite four full weeks as graduation will be during the last week of May! It's an exciting time of the year, but also sad to see the Seniors go because you always have to realize that there are some that you most likely won't see again. I didn't teach the seniors this year, but had them as juniors last year. There are a lot of fun students in that class. It's strange to think that my second year here is coming to an end so soon. I am anxious to get home to see everyone, but knowing that we only have four more weeks makes me want to take it all in while I am still here. It's a great place to be.

Cherries and Bridges

2010-04-25T12:01:00.004-05:00

Cherries!
On Friday, I showed up for school and Cedric, a fourth grader that I sponsor, came running up to me and said that he had something for me. He set his book bag down and rifled through it. A second later, he pulled out a quart size bag of cherries! I didn't know Haiti had cherries. They were a little different than normal cherries. They are the same size, but have a slightly different shape. They're not perfectly round. More like an apple in shape, but small as a normal cherry. Also, they don't have seeds like a bing cherry. These have three seeds in the middle that are a little strange looking. They taste like regular cherries...the tart ones. I don't remember what they are called, but we had those on my dad's farm. I remember quite well. That's the tree I was in when my brother shot me with a bb gun right in the butt. Well, he hit my thigh, but it was pretty close to my butt. I have attached a picture of the bag of cherries. All of my students told me to make juice out of them, so I smashed them down and squeezed the juice into a cup. I didn't get quite a cup, but it was very good. I also ate the smashed up cherries. I was wishing that my brother was here because we both love cherries. We used to go to our grandma's basement and pull out a Cool Whip container full of frozen tart cherries. We wouldn't stop eating them until the container was empty and our fingers were red and frozen.

A New Bridge!
Other than this, we did have a bit of a wreck outside of our house. There is an alley that goes along the front of our house. I wouldn't call it a road because it isn't quite wide enough for most cars. People do try though. Everyone tries! We know, because the street narrows just outside of our house and those not big enough fall into the "stream" that runs along our house. This "stream" is nothing of a real stream. it's basically waste water. Any water from washing clothes, showers, or dishes goes into that stream. We have a septic tank, however, our washing machine goes into this stream and contributes to the flow. As I mentioned, it runs along our house...along our outer wall. So, to get to the street, we open our gate and walk over a mini concrete bridge. The problem is that whenever someone falls into the creek, they destroy our bridge. We first had a step. This was here for years. You would simply step over the small stream and onto the step directly in front of the gate. It was simple...until a large water truck came down the street and slid into the stream. It smashed up against our wall and my roommate, who was home at the time, couldn't get out of the gate, so someone brought a ladder to him so he could climb over the concrete wall. Earlier this school year, in October, a group from my church came to visit. They had poured a rectangle slab and reinforced it with rebar. They didn't have time to finish installing it though. So, we had a slab inside our gate, but we needed a good foundation to put it on. After a few months, Ermilien, a friend, and I picked it up and set it over the creek. It wasn't the best, but worked fine.

I was concerned that if a truck drove over it, it might break up as it was not concreted to a good foundation. Well, a few weeks ago, I heard a bunch of racket outside around 10PM. Sure enough, a Nissan truck fell into the stream and was up against our wall. They had crushed our bridge. We were now back to stepping over the creek.

I had woken up Saturday morning and was drinking some coffee when I heard the door. Roger was outside and needed to plug in an extension chord. He was here to construct a new bridge. I was happy to see him because I knew he would do it right. He needed power because he was going to drill four holes into the foundation right against the gate. He was working with Ermilien. Ermilien had dug down about three feet into the ground on the other side of the stream where they were going to pour a deep slab of concrete. This was also reinforced with rebar. He had forms for the concrete precut and was ready to go. I went out to help a little and after about three hours it was finished! Below is our new bridge. I am not going to say it's indestructible, but it should be able to handle the weight of any truck. Where the slab meets the alley, it goes down about three feet into the ground. I think we should be ok!

04/18/10

2010-04-18T10:59:00.001-05:00

This week has been fairly uneventful. School has been going quickly, but it always does and especially the last quarter. I gave a test in my 6th grade math class this week. There was a small section that had different geometric shapes. There was a trapezoid, parallelogram, ray, line segment, intersecting lines, and pentagon. The students had to write next to the shape what their name is. As the students finish they raise their hands and I walk around to collect the tests. When I took Dorothy's test, I looked at her answers. Next to the intersecting lines she wrote "x-rays". It seems so silly but to a student who hears English as their second language, it makes sense that she would easily get this mixed up. Of course, she has probably heard of x-rays, but most likely only a few times. Maybe as a vocabulary word, but never again. We also had just learned what a ray is in the geometry section, so as the intersecting lines appear to form an "x" it is quite reasonable for her to think that they are "x-rays". It's funny sometimes how words get mixed up. Last year, I had a student write, "photograph" for the name of a pictograph. I corrected him, but I didn't count off for it. I got to thinking about Creole and how hard it is to learn new words sometimes. I first learned "kanpe" which means "to stand". Later, I learned "koute" which means "to listen". They only start with the same letter and end with the same letter, but I used to get them mixed up. For a Haitian, it would be nearly impossible to mix those up as they have learned them in action rather than in a classroom. So, the same holds true for intersecting lines, rays and.... x-rays.

04/11/10

2010-04-18T10:58:00.002-05:00

Sorry for the delay in posting this. I wrote it, but couldn't post it last week as our internet service was down. When it began working again, I forgot to post it.

This past week had been very relaxing. We had the week off for Spring break so most of the missionaries took off for a little traveling around Haiti. This year, I didn't go anywhere but just relaxed here. It was great to be able to catch up on some things that I normally don't get to, to catch up on some reading and so on.

Earlier this week, some repairmen with John Deere came here to work on our generator engine. The newer one was still under warranty so fortunately for us, it was repaired at no cost. It is great to have two working generators again. It gives peace of mind to know that if one goes out, you have another option. For most of this year we have been operating on just one so it is great to know that we will be in good shape. I had talked to Roger yesterday about the guys who came and was told that they were headed to Port au Prince to work on some generator there that is over three times as large as our generator. For those of you who give a rip, our generator is 150 kW which powers our entire ministry and what seems like the entire neighborhood. I don't know the exact count, but I have heard that we power aroudn 100 homes including several UN units. It sure gets dark around here when the generator is out. I guess the generator that these guys are going to work on is a 500kW generator. I can't imagine what that would be used for. I thought our generator was hard to work on.

Other than the up and running generator, we haven't had much going on. For those of you who read this and haven't emailed me in a while, please do. I'd be glad to hear from you.

03/28/2010

2010-03-28T12:46:00.001-05:00

In Haiti, everything gets dusty and sandy. I like when it rains because it settles the dust and cleans things up a bit. However, when it rains it gets really muddy outside, so it's either muddy or dusty. It would be nice if it rained every three days at night....but that's thinking with my head in the clouds. A more realistic solution would be to have paved roads which would limit the dust tremendously. Most of the ground here is covered except for the dirt/rocky roads. Taxis (mopeds), cars, and trucks constantly are stirring up dust and everything gets covered. Also, with a road out front of your house which looks like the bottom of a river bed, you can expect to get plenty of sand in your house....even if you leave your shoes at the door. Sand gets everywhere and our floor is swept each day. Outside, we have a concrete mini courtyard. Once you enter our gate, everything is concrete. However, coming off of the street, our foot traffic brings in quite a lot of sand. We could sweep the concrete outside on a weekly basis and still be behind. I am amazed at the amount of sand that comes in.

Needless to say, our broom wears out quickly. We have two types. We have a typical household broom inside for sweeping the tile floor. For outside, we have a Haitian made broom. These brooms are very "green" as the handle is made out of the trunk of a small tree or bush while the bristles are made out of a thick grass or dried leaves cut into strips. I haven't found out exactly what tree the bristles are from, but they seem like palm leaves. They are then tied to the shaft and one nail is inserted to keep it all together. I just bought a new one this week because our old one disintegrated on us. It's nice to have something that isn't made out of plastic but they have to be replaced more often. The Haitian broom is great for outside as it is cheap and it is nice to have one broom for sweeping the dirtier messes outside and one for inside. Our broom that we use outside had been worn out for a couple weeks so we weren't able to sweep outside. This week, I saw a guy standing outside the school selling a bunch of these. I asked him how much they were. He said "kat dola" which means four Haitian dollars. I asked him again because I didn't think I understood. Four Haitian dollars is about fifty cents US.

Of course, most things are cheaper here as labor is inexpensive. However, this thing is hand made and unless I am mistaken, I wouldn't think it could be made quickly. Who knows; maybe it is easy to make. Either way, I was blown away by how inexpensive it is....the same price as a Coke here! Speaking of, if you like Coke, you should visit us. Now, I am not really suggesting that the trip is worth the Coke. The ministry should be your main draw of course...but the Coke here is pretty stinkin' good! They use Haitian sugar instead of corn syrup. It tastes very good and you can get it in half liter glass bottles! I don't have a picture of a Coke (I am sure you you can imagine what one looks like), however below is a picture of a Haitian broom if you are interested. If you aren't interested...don't look below.

03/21/10

2010-03-21T12:48:00.001-05:00

I didn't blog last week because I had a visitor! Normally, I come home after church, make a little breakfast and then write on my blog. Last Saturday, my girlfriend, Lindsey, flew in to visit. Like any visitor, she started her trip on Friday afternoon, over-nighted in Miami, then continued on to Port au Prince Saturday morning and then here. It wasn't quite that simple though. Because of a change in their flight that day, Lindsey had to fly to Cap Haitian from Port au Prince, and then flew here. She was able to see quite a bit of the country by the time she arrived here.

Of course, it was great to have her here. The students here were very excited to have her here as well. Many of them have heard me talk about her and were anxious to meet her; especially the 6th grade. They knew she was bringing cupcakes for her. What they didn't know is that she brought enough to have cupcakes on two separate days. She brought enough candy for them to have something each day. The first day, she gave them Swedish fish. A few minutes after she gave out the candy, Diana had her hand up in a panic. She asked if she could get a cup of water after she told me, "I swallowed one whole!!!!". She was in a panic as if she had drank strychnine. By the end of the week I think the entire class was so hopped up on sugar that we had to tighten the bolts to keep them in line. It was probably the most fun week they have had. It was the most fun I have had.

I got to do many of the things that I don't do every week. We ordered goat with fried plantains along with rice and beans for dinner Wednesday night. Earlier for lunch, we had Haitian spaghetti. It is the strangest combination of ingredients but so good. The plate is covered with spaghetti noodles, then has a little hot sauce on top, a little ham, peanuts, and a garnish. Around the edge of the plate are sliced beets, bananas, and boiled sliced carrots. It is the strangest combination of ingredients for spaghetti, but is so good. We also had papita, which are plantain chips. They sell them off the street in small clear bags for the equivalent of $0.25. They are plantains sliced as thin as a chip length wise, deep fried and salted. They are crunchy like chips, but long strips since they are cut lengthwise.

On Thursday, we went to La Pointe to get some ice cream and to walk around. The trip was fun but in the end Lindsey and I both acquired matching burns on our legs. Lindsey got hers from getting off her taxi (moped). You need to get off the left to keep from getting burnt, however, her taxi driver leaned to right making her feel that she needed to get off that side. On the way home, my taxi sped up and we lost control a bit. The driver put his feet down to keep us stable, and I did as well. The problem is that when I put my feet down as we were fish-tailing, the back of my ankle was hit by the moped and I was burned. My ankle is a little swollen, but not too bad. The muscles are a little tight, but nothing like a sprained ankle. The burn is the worst. It's about an inch and a half in diameter. Fortunately for us, since people often get burned here, Norma had given everyone some prescription burn creme (Silvadene). Hopefully, I should be healed in a couple weeks. There's nothing like getting a matching burn on your leg with your girlfriend. Fortunately, we didn't do that on purpose. Had we, I would hope someone would have a talk with us about our relationship.

Other than the burns, this week was the best week I have had here. It was a blessing to share this place with Lindsey this week, have fun with the students, our staff and the Haitian culture. It is always a blessing to have new visitors here to experience this place, so if you are thinking about visiting, please let me know.

03/07/10

2010-03-07T10:20:00.000-06:00

This week, Ken and Nancy arrived via the shipping boat that we use. Ken and Nancy are from Florida and have visited Sonlight for several years and love coming down here. Ken was here earlier this school year with Grant to work on our generator. Thankfully, it is still running very well.

To get supplies to Haiti, we ship everything to a boat dock in Miami which is then loaded onto the Lady Lotmore and takes four days to get here. Though it takes four days of travel, the boat may not arrive for several months. Sometimes they have issues with customs, with the boat itself or a number of different factors that prevent a one day turnaround (including the most obvious...loading the boat). One way to get into Haiti is via the Lady Lotmore rather than flying. The problem with taking the boat is that you need a great amount of flexibility. Ken and Nancy are retired so that was a big factor on making it a possibility. Without the flexibility, you may show up at the boat and find out that there is a two wek delay. Not too many people can fly back home and reschedule their time off with work. Getting there is also a problem. Ken and Nancy live about three hours from the boat dock, so each time they were told that the boat was about to leave, they would drive down to the dock and when told that there were delays, they had to turn around and go back home. The boat finally left and this week they arrived. They will be here for about a week and a half or possibly a little longer. They will leave when the boat goes back.

Not only did Ken and Nancy arrive, but so did our food. We sent our food orders to Sam's and it was pulled for us by employees at Sam's. The process was different. In the past, someone would have to go there and do the shopping for the entire staff for several months worth of food. That could take two days as you shop for the food, package it up and take it to the boat dock and load it into crates that you build yourself. The freezer food all goes in our deep freezers and is shipped down and the entire deep freezer is unloaded and brought over to the school. This week, we all met at the school yard after school was out to divide up our orders. Later this week, we should get the crates of dry food that we ordered. It's always exciting to get a boat order because it's a treat to get something in that you have been out of for a while. Tortilla chips for example. I can live without them, but I sure like when they show up!! Much more than that, I am going to like when my girlfriend shows up next Saturday!! Heck with the boat orders.

02/28/10

2010-02-28T10:31:00.000-06:00

This week had been fairly uneventful. School has been going by normally, which is nice for a change. When I moved here, I expected to have difficulties with daily life as it's a third world country, however, I didn't think I would appreciate a normal week of school so much. I am amazed at how quickly this year is going by. We only have three more weeks of school before the third quarter is finished. It's strange to think that we only have one more quarter after this and I'll be done with my second year here.

I am glad that American Airlines has started flying again. Tuesday, John was able to come back here. He left with Carmen and Isabella (Bella) a few weeks back to finish their adoption process. Since they aren't quite sure when everything will be final, John came back as he is greatly needed here. I am also excited that my girlfriend will be visiting in two weeks. Lindsey will be the second person to fly in (our first visitor) since the earthquakes. I am excited for her to see all that I enjoy here; the students, the people of Haiti, and our amazing staff!

02/21/10

2010-02-21T10:05:00.000-06:00

This past week has been fairly uneventful. We did have our refugee program on Monday and Thursday which were the last two times that we will be giving out food. We are going to change the aide program in an effort to serve the refugees in a way that will help them in the long run. We will be meeting about this tonight so I do not have all the details yet.

As for the past four weeks, we have given away 9,100 lbs of rice, 2,300 lbs of beans, 1,700 bars of soap, 240 cans of milk, and approximately $10,000 US in small bills. When money was given out, it was given in the amount of $5 for a family of two. The intent was not to just hand out money without a cause as that in itself does not create long term stability. The small amount of money was given to aid in the purchase of simple necessities, such as clean water and charcoal to cook the rice and beans that we gave out. It could also be used to purchase personal necessities such as a tooth brush, tooth paste, deodorant, etc. We tried to keep the amounts low as to not cause temptation of wasteful spending.

Other than the refugee program, I didn't have anything going on out of the ordinary. I did see that American Airlines is flying again. Their first flight was last Friday, the 19th of Feb. This is very good news for us as it means our groups can start coming in again. We haven't had a group here since we returned after Christmas break so it will be great to have visitors again! It's also a great sign to have flights again as it's a step toward getting back to normal and it promises a little more progress!

02/12/10

2010-02-14T10:04:00.006-06:00

Last Thursday I was at home when the power went out. It didn't go out immediately. It seemed to be out, however there was the slightest glow from our light bulbs. I couldn't imagine they could be any dimmer. A minute later and the power went out completely. We have had strange things happen before where the power dims for about ten seconds or so and then slowly goes back to normal. I don't know exactly what is happening with the generator when this happens, but it usually corrects itself. Tonight was a little different. Sometimes these things happen and Roger will go over and restart the generator with no problems. After about 20 minutes, I had to mow down my mac and cheese that I had made, I headed over. My rule of thumb is to never go to the generator room hungry. You never know how long you'll be there. I went over there one morning at about 5:45AM when the power went off. I didn't come home until 9PM. Fortunately, Roger took a break around 9AM and we got breakfast. The next thing I ate was a bunch of crackers for lunch. So, before I go to the generator room to see what is going on, I always eat first.

By the time I made it over there, Roger and Ermilien had already taken off the end of the generator (not the engine, but the actual generator which is full of magnets and a huge spindle of copper wire). I normally refer to the entire unit as the generator, but there are two main parts: the engine and the generator that the engine turns. Tonight, the problem was inside the generator. Roger had found a wire which broke. Normally wires burn up, but in this case, with years of use, a wire had snapped. We believe it came apart because of centrifugal force as there weren't any burn marks. The room was also filled with a few others. Scott, Lenny, Stephen were already there as well. After finding the problem, the only thing to do is to start fixing it. It seems like such a simple breakdown and yes, one wire is simple to fix. The problem is getting to it. To do the, we had to remove the 500+ pound generator from the engine. It's cylinder shaped and lies horizontally. We needed to take it off, hoist it vertically and then set it back down. Once it was set down, we needed to hoist the copper spindle out of it. To do this takes several hours. Normally, when we need to do this sort of work, Roger or John will get the tractor and pull the generator out of the generator room and into the school's front yard. We would then remove the generator from the engine and hoist it up out there. Tonight, we didn't have that option. It was already dark. Our only option was to hoist it up inside. The problem is that there isn't anything to hoist it up from. The room had a concrete ceiling but does not have anything to connect a chain hoist to. There is also a concrete loft above where the mufflers sit, so our only option was to get a concrete chisel, a large hammer and chisel a hole through the loft so we could wrap a chain around it. We chiseled the hole about a foot from the edge of the loft so we could wrap the chain through the hole and around the edge. The edge also happens to be a concrete beam that runs from one wall to the other so it seemed very strong. About an hour later and we started to lift the generator. It's almost unreal how much that thing weighs. As we started lifting it, we heard the beam overhead start to crack and little pieces of concrete fell. You could expect this as the chain was going through a hole that was freshly chiseled. It's likely to have loose pieces fall to the floor. A moment later and the entire generator had been lifted off the platform and was suspended. At this very moment more concrete fell as the beam overhead had dropped down about three inches. That's when we realized that the beam doesn't actually go across from one wall to the other. It did at one time, however the exhaust pipe comes up from the engine and the beam is in its way. So, years ago, the beam must have been chiseled across. The only thing that connected it to the wall was a single piece of rebar as you can see in the picture below.

Of course all of us were concerned except for Roger. When we hoisted the generator more, Lenny and I would keep an eye on the cracks and give him updates on it's thickness. At one point, we noticed a crack had opened up to about an eighth of an inch. We told Roger and he said, "That's probably good enough." I always crack up when I am in there. He reassured us that the rebar (though it was only one bar) is very strong. I was just hoping that that piece had been tied in to the wall and wasn't just a straight piece that could be pulled away! Fortunately, it held.

The spindle was eventually raised up and Roger took three heavy gauge wire and soldered them to both ends where the wire had snapped. At this point it was much past midnight. We were getting tired, but fortunately for us, we were about half way done. About an hour later, we were lowering the generator back down so we could reattach it to the engine. As I mentioned, it's very heavy and when it pivoted, it hit two of the eight bolts that it connects to. These specific bolts aren't the bolts that hold it on, but the bolts that spin the generator. We were able to bend one back, however the other bolt sheared off when we tried to bend it back. We had to go without, so it now only has seven of the eight. Without going into detail, as connecting it has many difficulties, we finally had it back together a few hours later. I don't know what happened at what time, but around 4:30 AM, Roger turned it on but we weren't getting any electricity. I cannot tell you the frustration of spending over eight hours on that thing and to not have any power once it's back together. Fortunately, the problem was in a circuit board that took some damage while we were moving the generator around. So, at about 5:45 AM we had not only finished but everything was working. Here are a few more pictures of the generator. If you look, you should see a few blue arrows which point out the cracks in the concrete beam. You'll most likely have to click on the image so you can see the full sized picture in order to see the cracks. I also colored the beam in one picture green so you can see where the chains were. The poor quality pictures were taken from my phone's camera the night that we were working. The others I took a couple days later. The last picture is the final product. It's a bit crazy to think that this old generator is powering the entire ministry.

02/07/10

2010-02-07T11:16:00.005-06:00

This past week we had school again. It was great to be getting back to our regular schedule. We still aren't quite back to schedule as we are continuing with our refugee program. We had to stop taking new refugees into our program, however those who have been interviewed and given a card are allowed to come once a week for four weeks. We take people on Mondays and Thursdays. This past week was the first full week of handing out aide packets to the refugees. After school, we eat lunch quickly and meet back at the school at 2:30PM. The refugees are supposed to show up at 3PM, however we see them there as early as 6:30AM waiting across the street.

As soon as one teacher makes their way toward the gate the entire crowd moves in and the pushing begins. As I have mentioned before, the people who are pushing are not pushing us nor are they being unruly toward us. They are just pushing amongst themselves as some try to work their way forward so it gets a little difficult. To remedy this, we have them line up along the street. Those who line up quickly get a slip of paper with a number on it. Those who are arguing about where they were in line are sent to the back. This has sped up the process tremendously. It helps us get everyone inside the school gate and upstairs where we can begin handing out their supplies.

Since the program began, we have helped nearly 1000 people and have gone through thousands of pounds of rice and beans. It's unbelievable how quickly we are going through it.

Here's a picture of Friday, January 29th when we took our last group of refugee interviews. The first picture is of the crowd outside our gate. The other pictures are inside the school gate. In the last picture, you'll see those in line, but if you look toward the top, you can also see the people upstairs that we have seated:

Ice Cream!

2010-02-07T11:15:00.003-06:00

Recently, we have had guys come through the neighborhood pushing ice cream carts. These carts have a small lawnmower sized engine on them which powers the ice cream maker. On the side is a little compartment with cones and small cups. The first time these guys came down the street, I didn't know what to think. I heard a sound like a helicopter but knew that wasn't the case as it wasn't quite the same. I couldn't figure it out. You never hear a lawnmower here as people don't have lawns. Well, I take that back. We have a lawnmower at the school and the first time I heard it run, it was the strangest sound. It made me think of a small town, especially the smell of cut grass. In any case, the sound of these "helicopters" was a mystery to me so I had to go out and take a look. Seeing these guys pushing ice cream carts down the street was indescribable. It's nearly impossible to get ice cream here. There is a down about a half hour away where we can sometimes get some soft serve, but it's quite the ordeal to get it. So, to have the opportunity to buy ice cream just outside my door was amazing. We stopped the guys and I started calling all the missionaries. Within about five minutes, there were swarms of people around these guys. We had them stopped for nearly an hour as we kept buying ice cream cone after ice cream cone. I finally went inside and got a small cup for them to fill. We bought some for the kids in the street who I am sure rarely get the chance to eat ice cream. We told them to come back often. They have come down the street nearly every day. I always feel bad when I don't see them because I wonder if they came and I wasn't home. I always know when they are coming as I can hear the "helicopters" getting louder and louder as they get closer to our house.

Below is a picture of the first day they came:

01/30/10

2010-01-31T09:45:00.002-06:00

This past Sunday, we had learned that we would be closing the school for the next three weeks. The main concern was the view of our ministry to the community. Many schools had been closing and many within the community had the belief that we didn't care about the tragedy of Port au Prince or the victims since we continued with school. Of course, this is mostly coming from people who don't have any idea what is going on here. On Wednesday, the following day after the earthquake, we skipped teaching our first hour and had a time of prayer and singing with all of our students. Later in the week, we closed for two days. One day we all met at the school and had a memorial service, again with a prayer time and singing. We also had a few victims from PaP come up and give some insight as to what they saw. Many of the stories were very hard to hear. Following the service, we split up in groups and visited nearby hospitals to pass out water and to pray and sing with anyone in the hospital. It's a bit different here. You can walk into the hospital without permission, not knowing a single person, then proceed into a room of victims and just walk up to people and pray. The culture here is very different than that of the States. Not only is the security not a concern within the hospital (no one is showing up to do harm) but the victims don't desire privacy as you or I would if we were in a room at the hospital. They welcome visitors who they don't know and everyone enjoys when groups come in to pray and sing for the entire room. I have heard that when you visit a victim in a hospital that it is somewhat expected that you would pray for them and might sing for them as well. In any case, though we were closed for two days, we decided to close for three more. During this week, we found out that schools in the area are actually opening soon, and we were then told that yes, we should be opening. So, tomorrow (Feb. 1st) we will be starting again. It's a little frustrating to be getting mixed messages from the community, however it is good to be starting again. Three weeks off would have been such a loss to our students. There isn't any reason to suffer through a loss (one which you cannot control) and then to purposefully stop everything for such a period where you sustain another loss unnecessarily.

Having said all of that, having this past week of was much needed. Looking back, we wouldn't have been able to do everything had school continued this week. We had all been wanting to help out but obviously, with our responsibility here, we couldn't leave to go to Port au Prince. Therefore, we focused on helping the refugees who were coming here. On Monday, we met at the school and gathered supplies. Many of the teachers put together items such as extra clothing, soap, towels, toothbrushes, toothpaste, etc. We wanted to make up care packages for those who came here without much other than what they had on their backs. Lenny, the bible college director, organized this and suggested that we create a food program to aid those in need for four weeks. With limited resources and our focus of teaching, we aren't able to help out on an ongoing program nor would this help those in need if we constantly provided food and created a dependence.

Tuesday, many of us met at the school to begin processing refugees. The plan was to bring them in and interview them as to assess their needs. Some people were given a card that allowed them to come back to receive a one time care package. Others are able to come back once a week for four weeks. The interviewing was done by the missionaries here who not only have lived here for a very long time (one upwards of 20 years) but who knew Creole very well and could speak to them fluently. Unfortunately, as I don't like to say, we had to filter out those who really weren't from Port au Prince and weren't directly affected. We have taken people from Port de Paix and allowed them to get aid, but only because they had family from Port au Prince staying with them. The goal is to lighten their burden when some have taken on five or so into their homes when they don't have the space for their own family. Of course, we were probably taken advantage of from those who really didn't come from PaP nor did they have family from there. However, we would rather err on the side of generosity in a situation like this than to turn away those in need. The sad reality is that in any case, those who waited for four hours or more to get an interview simply for rice and beans must be in need. It is always hard to turn people away, but with limited resources, we had to focus on those who needed it most such as those with children, people who only have one leg or those who had to be carried upstairs because they were too weak to walk.

So, as we began on Tuesday morning with our plan, we were surprised a bit by the amount of people outside. It was a bit hectic. We were at the gate and could barely hold people back as we constantly reminded them to not lean on the gate. We weren't looking forward to having the gate break, get crushed and then trampled. Well, I wasn't. Thom who was with me might have been.... he does like adventure. In all honestly though, those outside the gate weren't being unruly or harmful toward us. The chaos was within themselves and their fear that some would get in and others wouldn't. We tried to let one family in at a time, but that became too difficult. The front gate was so big, and since it swings out, it was impossible to open to let anyone in as too many people were pushing on it. We had to opt to let people in the side gate which goes directly into the generator area and then right back out into the school yard via another door. Since there were only around 100 or so, we just let them all in at once and shut the gate for good. Anyone who came after that point were late and would have to come back Friday. After everyone rushed inside and realized that they would get seen, they were incredibly calm. Again, they weren't rude or aggressive toward any of us, but just fearful that they might not get help as they know that supplies usually run out and that not everyone would get help. Fortunately, the group was small enough that we could see them all. Once we got them all upstairs and seated, I stayed down to watch a side gate that we have. It's a smaller gate which leads toward the construction site. We had to leave this open as workers are constantly going in and out. I stayed there to keep people from sneaking in. On occasion, people would walk in and I would have to escort them back out. We also used this gate as our way to let those who had been interviewed out. The process took about four hours. It was a bit stressful and a relief to be done.

The following days we would see those who were given cards and begin passing out supplies. We did interviews and pick-up days on separate days to maintain the crowds. Those who weren't seen on Tuesday were told to come on Friday. The fear of us all was that gave them two full days to spread the word (though it was supposed to be on a small scale and within their families as our pockets aren't terribly deep) and we didn't know how many would show up. Friday finally came and as expected we had a large crowd outside the gate. I couldn't go in the front gate, so I went around to the side. Once I got in, I stayed back as to not draw attention. Those in the street were being quite calm until a few went up to give them directions. At that point, everyone rushed to the gate and it began to bulge inward. Part of the lower ironwork broke and was welded later that day. We wanted to get there early and let people in before the crowd grew, but they had began gathering since 6AM. By 9:30, there was already a few hundred.

Once the gate was finally opened, the crowd came rushing in so quickly that they began trampling over bushes and pushed so hard that about thirty people got trampled themselves. At this point, Thom and I were up in the stairwell. Our goal was to allow them in but to stop at that point. We needed to maintain order. I was amazed by how many people came in and that they weren't nowhere near as calm as the group on Tuesday. They came in so fast that Thom and I literally had to shove them back as we tried to maintain our ground. The one distinct thing I remember about it was that the entry filled so quickly with people, that I remember a wave of heat and humidity which came at us as it rose from them and traced the ceiling and up the stairwell. It was stifling. I understand that a group of people in a room can eventually cause the temperature to rise, but this happened so suddenly it was a bit unreal.

Fortunately for us, a few people from the neighborhood and some of our Junior boys were there to help get some order. It was the strangest thing to see. I couldn't believe my eyes. There were about three guys who were taking the lead and telling everyone to be quiet and were getting them in order. I had thought they were refugees that were just realizing the absurdity of the chaos and were trying to make order out of it. I found out later that they were just people from the neighborhood helping out. It was very reassuring to see this. The first thing was to get them to be quiet which didn't take too long. After that, we began to get two lines formed. That took about a half hour, but significantly calmed everyone. Of course, some were not happy about the wait, but then, who does like to wait? In any case, the rest of the day went well though it took us until 5PM to finish. I had counted 382 but didn't start immediately and since my count we let a few more in the gate who had a referral card. I would estimate that we interviewed between 400 and 450 on Friday. Fortunately, the difficult part is over. Now we just need to create aid packages. This is time consuming, but much easier! Please pray that what we are doing is effective and does help many get back on their feet as they look for a new start in life, a new job and a new home. Thank you.

01/24/10

2010-01-24T10:16:00.000-06:00

I had written before about support for the earthquake relief. Many had asked what they could do. Since we didn't have any need here I had suggested that anyone who would like to help could support Missions of Love, an organization working in Port au Prince where the help is needed. To read more about this, see my earlier blog entry (01/17/10).

However, as time passes, some refugees have been making their way here. We have visited a couple hospitals in the area and are trying to support some of the refugees who are here. On Saturday, we bought 100 pounds of rice and 50 pounds of black beans. We divided it up into about 36 bags. Our plan is to figure out who is of need, who came directly from PaP, and set up a schedule for them to receive supplies. We aren't in the position to have a food line by any means as we would run out in minutes. We want this effort to be exclusive to those who were directly affected and have come from PaP. Other than food, we also sorted several bins of t-shirts, dress shirts, pants, underwear, and socks for various ages. We also put together bags with towels and soap. Some clothes were donated by the missionaries here and a good deal of the clothing had been sent in. Though we may not be able to help everyone who comes, it is reassuring that we will be able to help some.

At the moment, we really aren't sure how many will show up here. Many have come already. Because we are seeing refugees who are in need, we do want to let you know that you may send support directly to us. If you prefer to support an organization in PaP instead of here, that's great. We realize that you may not feel comfortable supporting an organization you do not know, so if you are more comfortable with supporting the earthquake victims through Sonlight, please send financial support to the following address: P.O. Box 8031, Evansville, IN 47716. If you do decide to send support for earthquake relief, please make sure that you write "Earthquake Relief" in the memo field of your check. 100% of those donations will be used in supporting refugees who come to Port de Paix from Port au Prince.

Thank you all for your concerns and for your prayers over the past two weeks. It is greatly appreciated. Also, thank you all who have updated us on what is going on in PaP since we do not have access to televised news and have limited access to the internet. It's a bit strange to say that we are 100 miles from PaP, but most likely know less about the situation than you do. We have talked to a few who came from PaP, however it is still difficult to grasp the damage and the progress they are making as I haven't seen more than two images (and those weren't of great quality).

01/17/10

2010-01-17T10:20:00.000-06:00

Since the earthquake, many people have emailed me asking how we are doing, what they can do to help etc.

As of now, we are all doing well. I heard that the gas prices here have already started to go up a bit. Other than that, I haven't seen any shortages yet, but then, it's still pretty early. As for our food situation, we fortunately just ordered food from Sam's in Florida and the boat arrived while we were home for Christmas break. When we arrived, we split everything up and brought it all home. My roommate and I both have enough food to last until the end of the school year. Just to be safe, I went out yesterday and stocked up on powdered milk. Yeah, I know many of you cringe at the thought of drinking powdered milk, but I have not only gotten used to it, but like to have a nice thick glass. Yeah, it's full cream milk and delicious. I bought two big cans of it...a total of 5.5 pounds (dry weight) so you can imagine how much milk that will make...about two big glasses...ha.

These last few days have been pretty hard on those in the community. We have seen the effects on our students, the people in our church and our aides at the school. Many of them had family and/or friends in Port au Prince and have received some good news and some bad news. Some have lost loved ones while others haven't heard anything at all. Many people are trying to get a seat on a bus to go to PaP from Port de Paix. I heard the other day that it's getting quite expensive to get a seat especially when the price of gas is taking off. Many from PaP are also coming here to be with their family. We have a student here who was living at home for a short period while her entire family had gone to PaP. She was living at home by herself from Tuesday until Friday wondering if they were ok. I cannot imagine how difficult that time was. I cannot imagine the fear and anxiety I would feel if I were in a position of not knowing if my entire family was ok or not. Fortunately, for this student, her family is doing well. That time had to have been horrible for her. Many others aren't so lucky. My aide told me on Saturday that she keeps calling her cousin but no one is answering. She said it was hard to make those calls...it is hard to leave a message on their voicemail not knowing if they are going to hear it. She said that when no one answers you know something is wrong. It's hard to see so many people hurting all at the same time. During church today there was a lot of crying and tears. Our pastor most likely lost his sister there. They aren't sure just yet, but know that her house collapses, and the school that she works at also collapsed. I don't know that I would have too much hope after hearing that.

So, as for us, we are safe here. However, if you would like to pray for something, please pray for healing, peace, love and hope for those who have been affected by this and who are hurting.

If you are wanting to help, I would suggest Missions of Love. We personally know the doctor that sent the following email to us. Many of you have asked if we need help. I am very grateful for your concern, but help is needed in Port au Prince....not so much here in PdP at the moment.

----

"Gentlefolk,

A nightmare beyond your wildest imaginings is unfolding in Port-au-prince, Haiti as I write you this fervent plea. Hundreds of thousands dead, many more seriously injured and dying as we speak. The medical and surgical implications are beyond description. The needs would seem insurmountable, yet, as always in the past, Americans will be touched to be of help and surely help will come again in this horrible situation.

Here's a list of actual supplies and meds we need immediately. Beyond that, money in any amount will buy much needed meds in Port-au-prince IF they are available.

Materials:
Dresssings of any type (tape, gauze, Kerlix, ace bandages, roller bandages, ABD pads, 2x2s, 4x4s, bandaids, perineal pads)
Plaster or fiberglasss splinting materials
Syringes with needles, (2.5 to 10cc, 20g. to 25 g.)
Alcohol /Betadine pads or wipes
Betadine solution
Surgical instruments (i.e., suture removal kits, procedure kits)
Burn dressings
Silvadene cream
Vaseline

Meds:
Topical antibiotics (Neosporin, Gentamycin, etc.)
Antibiotics, any (amoxicillin, tetracycline, cephaloxin, ciprofloxin, sulfa-TMX)
Painkillers, any (Tylenol, acetominophine, ibuprofin, naproxen)

Deliver any medical supplies or meds to
Reflection Of Christ Church
200 Main St Hartford, KY

or in the Florida area to
Dr Johnson at 621 Morning Cove Circle, Palm Bay FL 32909

Or phone us for a pickup at your place: (270) 315-7284 or (270) 315-7489.

Donate Online
http://www.missionsoflove.org/

We're sending in $2000 cash with Dr Cenord Guerry, who flies in tomorrow with Vanessa Carpenter of Angel Missions Haiti to mobilize their clinic on Rue Delmas to its maximum ability to intervene, triage and treat the thousands of wandering wounded. But many thousands more will be needed over the next several weeks.

I'm going down with a team of 14 and hope to carry many duffel bags of supplies and medications in with us on Jan 31st.

Please send any donations marked "earthquake relief" to MISSIONS OF LOVE, Inc., PO Box 292, Hartford, KY 42347. You'll receive a receipt for tax purposes.

Please spread the word in your church, workplace, friends, neighbors, etc. to help in any way they can. God bless all! Dr Bob and Betty"

Earthquake - 01/12/10

2010-01-12T17:16:00.000-06:00

Today, I experienced my first earthquake. I was sitting in my living room talking to my roommate Jonny when we felt the house shake a little. We live very close to a street where large trucks drive down from time to time, so we first thought that it was just a truck. After a few seconds, and no sound of any vehicles, we realized that it was an earthquake. I told Jonny, "We should go outside!"...not thinking that staying inside a concrete house was the best idea. As we walked outside, our friend Gepson was standing inside our gate with a crazed look on his face. I walked away from the house a few feet and leaned up against our concrete wall. I started swaying back and forth. It was the strangest feeling to be standing on "solid" ground, but yet feel as if you were floating to the right and left. It was a little nuts. This happened for several seconds. Immediately, the kids in the street started running around and laughing hysterically.

We stayed outside for a while and then I came back in to get online to check to see if the earthquake registered. I use Firefox as my internet browser and for whatever reason came across an add-on for earthquakes. I installed it for fun. It checks for recent earthquakes and when one hits, my browser shakes. So, I opened up my browser to see, but the most recent one was a 2.5 in Utah. Well, I checked back later and saw that there was a 7.0 just West of Port au Prince. I guess there was some damage including a collapsed hospital. We didn't have any damage here, but it was quite the experience. As I was checking online, I felt one of the aftershocks. I went outside again...it's more fun out there anyway! ha

About ten minutes later, Marc, another friend of ours came over. He said that when he was walking down the street that kids were laughing and saying, "Mr. Doug was swaying back and forth." I guess that I stuck out since I am so tall. Maybe I sway more. If you want to read more, you can check out the following sites:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34829978/ns/world_news-americas/?GT1=43001

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2010rja6.php

01/09/10

2010-01-10T08:47:00.003-06:00

I'm back! Christmas vacation was great. I was happy to be home to see my family, friends, and of course Lindsey. I also worked while I was home which was a blessing considering how expensive Chicago can be. I think they are about to start charging people to breathe. I'd pay for that as long as they could keep it warm all year.

Well, while I was gone, the boat arrived which had our food orders from Sam's and Wal-Mart. I am happy because we were starting to get low on food. I don't mean that we were going to starve or anything, but just that we were running out of choices. Another thing that came on the boat is an air tank for our water pump.

I don't remember if I wrote about this last quarter, but we were having problems with our water. As you may know, we have a reservoir in the back and the only way to get any water pressure is to pump it into the house. It's an above ground reservoir, so as long as it is full gravity will pull it into our toilet. However, without power, we won't get any water for showers or for our sinks. So, we have to fill up a bucket and use a cup to pour water over our head in the shower. It's really not all that bad. In any case, I don't want our pump to burn up so I was concerned when it was running strangely last semester.

I had gone out back as it was making a strange sound. The problem was that it needs to pump water into what I refer to as the air tank. This tank has a bladder (like an inner tube) which when full of air gets compressed and pushes back on the water therefore creating pressure in our water lines. If the bladder cracks and fills with water (as ours did because it is old and rusty) it doesn't work properly. Ours wasn't too bad as I could fill it with air but it wouldn't hold for much more than a couple weeks. So, that's just what I did until we could get a new one.

One the boat arrived, John asked if I was going to hook it up. I told him I would like to help, but didn't know enough about it to try it on my own. He said that he would have Ermilien, one of the workers here, help me with it on Saturday.

So, today, I was going to have him help me change our air tank for the water pump. I couldn't find him so I needed to add air to the tank so it'll hold over until we can put the new one on. Well, you see, nothing goes quickly here. To do that, we have a little portable compressed air tank, however, you need to fill it up first as it isn't a small compressor unit, but just a small tank to transport compressed air. So, I grabbed it and went over to the compressor. The compressor's on/off switch was broken. It must have happened over break as it was fine before I left. The cover to the switch was off and noticed that there are a bunch of wires inside. The way it connects is a little strange, but fortunately, I was able to take the broken handle, and wedge it in a little spot to keep it switched on. I then plugged it in and filled my tank. As I was filling the tank I noticed it had a leak. There is a plastic connection (I don't know why it isn't metal) to the tank which was cracked. That wasn't like that before break either! So, I filled it as best I could (I didn't want to over fill it and then have it blow up in my face), and then hurried over to my place as it was leaking air. Fortunately, it didn't all escape and I got there just in time to squeeze a little air into our tank. Not ideal, but enough to get us by. It's funny sometimes as we often have to improvise here on such short notice. It does make for an interesting place to live!

12/13/09

2009-12-13T10:35:00.001-06:00

This past week was fairly uneventful. It worked out well in that I taught lessons through the week and gave a test on Friday for all of my Algebra I and II classes. On Monday, I will be able to go over the tests and won't have new lessons again until next year. Monday will be a regular day of school, but we have a half day on Tuesday. Tuesday night we have a Christmas program which we will be preparing for all of Tuesday afternoon. The Christmas program is great because it is the one time other than registration where you get to see all of the students and their parents throughout all classes! We use the entire front yard of the school for setting up the stage and seating. It was an amazing performance last year. Each class goes up and sings. The students show up dressed as if they are going to a wedding. It is very impressive.

On Wednesday, school only goes until 10:30AM. It's considered party day. Over the summer, many student sponsors and a few churches, do Christmas shopping for our students. They send their gifts to the boat dock which arrive here in the Fall. We spend an entire Saturday morning sorting gifts for the specific students they were sent to. Many gifts are sent from churches that do not specify any particular student so we split those items up for students who either don't have a sponsor or who's gift didn't arrive via the boat. Unfortunately, sometimes the boat fills up, or for whatever reason, certain boxes don't make it before Christmas. In any case, we make sure that each student gets an assortment of gifts. We distribute these on party day and then play games.

It's also nice to get out of school early on Wednesday because it gives us time to make sure we have everything ready before we leave. This half of the year seemed to go by quickly...much more quickly than it did last year. It has been a lot of fun, however I am excited to get to go home to see everyone that I have been missing!

12/06/09

2009-12-06T09:52:00.003-06:00

Today I taught Sunday school for the high school students. I chose the question, "Why are you a Christian?" as the topic. I asked this because many of us rarely if ever ask ourselves this question. So, when we are confronted later in life, maybe at school, at work, at some event, etc. we don't always have an answer. I want each of our students, who have chosen to follow Christ, to know why they made the decision and for it to be a good one. I don't want them to call themselves a Christian because they are trying to impress me, their friends, or their parents. I don't want someone to label their self as a Christian only because their parents are. I want them to make the choice because they personally believe in the faith. I spoke about the things I value and what makes Christianity important to me. How I think it not only leads to a better life, but that it brings us close to God, who I believe is a personal God. I also discussed a few apologetics which seem to be the most talked about and the most questioned. I don't think I have all of the answers, but I do think it is a good thing to question and to understand about ourselves.

Roger and Norma are Back!

2009-12-06T09:52:00.001-06:00

This past week has been a great one. On Monday, Roger and Norma returned after being away for over three months. As you may recall, Roger had a heart attack on the first day of school and here we are, three months later and they have come back. He had been in the U.S. during this time recovering from surgery and we are very happy to have him back in good health again. I know that John surely missed Roger with all of the generator problems we had on top of his regular work at the construction site. Now, whenever something comes up, it will be much easier to ask than to make phone calls to the U.S. and to try to describe something that can be very technical. Most importantly though, it is good to see their smiles, to hear their laughs, and to be able to sit down and talk with them during lunch. I'd say that if you haven't met Roger or Norma, they are worth the trip down here. The ministry, of course, is well worth the visit, but to share a conversation with the couple who has lived here for 25+ years and live a Christ centered life is always amazing. To hear perspectives, what they have learned, what they enjoy, how happy they are...it is always great to be in their presence!

11/27/09 Eggs and a Taxi

2009-11-29T11:31:00.000-06:00

This afternoon, I was planning on going downtown with Marc and Brooke. I needed to get a few things from the market. One of which was eggs. My roommate and I have eggs each morning for breakfast. I don't cook too many (two each every morning). We buy a flat which is 30 eggs for 40 Haitian dollars...about 5 dollars US. Well, the flats that we have in the states have a covering. it is cardboard and yes, it isn't terribly sturdy, but still, it is better than nothing. Well, here, you only get the flat...no covering. The eggs are exposed, so you have to be careful carrying them. Going downtown is walkable, but it would take at least 20 minutes, so we always take taxis. This is normally a quick trip, but the roads are torn up because of construction. It looks like they are putting in drainage and a new road (a paved one at that!). Well, the crazy part is that the drains are not covered, so when the taxi driver speeds by within inches you just hope you don't fall in. On the way back, the other side of the road isn't paved yet. It is still gravel/dirt. It also has a little bit of a steep drop to the right. Not that you could fall off...not a cliff or anything. It's just about a two foot steep drop to the edge of the road (where a sidewalk would be). Well, we were going along and my taxi driver slid down a bit and came to a sudden stop at which one egg plopped out. I don't know why he didn't slow down before veering to the right, but then, I am not driving the taxi, nor do I know how easy it is to stop when the road is gravel/dirt. I was holding the flat with one hand....like a waiter would bring food out to a table. I didn't know how else to hold it... I mean, I am on the back of a moped! Not like I have a seat to set it on next to me. I had a good grip and needed to cushion the eggs when we hit bumps. I was doing pretty good considering. Well, a truck was coming toward us so my driver sped to the right again, but a little too fast and we slid again a bit uncontrollably and slammed into what seemed like a plastic playpen/crib. I have no idea why it was on the side of the road. For all I know, it was for sale. It was empty, but still, we hit it pretty good.....four more eggs plopped out and hit the ground. Still not bad for a wreck. I shouted at the guy to go and then Marc came up behind him on his taxi and started yelling at him. My driver was telling him, "Boss, I have to protect my passenger." As in, he has to watch out for my safety first before he takes the smoothest road in care of my eggs; which makes sense. Who cares if the eggs are in great shape if I am not around to eat them. We didn't crash too hard...I mean, I was holding onto my eggs with one hand and holding onto the taxi with the other and only lost four more eggs. Though I wasn't happy about losing the eggs, all in all, it was a funny experience.

11/22/09

2009-11-22T20:06:00.001-06:00

The second quarter of school has been going well so far. The Algebra II classes that I teach are starting to get more difficult and with the day off this week, I slowed down a little and gave them a review day. I like to give review problems for them to do in order to prepare for the test, but not until we are well into the second quarter. The first quarter has so much review that they do very well with that it isn't necessary. Now, it is starting to pick up and this is one way that I can get them to practice more and increase repetition.

As for 6th grade, things are picking up as well. We have been working on new material that they are not familiar with. At the beginning, I felt that they were so quick to learn but most of it was review. They are a bright class, so even the new material isn't incredibly difficult for them. They have been a fun class to teach. I did have one student, Lindsay, who was struggling, however we have a recent graduate, Miss Elose, who started working as an aide in 6th grade this year and has been helping out. Each day, she takes her upstairs and tutors her one-on-one as I teach math. It has been very helpful because she can teach everything at her own pace. She can stop on the material that is difficult and speed through what is easy. It's great to have this luxury. Lindsay struggled last year, but seems to learn quickly. She had moved here from the Bahamas so I wonder how thorough their math classes are there. I only wonder because she seems to learn quickly. I am hopeful that by the time we are getting through the 3rd quarter, she'll be doing much better.

11/18/09

2009-11-22T19:59:00.002-06:00

This past week went by fairly quickly. Monday and Tuesday were fairly busy with regards to the generator. John had shut one off early in the day because it was making a strange sound. After a few hours of work, he found out that an injector had gone bad and needed to be replaced. Unfortunately, we didn't have any. I had started helping around 1:30PM after my last class. Since we couldn't get the generator running we needed to start up the smaller generator. The small generator is a portable one which is barely enough to run our refrigerators, however we are grateful to have it as thousands of dollars worth of food would go bad. Since most of our food comes via boat we must order enough food for at least three months, but usually more to be safe. Everyone has a large supply as we cannot buy a week's worth at a time as you would in the States. On top of this, Norma has several deep freezers filled with food as she prepares lunch for 20 people every school day. Between the 20 of us, we most likely have about $40,000 worth of frozen foods including what Norma has for the school lunches. Without power, we would lose it all.

I had mentioned in my newsletter that two guys, Grant and Ken, came to work on one of our generators. After they left, both were operational. The newer generator which was limping along with some oil loss, was shut down while they turned on the rebuilt generator. The rebuilt engine worked fine. The newer generator would not turn back on after it had been shut off. Fortunately for us, had the older one not been rebuilt when it was, we would have been out of power a week ago. Well, it wasn't but a few days later and the injector went bad on the working engine. It's a fairly quick fix, but we didn't have the part. Without the parts, we found ourselves sitting outside trying to get the smaller generator to work, but it wouldn't stay running. We were a bit concerned because our two main generators were down and the little one wouldn't start either. The last resort was to ask Jerry, who owns the hotel next to us and who normally buys electricity from us, to power up his generator. Since he is already wired to receive power from us, we just fed the electricity back from his generator and through our breakers to our houses. We had to go unplug and disconnect all of the heavy electrical items. I had to disconnect our water heater, water pump, air conditioner, etc. The only thing we could power were refrigerators, one fan per person, and a light. This was plenty!!! As long as the refrigerators had power and we could run a fan, that's all I could ask for. Everything else can wait. I kept thinking about how funny it was to be purchasing power from a customer, but we were very happy to do so.

During all this time, we had scheduled a John Deere employee, from the Dominican Republic, come over to take a look at the newer generator. It was still under warranty. Fortunately, he was able to bring an injector for the older engine and was here within two days. We had Wednesday off due to a Haitian holiday, Combat de Vertierès, so it wasn't so bad to go without power. To be honest, it isn't all that bad to have school without power...at least for me. As for the elementary grades, it's a bit harder if they had a movie they wanted to show, but as for math, I don't really need lights since I get so much light from outside. Though we got the older generator back up and running we were told that the newer one had some major issues. We'll have to worry about that another day. We will repair it, but as for now, it's nice to have power again!

11/14/09

2009-11-15T10:56:00.001-06:00

This past week the boat arrived. We were expecting it a couple months ago, but are happy that it finally arrived. Fortunately for me, the boxes I shipped came several months ago. There was a problem with the big ship getting clearance from customs for whatever reason, so they sent a smaller boat. Luckily, I got all three of my small boxes. The crazy thing is that I didn't need anything that I had shipped. I mostly sent toiletries and had plenty for the time being. I felt a little guilty getting my boxes when there is a couple here who is new and they hadn't had anything but what they brought in their checked bags. Needless to say, many of the missionaries were happy to finally get their stuff after waiting so long.

This also means that all of the food we ordered from Sam's Club came. My roommate and I hadn't ordered anything because we had a huge order the last time. Normally, the process is to order at least three months worth of food. It takes a bit of getting used to ordering that enormous amount of food, but you always want to over order than under order...and we had over ordered by a long shot. The good news for me is that the longer I am here, the more I know about what I can buy here. We try to eat more local foods for a few reasons. One, it is fairly cheap and adds to their economy. As for ordering food from Sam's, though it is necessary because there are certain things we cannot get here, it is fairly expensive considering someone has to go there to do the shopping over the course of two days and take it all to the boat dock and put it in crates. As for the frozen food, we have that all put in deep freezers and then inside metal cages. The boat bill alone is pretty hefty as well.

So, though I didn't get anything, I am happy for all the others who had been waiting so patiently for things they shipped to the dock back in May!

11/13/09

2009-11-15T10:47:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, the health department stopped by to speak to all of our students and to give them permission slips to have signed and brought back the next day for a vaccine that they were going to be giving. The vaccine was for elephantiasis and for worms which can be transmitted via mosquitoes. I knew that mosquitoes can transmit malaria, but wasn't aware that elephantiasis was transmitted this way.

I was in the office when they were at the school. The vaccine was given orally so no needles. I wonder how that would have gone over with the little kids! I was told that we could get the vaccine too and since I am not fond of getting elephantiasis or any other worm related parasite from mosquitoes, I went right over and told them my age (trante en) and was given a cup with a big pill and a few little ones. I am guessing the little ones are in addition to the larger one based on age. Of course, they could very well have been another vaccine in the event that they had two separate ones, but in any case, I slammed them down with some water and went back to the office.

I was in the office for a little while until I needed to go back to the school to teach Algebra I. It was an easy day for me in Algebra because I was simply giving a test. After that class, I am done teaching and get my planning break before lunch. I normally go back to the office and get a few things done that I wasn't able to do while in there for my scheduled time. Today, I figured I'd go back there and take it easy because I was a little tired. I was up a little late the night before and figured that I was tired from that. When I got back to the office, it wasn't but five minutes and I had fallen asleep in Roger's chair in the back room. It turns out that everyone was tired from the vaccine. It was Friday so many of the elementary teachers show a movie. Mr. Thom said that at least three of his students fell asleep and he was feeling wiped out too. All of the teachers were tired and a few felt nauseous. A few students got sick, so I wonder if they didn't have any food in their stomach. I had made a huge glass of milk (yes, made...powdered milk) and drank that before I went to the office so I didn't take the pills on an empty stomach. I felt fine other than being a little tired.

It was interesting to see the health department at the school. It's nice to see because I have to imagine that these vaccines aren't cheap, even if they are on the side of lesser expensive medicines. I am guessing that it was a donation from some organization who was behind this and am grateful that it was made available to all students. I don't know if it was a country wide program or if it was just something here in Port-de-Paix, but either way, it's good to know that our students will be less vulnerable to certain parasites.

11/08/09

2009-11-08T14:31:00.000-06:00

Last year, I had mentioned I was taking a Creole class. We didn't start right away last year because we had to wait for Cara and Thom to fly in. They had a baby and couldn't come at the start of school. Cara teaches the Creole class so we didn't begin until about October. This year, she is teaching it again, so I started over. It is nice because I am pretty much a repeat offender and get a second chance at making the material really sink in. We have gotten a little further this year than we were last year so I am starting to learn a few new words. We just had our Creole test and I am waiting to see what I got. I am sure I did well, but we'll see about that!

This week, we had a few guys, Grant and Ken, fly in from Florida to work on the generator. We had one up and running, but the other generator was broken. They repaired it over the course of two weeks and it is now up and running. Well, it was. They flew out Saturday morning and it was working great. By Saturday night, a few hours after I emailed my newsletter mentioning that both were good, they had both stopped working. The one we had been using, which was leaking oil, will not start. Hopefully, it is a minor issue, once we find out what the cause is. As for the second generator, the one Ken and Grant had fixed, it stopped around 8:00PM Saturday night. At that point, I didn't know that both were down. I figured it had shut off from overheating or some simple problem. This happens from time to time and within ten to fifteen minutes, it restarts. Well, that didn't happen so I went to bed around 9:30 hoping it would come back on. I woke up in the middle of the night to see that everything was still off.

I got up this morning, showered (bucket bath, really) and then went to church. As I entered the school gate, I noticed that John had the small (and I mean small) generator out. That is bad news. This little generator can barely power all of our refrigerators if that's all we run. I could see John was hard at work, so I kept going to church as I didn't want to be the 50th person to ask him what was wrong. Afterward, I went to the generator room to see if I could help. They had the generator pulled off of the engine and I figured that they could use some good humor if anything. I went home, ate, changed and headed back. Fortunately for us, it only took about four hours of work and it started right back up. For those of you who know this stuff, there were a few bolts that connect the aperture of the generator to the engine which had been severed. This most likely happened because the generator wasn't bolted down securely in two places causing it to vibrate too much. As of now, the one is working. Hopefully, the second will be diagnosed and fixed soon! We're just happy to have power!

10/31/09 La Tortue Kayak Trip

2009-11-01T10:38:00.003-06:00

It wasn't but a few days ago had I been thinking how I haven't gone on any adventures this year. Last year, I had gone on several hikes and trips. Some of those were all day trips that involved taking multiple tap taps (pickup trucks used as public transportation). I had gone on a few kayak trips with Thom and other adventures. This year, I had only gone on one hike and it was a brief one early one Saturday morning. Today changed all of that. I was at home on Saturday when Thom called me. He was telling me how he couldn't sleep Friday night and had gone up on the school roof around 1:30AM since he couldn't go back to sleep. He noticed that it was almost a full moon and the ocean was very calm. He said he almost called me to see if I wanted to take the kayak out. We got to talking and he asked if I would be up for meeting at the school at 1:30AM to take the kayak out and attempt to go to La Tortue (the island which is about 6 miles from us at the closest point). I was definitely up for it. I wanted to row over to the island before I came down here for my first year.

Initially, Thom didn't want to make the trip because of how rough the wind and waves get out in the middle of the channel. He also had the memories of a day where he and Brice had gone out. It was calm for them, but on their way back the wind picked up and it took them about 8 hours of constant rowing. Also, we didn't know how strong the currents were out there. We had taken a boat over last year which took a few hours to get over (though we didn't go to the closest point). On the way home, it took us four hours... with an engine. Well, Friday night, Thom must have gained new confidence as the ocean was very calm so we decided it was a great idea. We would go to bed early then meet at the school at 1:30AM. We thought it would take two or three hours to get over there and the same to get back. We thought we could be back by 6:00 or 7:00AM.

So, this morning at 1:00AM, my alarm went off. I got up and heard my phone ringing. Thom had called because he wasn't sure if we should go. It had rained and there were a lot of clouds in the sky limiting our night visibility. Also, it wasn't quite as calm. We could hear the waves crashing up on the shore. It wasn't bad, but he didn't think it was quite as ideal as the night before. It was a downer, but we thought we should at least get in and tool around a bit since we were up. I really wanted to attempt it and didn't feel like going home without at least getting in. Also, I thought once we were in, we should be able to at least get a better feel and then have a better chance of convincing ourselves to go. We headed downstairs, drank a few Toros (Haitian energy drinks), put our live vests on, unlocked the gates and started wheeling the kayak out to the ocean.

Once we were in, we headed out to the point which takes us out of the little cove and directly toward the channel. It was very calm, it always is until you get out into the open. It only took about five minutes at the most and we were out. The water was a little more rough as we expected but very manageable. We had great visibility with the full moon and the clouds seemed to be scattering. Every once in a while, a cloud would cover up the moon and it would get darker, but it didn't matter so much because we were aiming toward a few bright lights that were on La Tortue's coast. We assumed that they were of the Princess Hotel. We felt like we were making pretty good progress and could see fairly well. It did appear at once that rain might have been coming our way, but it turns out that it was only a darker cloud and the humid air which made the mainland appear to be behind a storm.

We had been making pretty good progress to which we finally started joking that we knew we would make it across, but weren't sure if we could make it back (in the event that the weather turned on us). We thought that if it started to rain hard that we couldn't turn back since the island was closer. As we went along we could see more lights and eventually began to make out boats that were on the shore. A minute or two later, we could hear water crashing up against rocks. Fortunately for us, Thom had been to the Princess Hotel before and knew there was a beach we could land on. About ten minutes later, we were paddling between boats looking out for their anchor lines so we didn't run into them. Thom didn't think it was a great idea to get "clotheslined" by one. We finally got close enough to see a few people who were up. Most likely, they were security guards for the hotel. We pulled up to the shore, got out and stretched a bit. We didn't stay too long. It was pretty dark out, there wasn't anywhere for us to go really and we figured that at 3:00 in the morning, we would probably spook anyone who would see us on the beach. We were pretty happy to have made it in an hour and thirty-five minutes. We knew it would take a little longer on the way back, but not much more than two hours.

After a few snacks, more Toro, and a little rest, we headed back out. We passed by all the anchored boats and realized that the water had picked up a little bit, so it seemed. The wind was steady, but not too bad. It wasn't much of a concern because it was still early and we didn't anticipate morning winds for another few hours. We had talked a bit about how exciting it was to row over to the island. How it is always much more exciting on the way to the destination, but how the paddle back wasn't. We slowed down a little for a couple reasons. One, we weren't quite as enthusiastic about the return trip. Second, fatigue was beginning to set it. We weren't exhausted by any means, but not quite as excited about the trip to the island. We were talking about how quickly we had made it over and how easy the trip was considering the conditions. We don't think we could have picked a better night. We joked about it being our annual Halloween night kayak trip to La Tortue.

After about twenty minutes of rowing, Thom hollered up to me and said to look at my paddle when it entered the water. He told me that there were plankton in the water. We could see it glowing. I had heard of this before but didn't expect it. If I am not mistaken, the actual name for these are dinoflagellates. When they are disturbed in the water they illuminate. They were lighting up like blue sparks. I had seen shows where divers mentioned it. As I looked around, it first appeared as moonlight shimmering off of the surface of the water. I probably wouldn't have noticed it if Thom didn't say anything since I was in front. I didn't see too much from the front as I could only see the few that had been disturbed as the water splashed against the side of the kayak. I had to turn around and watch my paddle as it glided along the water. It wasn't immense, but then, when you realize that the moon was no longer out (it had gone down to the West) that there was nothing that could have been reflecting off the water. Thom told me to watch my paddle as it went into the water. As I watched, I could see what appeared to be blue sparks around the paddle from the moment it entered the water until I pulled it back out. Thom said he had been watching it for a while and could see it clearly since he was behind me. We stopped for a minute and would splash the water with our hands. Sometimes one of the plankton would wash up and run off your arm like a spark. It looked a little like fairy dust from Peter Pan.

Just then, I remembered the show I had seen with the divers. I remember them being afraid of making too much movement. They were worried that it would give away their location to sharks. Thom and I joked that if we saw a big flash in the water that it would most likely be a shark following us. Fortunately for us, we didn't see any big flashes; just those that we were making. It was very interesting and sure made the trip much more enjoyable on the way back!

Not but twenty or thirty minutes after the moon went down the sun began coming up and it started getting lighter. We paddled for a while and checked the time once we got back around the point. We had left La Tortue at 3:55AM and were at the point at 5:50AM. After a few more minutes we make it back. Just at two hours. We were exhausted. I came home, showered, drank some milk and went straight to bed. I don't think I slept for more than 15 minutes at a time, but it sure felt good to lay down.

Below is an image and the path we took to get over to the island.

10/25/09

2009-10-25T10:12:00.001-05:00

I don't have too much to write today, but I did see one of the funniest and most odd things in church today. I was sitting in about the middle of the room in a folding chair. I had looked up a row and all the way down to the left at one of our fourth graders, Dacheka (pronounced Dashka). She was holding a regular size sheet of white paper. No big deal...it's just a sheet of paper. That's when I read the title which was printed in large enough print for me to read from about 10 seats away. I didn't know what to make of it. It read, "Diffusing Land Mines" Now, first of all, I didn't think that was a problem in Haiti. Second, if anyone has instructions on how to diffuse a land mine, should it really be one of our 4th graders? Let me reassure you, that is not what we are teaching our students.

So, I got to thinking. Maybe it's a play on words. A funny title to a worksheet she got in class. Maybe it was a sheet about how to diffuse others when they are angry. How to treat them nicely and be kind. How to calm them down. I didn't know....I was just having a hard time understanding why she would have had this sheet.

Later, I saw her teacher, Miss Brook. I asked her if she had given her a funny sheet in class. She said she didn't, so now I sit wondering. Why did one of our students have a "Diffusing Land Mines" sheet? Why was she handing it to her 7th grade brother, and then to her mom, and back and forth? I think it is the funniest thing....considering that we don't have land mines here. So, I thought.

10/20/09

2009-10-25T10:02:00.001-05:00

As you may know, voodoo is common in Haiti. I normally don't see much of it myself. I do hear drums from time to time and know that it is going on, but normally I don't see it up close. Well, that all changed this week. For whatever reason, our neighbor directly across the street decided that they were going to have a voodoo ceremony. You can always tell by the sound of the drums. It is always the same exact rhythm. They also have some sort of cymbal or metal chime that they bang. Well, when this started at 6PM one evening it didn't stop all night. I don't know how one person can drum that long. I guess they have people who trade shifts. They would stop for a minute or so, but that's it. It went on for hours. I woke up in the middle of the night, and it was still going on. It was going on when I went to school, when I came home for my break and then after school. They continued for over 24 hours straight. It was a bit insane. Fortunately, we have concrete walls so it was absorbed a little. Further, my room is in the back so I didn't lose any sleep, however it was a bit annoying. I can only imagine what people with less enclosed houses think that need to go to work the next day. So much for noise ordinances! I hear they have them, but no one seemed to be enforcing it.

10/19/09

2009-10-25T09:51:00.000-05:00

This afternoon I was sitting in the office working on some accounting. I had a question about something so I asked Gepson if he could come into the office to explain the thing I didn't understand. We talked for a little bit and as we were talking, Bedjina, a fifth grader came into the the office. She walked back to the room we were in. I just figured she had a question for Gepson. Students come into the office quite often. Sometimes they have a stomach ache or headache. They might be in there because they have some make-up homework, and yes, sometimes they come because they are in trouble. Well, after Gepson and I had finished talking, Bedjina stayed in the room. She told me that Mme. Scott, her teacher, had sent her in to see me. She handed me her test. She had gotten a 94% and wanted to tell me thanks for tutoring her after school. It made me very happy that I was able to help her. Sometimes students want tutoring, but they cannot come frequently enough. As for Bedjina, she has been coming regularly with one of her classmates, Olivier. I haven't seen his grades yet, but he has stopped bringing papers that he needs to redo, so I guess there's a little improvement there!

10/14/09

2009-10-18T08:43:00.001-05:00

The best part of this past week was having my home church visit. They came last year about this same time, except this year the group was much larger. Before the group arrived, Scott, Lindsay and their boys came in first. They arrived Thursday the 8th. The rest of the group came in on Saturday the 10th and there were seventeen of them, so with Scott, Lindsay and the boys we had 21 people. Normally, I know most of the people who are coming in. This time, I didn't know everyone since our church has been growing, so I had a lot of new faces to learn.

It is always good to have people here to help out and to relieve John of the endless tasks he has to do. So much gets done in a week when we have a group here. This is a place where things tend to break down a little faster than anywhere else. Things rust faster since we are close to the ocean and since our running water has a little salt in it. Our generator runs non-stop (or a minimum or 12 hours when we have two working) so those don't last much longer than two years until they need to be rebuilt. There is always new construction happening which is great to see because it is a clear sign of growth here. However, more than all of this, it is great to see the group interact with the students. When I am passing between classes, I enjoy seeing group members sitting at a table outside the classrooms, or sitting side by side in a couple small chairs working on spelling, reading or some other subject. You can see the visitors bonding with the kids. Sometimes I get to see group members running around on the playground or soccer field during a game of kickball.

Once the day is over and we have all eaten dinner, I also enjoy going up on the school roof where we will gather in a circle with some folding chairs and discuss what we all experienced that day. I like hearing what the new visitors see when they first come and what they enjoy. I also like hearing what the veterans see as some have been visiting year after year.

Groups are also our lifeline for getting stuff delivered. There is no mail service. We did have Lynx, which would bring in small mail, but it was very unreliable/inconsistent as well as expensive. I don't think they have delivered anything since we have gotten here. I won't use it because if there is something I can wait 4 months for, then I probably don't need it. Anything else could be brought in by a group. When the group arrived this week, they brought in a few turbo chargers for our generator. The only other way of getting these would have been to send someone out and to fly them all the way to the States to get whatever we need. That's some pretty expensive postage. Fortunately for us, when groups come they only need one checked bag, so we request that each person brings two. One checked bag and one plastic crate. This means that if 21 people come, we get 21 crates of supplies. It is also a huge luxury for us. I can have family, friends...and my girlfriend :), send care packages to group members who will bring things in for us. It is a little like Christmas when they show up. Sometimes people just ask for simple things that they cannot get here. On top of crates, the group will also bring in a few coolers. So, we can ask for sour cream or other refrigerated items that we cannot get here. It's funny to think that someone bought sour cream, checked it on the plane, and over a couple days and a few chunks of dry ice, that it arrives perfectly cold and can be the best treat when you cannot find it here. I didn't ask for any food, but did have my sister Sherrie send some things to me that I forgot to bring. For example, I had bought a new pair of pants that I forgot to bring. She got them to someone at my church and they brought them. I also got cards from her, my brother-in-law and my niece and nephew. It was an unexpected treat.

On top of all this, my girlfriend was sweet enough to send a huge bag of her favorite candy for my students. They were very excited to each get a little bag of candy. I passed a sheet of paper around each class and they all signed their names and many of them wrote thank you messages. There were many funny ones. One of my sixth graders used her nickname when she signed her card. Her name is Eliette, but she signed the card "Magnet". She got that nickname from recess. She would always fall down so Mr. Thom started calling her Magnet because she was like a magnet to the ground. They love nicknames and they write their nickname on their homework and tests. The messages they wrote were very funny, especially since they knew that the candy came from my girlfriend, Lindsey. My sixth graders wrote things like, "I hope you still love Mr. Doug." or "I cannot wait to meet you when you visit." One student in my sophomore class took it upon herself to write a letter for the entire class. I had passed out the paper for all of them to sign and to write a little "thank you" message. Baradina was the first person to get the paper, and used the whole page to write a letter to her. The rest of the students only had space to sign their names. It was very funny and sweet.

I hope that for those of you who haven't been here before or haven't been here in a while will consider visiting. It isn't only enjoyable for us but life changing for you. Of course, I always enjoy seeing my friends and especially here when I have gone months without seeing you all, but mostly I want to share this experience with you. I want you to see how incredible it is here. It was great having my home church here, and though I didn't get to see a lot of familiar faces, I was happy to see so many new people come who got to experience this place.

10/09/09

2009-10-11T14:55:00.002-05:00

This week we began to have generator problems. Fortunately, we aren't in as bad of shape as we were last year. I don't know exactly what day it was, but one day the radiator hose broke on the older generator and it overheated causing one of the pistons to break. This put the older generator out of commission. Around this time, we began having problems with the newer generator (which we just bought last year). There is a hose connected it it, I don't know the exact reason for it, that allows excess oil to drain. Well, for some reason it is leaking oil much faster than it should. It is dripping so fast that it appears to be a constant stream. John can only let the generator run for a couple hours before he has to shut it down and put the oil back in. He had looked in a repair book and according to the diagnosis, the book said that the turbo needed to be replaced. So, we ordered a new turbo. Scott Alexander, from my home town, was planning to visit and brought a turbo in. John replaced it and the problem persisted. He had thought that the turbo was bad so we had a group bring in another one a few days later. Once the second turbo was connected, we continued to have the same problem. Unfortunately, this is the last group to visit this year and we have yet to diagnose the problem correctly. Hopefully, we will be able to figure out what the issue is and fix it before something major happens. When it leaks oil so quickly that a bucket is filled in a couple hours, it makes you wonder if something larger will break. If that happens, we won't have power at all unless we reconnect the 5KW generator we had last year which is only enough for our refrigerators.

Fortunately, we have been doing well so far. We have to shut down the generator during the day, which isn't too bad. It does go off around midnight, but is only off until about 4AM. This isn't to bad because by midnight I am asleep and I don't notice that it is getting hotter. I have woken up sweating, but four hours isn't too bad considering that it could be off completely. I feel like we are walking on egg shells by using it, so please pray that the problem is a minor one and that we will be able to fix it soon. Not only does this affect the missionaries, but we have around 100 customers that have been without power this entire time because we cannot turn everyone on. If we did, the load would be too hard on the engine and we would risk major damage. I'll be sure to post updated on what is happening as I can. As I write this, I am not able to connect to the internet. It rained pretty hard last night so I assume something is acting up with the satellite. I would like to assume for now that it is a minor problem. If you are reading this, then we clearly have gotten the satellite fixed.

On a good note, my home church is here visiting, so I am excited to have everyone. It's always good to have visitors here, but it is especially great to have some friends come and I get to meet a few new people that I didn't know from my church.

10/03/09

2009-10-11T14:50:00.002-05:00

When I posted my blog last week, I had forgotten to write about something that happened after I went snorkeling. It isn't that big of deal, but something I have never seen.

When we finished swimming, we had gone up to the shore to dry off and as we did, I heard the sound of a jet. I have never heard a jet here before as we don't have an airport which could handle one. The airport here has a gravel runway; too coarse and short for any jet. As I looked up I noticed a small white jet with some red lines on it. It may have been orange as it flew by so quickly that I couldn't get a good look. It appeared to be a coast guard jet. I imagine they were doing a routine fly by since some of the missionaries have seen it before. I have seen coast guard boats here, but never a jet and it was interesting to see it fly along the coast at a low altitude.

10/03/09

2009-10-04T13:05:00.000-05:00

This afternoon I went snorkeling with Kyle again. The tide was out and therefore the water was about three feet lower so I could touch the bottom. We hadn't started swimming too long and a few kids swam out to see what we were doing. It seems that whenever you go somewhere, there are always a bunch of Haitians who will tend to gather around. Well, as I said, we hadn't been out long and this boy was swimming next to us. He dove down and came back up. As soon as he surfaced, he was spitting sand out of his mouth. I didn't know what had happened. It was the craziest thing. I couldn't make any sense of it so I just sort of dismissed it. Well, we kept snorkeling and looking around. About twenty minutes later we started swimming along the coast to look for some coral. As we were making our way along I slowed down to look at the bottom of the ocean. We were finding some star fish and I noticed a sand dollar, so I stopped and just floated there for a second. I guess the boy caught up with us because I noticed him to my left. I saw him dive down and noticed that he was going head first toward the sand. He kept going down and just as his head reached the bottom I could tell he was opening his mouth to get a full scoop of sand. It was horrendous. I cannot explain it at all. I guess it was just a kid trying to have some sort of fun not realizing how horribly disgusting it was. Kids do some crazy things.

There had been another boy swimming with goggles and a makeshift snorkel. His was made out of what appeared to be PVC pipe. I couldn't tell, it may have been a regular snorkel, but didn't appear so. He was swimming around with a metal spear and a large rubber belt most likely scrapped from some broken machine. He would pull the spear back with the resistance of the rubber belt (more like a big rubber band) and made a makeshift spear-gun. I had seen him out there last Saturday and he had caught/speared several fish. I guess he has gotten pretty good at it.

10/01/09

2009-10-04T12:58:00.000-05:00

Today was the second time I have attended the church bible study which is all in Creole. It is very difficult to understand as I don't speak much Creole, but it has been a very good learning experience. I had started taking Creole classes last year and am taking them again this year. Mme. Thom (Cara) is teaching us and required us to go to either a Creole bible study or a Creole prayer group so we could be submerged within the language. From her experience, those who have gotten more involved within the community are usually the ones who become most fluent with the language. Of course, it makes sense and it is necessary to make an extra effort considering our school is English speaking. It is a little difficult to get anything out of it, but I have noticed many new words that I keep hearing and have asked what they mean. There are a few students who come to the bible study so when I need, I can ask them for guidance. The leaders of the study, Pastor Frank and Archimel, alternate each week. Fortunately for me, they both speak English, so I can ask them questions as well. I am hoping that I will eventually be able to pick up the gist of what is being said. As of now, I understand only bits and pieces.

09/26/09

2009-09-27T14:08:00.000-05:00

This afternoon, I went snorkeling with Kyle, one of the missionaries here. We just went behind the new Soncenter building which is just down the street a little. I was excited because my brother bought a snorkel and goggles for me this year. I had told him how I liked going out last year and had to borrow some goggles. Unfortunately, we don't have the best coral behind the school, but it was still a lot of fun. The shore of the ocean is a made up of a few feet of exposed coral. It's a little like walking on uneven concrete. This portion doesn't have much growth as it gets exposed to the air when the tide is out. This crust around the edge doesn't go very far and then abruptly stops. When we went out yesterday, the tide was in, so there was about a foot of water over the coral. We walked out to the edge, and jumped in. The depth off of the ledge must be around 8 to ten feet. I couldn't touch, but when I look down, I can tell it wasn't too deep.

Looking into the water and seeing the fish was incredible. There were all sorts of tropical fish swimming around. Mostly little fish, but very colorful. Some were blue with orange tails. I had also seen a black fish with yellow stripes and a blue fin. There were a lot of beautiful fish and some strange plant life. I remember seeing something growing on the vertical edge of the reef which looked similar to an octopus/jellyfish. It was a lot of fun to just relax and float on the surface of the warm water and watch the marine life. It was strange how the water was incredibly warm on the surface, but about four feet down there was a threshold where the temperature was much cooler. Not cold by any means, but a significant change in such a short distance. I wish I had some pictures to share. I guess if you want to know...you'll just have to visit.

09/23/09

2009-09-27T12:36:00.000-05:00

After school today, I met with a few students for tutoring. I only have two students from 6th grade, but about three from fifth grade. One of the girls from fifth grade is Jenny. Her twin sister also stayed, not for tutoring, but to wait for her to walk home. Her name is Jennifer. I don't quite understand this. You see, in Haiti, whenever there are twins, the parents often give their kids nearly identical names. We have two preschool boys who are twins. Their names are Mike and Michael. Tell me that this isn't going to cause trouble for them. It's the craziest thing.

So, I had about five students who needed help. Mostly with their homework, so I should be able to keep up. I won't be able to take much more than this so once their grades go back up to A's and B's, I'll have to tell them that they cannot come for tutoring anymore. I love working with them, but it is about to the limit where I cannot give enough one on one attention unless they are good with their homework and just need to work with flash cards. In this case, I can set them up in pairs and let them quiz each other.

Lindsay didn't come this week but is planning on coming next week. I think she will do much better this year as long as I can get her up to speed with multiplication and division. This seems to be the hardest part for her. Just multiplying large numbers and dividing with four digits can slow her down quite a bit. I'll be sure to write about her progress. Please pray that I am successful with tutoring these students!

09/22/09

2009-09-27T11:46:00.009-05:00

In 6th grade today, I had finished a few minutes early with the lesson. All of the students had finished their practice problems which we don't always get through. We usually come close, but there are days where there are a few left (just review problems) so I have them do these along with any homework I assign. Whenever they finish early, I let them ask me questions. They usually ask about my family, if I have siblings, and so on. Then, there is the one question that they always want to ask.

Well, a week ago, I was in the middle of class. I had them working on a few problems and told them to raise their hand if anyone had a question or needed help. Merry (yes, this is the correct spelling) raised her hand. She always has her hand up and is done early...just grinning away. I asked her if she was done. She said, "yes!". I checked her answer which was correct and I let her know. She kept her hand up. She tends to do this as if I'd let her answer five questions in a row without calling on anyone else. I looked at her and asked if she had a question. She said she did. I asked her what it was and with the biggest smile, she leaned forward and in a quiet whisper asked me, "Do you have a girlfriend?". No one had noticed what she asked because she was so quiet. Since we were in the middle of the lesson, I leaned forward and said, "We're in the middle of a lesson. You'll have to ask me another time." She just laughed and started working again.

So, today they had time to ask questions and of course, it came up again. I saw that Merry had her hand in the air. I called on her and she asked me again in a whisper. I said I couldn't hear her and said she would have to speak up. She repeated it, but still just as quiet. I said, "You'll have to ask a little louder." At this, she raised her voice plenty for the whole class to hear. As soon as the question went out the entire class perked up and was focused! I told them that I did. That made them giggle and squirm. Of course they asked what her name was. I said, "her name is Lindsey". I was expecting all sorts of questions after that, but didn't get any. Below is a picture of Merry who had asked. And of course, here is a picture of my sweetheart, Lindsey, who they were all asking about :)

09/17/09 - Roger's Second Surgery

2009-09-20T11:03:00.002-05:00

Though this week has been a lot of fun as school is progressing and all of the teachers are getting to know their new students it has also been another difficult one. We found out that Roger needed a second surgery unrelated to his heart. This time he needed to go in for surgery for his intestines and heard that it is a major surgery. Not only is it a complicated surgery, but it is following so close to his heart surgery that we know he is going to be in a lot of pain afterward. The good news is that Roger is a strong person and I don't have any doubt that he will come out of this stronger than before. The difficult part is knowing that he will have to endure a great amount of pain during the process. As of now, he is recovering from the second surgery and is getting better. Please continue to pray for him as he has a long road ahead!

09/17/09

2009-09-20T11:00:00.000-05:00

Today I met with four students for tutoring. Anessa and Bedjina came again as well as one of my sophomores and another 6th grader. Amos, who is in my Algebra II class wanted to come for tutoring since he had a test the following day. We worked on several problems and he seemed to catch on pretty quickly. He has since taken his test and got the second best grade. He only missed three problems. He is currently third in my Algebra II class.

Catiana, the other sixth grader, also came with a few questions. I wasn't expecting her to show up but she literally lives next door to the school so I am sure she just saw us sitting on the picnic table and came over. So, as I was working with Catiana and Amos, I had Bedjina and Anessa quiz each other with flash cards. It worked out well because they both need to increase their speed with multiplication. I had tested Bedjina earlier and noticed that she got most of the multiplication problems correct, however she skipped nearly all of the problems where she needed to multiply by 12 because of time.

I plan on continuing the tutoring with them each Wednesday and Thursday so hopefully this will be enough to bring them up to A students! I'll be sure to write about their progress!

09/16/09

2009-09-20T10:25:00.000-05:00

This week I began tutoring Anessa, a sixth grader from my math class, and Bedjina, a fifth grader. Anessa is good at math, however she just needs to work on her speed. We have speed drills each day and though she can do the math, she doesn't get all of the problems done when the time is limited. I will mostly be working with her on her speed so she can fly through the speed drills effortlessly. As for Bedjina, she is a little behind with some subtraction as well as multiplication and division. The first day we met we only went over subtraction and helped her with a few of the subtraction 'rules' so she makes less simple mistakes. It's fun working with the lower grades because it usually seems that there are only a few things that they need help with. These grades deal with mostly simple math at the beginning, so I should be able to get them caught up. They will soon be learning about measurements (linear, volume, and weights), so though some of these lessons do require some conversions it does gives me time to work on the simpler math allowing them to get caught up faster than the class is proceeding.

Hopefully, next week, I will also be able to tutor Lindsay from my sixth grade class. If you had read my blog last year, you might remember her name. Unfortunately, she was retained, but both Thom (her 6th grade teacher) and I feel that she will do great this year. As for math, it is my impression that she didn't get a great education from her prior school. She learns quickly, however the class had started out a little further than what she was comfortable with last year. She is doing much better this year, however I still want her to be a little further ahead. Hopefully, when I write again next week, I'll be able to say that she is able to come.

09/11/09

2009-09-13T10:52:00.001-05:00

So far this year I have only tutored one student. I remember tutoring a lot last year, but cannot remember when I started so I suspect that when the material gets more difficult I will have more. I had my first tutoring session at 3PM today after school. One of my sophomores, a new student to Sonlight, wanted to meet with me after school. Jonathan seems to understand the material in class, however he has been turning in nearly every assignment late. I have talked to him a few times and we had his parents stop by to discuss it. It turns out that he isn't quite used to our policies. He was explaining to me that the school he attended before didn't meet each day for every class. He said that he only met two or three times a week for Algebra in his old school. He explained that if he had an assignment on Thursday, that it wasn't due until the following Tuesday. Here, I give them an assignment every day and require that it is turned in each morning before the pledge. I deduct points for late homework and was concerned since they had all been late.

When I met with Jonathan today, I was happy to see that he only had a couple questions and what I went over he quickly picked up. As I had him try the examples I gave him, he didn't make a single mistake. Further, I also learned that he wasn't quite sure what I expected from him. Not only was he showing all his work, but he was explaining some of it in sentence form. Though impressive, it was taking him too much time and he couldn't finish his homework. He had turned in one assignment where he took the entire page to do one problem. It was organized neatly, had good handwriting, but just showed way too much work. I showed him what I expected....that I want to see the work, but that he didn't have to write out an explanation for everything. For example, if angles are supplementary, then he can just take 180 and subtract the known angle to find the unknown. He thought he needed to explain that they were supplementary and why before doing the math. I have a feeling he will do just fine when he gets to geometry and has to do proofs!!

I am hopeful that he will be able to keep up now that he knows what I expect and that he doesn't have to do quite as much work. He definitely seems bright enough to maintain the work load.

Funny Students

2009-09-13T10:38:00.000-05:00

As the school year is getting along, I am starting to get to know the personalities of some of my students. I have a few that have stuck out a bit. In 6th grade, I have a student who sits in the back. Her name is Mike Shelda (both of which she goes by for her first name). I have noticed quite often that she will be sitting back there making faces. I don't even know if she realizes it. The funniest part is that she isn't doing it to get attention; it's as if it is a second nature sort of habit. She isn't making faces at anyone, and isn't being distractive. I don't even know if the other students notice. However, I'll look back and she will have her eyes open as far as she can as she squirms a little in her desk with a silly grin. The funniest part is her silly grins. One day I'll probably crack up in the middle of teaching and the students will think I am half nuts. I would worry that she isn't paying attention, but somehow she is multitasking because 90 percent of the time, when I ask for an answer, her hand shoots up in the air. Also, six of her seven speed drills and homework assignments are above 90%.

In my freshmen class I have a few students that are quite funny. I have talked to my roommate, Jonny, who had them in 8th grade last year and he told me about one of his students who will just go off into his own little world. He said he caught him with both hands in the air waiving them around a little. Jonny said that this student snapped out of it when he noticed Jonny looking at him. I haven't had any funny stories but I was thinking that it would be great if I could be in two places at a time. One, teaching the class....the second, as a fly on the wall observing the funny things about the students. Hopefully, I'll have some funny stories about them. So far, nothing too out of the ordinary has happened.

First Week of School

2009-09-13T10:12:00.000-05:00

Today is the start of our first full week of school. So far, everything has been going well, but then we are still going over a lot of review material. The thing that I enjoy most about the start of this year is that I understand that most of this material is already in the minds of my students, but that it is just review and extra practice before we really get into the new info. Last year, as my first year of teaching, I wasn't sure what the students knew and what to expect from them. I feel like I am better prepared to get them going at the right speed. I also remember what the students (since I have the same ones, but in new classes) had difficulty with and know to spend more time on this material and less on what they found easy.

It seemed last year that there was an overwhelming amount of information to process. I had around 100 new names to learn (mostly names I had never seen or heard pronounced before), I had to get to know the students (individual traits and as a class), I had new material that I had to keep up with and so on. This year, I know the names (I only have to learn 6th grade and the freshmen) since I had taught the sophomores and juniors last year. I also remember most of the material and the order in which it goes, therefore I feel as if I can spend more of my time fine tuning the things that didn't go well last year and to find better ways of explaining material that was difficult to learn.

So, as of now, I am eager about a few things. One, to get to know the newer students because so many of them are funny, caring, and just incredible people. The other is to get into the new material that is a bit more challenging. Lastly, I want to get a little more involved than I was last year since I feel a bit more efficient this year. I don't feel like I will be chasing my tail as much and therefore I think I along with Marc (a graduate of Sonlight) will meet with the 11th and 12th grade boys for a bible study. I don't know what days we will be meeting just yet but hopefully soon.

Jonny Makes The Radio!

2009-09-06T11:27:00.003-05:00

Below is a funny story about my roommate that happened this Saturday. The funniest part about the story isn't that he fell off a taxi, but that it made the radio!

Here is an email I received from him:

"Well, since the story has already be reported on the radio, I thought I should go ahead and fess up. I fell off a moving taxi today. I got on a taxi near my house. A full minute hadn’t even passed before I was lying in the street. The driver hadn’t given me enough room to sit on the back, and he lacked the ability to control the weight of the bike. He was swerving wildly and I fell right off the back. I hit hard on my left hip and left palm. At first I was shocked and just lay there, staring back at 7/11 upside down. The sounds of the quickly forming crowd yelling at the driver snapped me back. I don’t know what they were saying, but I knew I was really embarrassed and I wanted to get out of there, so I jumped back on the same taxi and said, “Ale, ale.” Not the brightest move, I know. I just wanted to get out of there. Another taxi driver who spoke good English came up beside us and asked if I was ok. I said sure, just so I could get out of there. The rest of the ride was full of fear, tight grips, and slow speeds. The driver tried to do better. I think he was just happy I didn’t yell at him. When I got off the taxi, I still had a 30-minute hike over a river and up a mountain (which was real fun with my sore hip). I was so sweaty when I arrived, that the host offered me a towel. My hip and wrist are still sore.

The best part is that some of our seniors just told me that the whole eyewitness account was broadcast on the radio less than a hour after it happened. They said a Sonlight teacher fell off a taxi and got back on. They gave a description of the clothes I was wearing but didn’t give my name (thank goodness). They made fun of me for getting back on (which I probably deserved). I guess I can say I had my 15 minutes of fame in Port-de-Paix!"

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I don't know how the story made it to the radio so fast, but I have a feeling it has something to do with our students. The radio station which is down the street is owned by the father of one of my students. I cannot wait until Monday to ask Jean, one of my Juniors, how they found out. I am mostly amazed at the fact that this made the radio....that there wasn't something more important to talk about.

Rice and Beans at Mme. Ile's

2009-09-06T11:21:00.002-05:00

This year, I have had lunch with Marc several times down the street at Mme. Ile's (pronounced eelay) house. Today, I told Marc that we need to start eating at her place every Saturday. We mostly go there for rice and beans. There is no menu. You get whatever she is making that day and the price is always 10 Haitian dollars (50 Goud). If you get a Coke with your meal, and we always do, then it is 14 Haitian dollars (70 Goud) which is the equivalent of about $1.75 US. I remember the first time I went there. I was told where it is at, but the restaurant isn't really like a restaurant and I was not sure about going inside. Actually, I didn't even know you could go in to eat. I thought that maybe I was just supposed to go up to a window, order, pay and take my food with me. There are several street vendors, so we often buy food and then take it to go.

So, Mme. Ile's house has a wall around it, like many houses here with a metal gate. You first pass through the gate and take a left. From here, you can see a concrete room with a curtain hanging in the entrance. It looks similar to a white table cloth that my grandma used to have on her dining table. It is white with lace around the edges. For all I know, it is a thin old table cloth. The ground beneath your feet is dirt and covered with bottle caps, all turned right side up and pressed into the dirt from all the foot traffic. I figure that over the course of a few years, they might be able to have a walkway that is completely made up of bottle caps. Once you pass by the curtain, the room inside is completely concrete. The walls are made of block and are unfinished. The floor is concrete, but not quite level. To the left is a very long table which is made out of particle board with veneer covering it, except for the edges which have been chipped away and are eroding. The chairs all vary in shape and size; some are stools all about the same height. Many of the chairs look like they consist of an old frame from a padded chair that went bad where the pads were replaced with plywood. To be quite honest, this is probably the worst atmosphere of any restaurant I have been in. Quite often, there are a few chickens running around on the floor. Sometimes they are just sitting there resting while other times they are just passing through, from one room to the next. As I said, the doorway just has a curtain. On the other end of the room is another door which leads to another room where the cooking is done. Nevertheless, the food is great, so we keep going back!

There are only a few different meals that Mme Ile makes. One is "diri ak sas pwa avek legim" (rice and bean sauce with legume). This is one of my favorite. You get a heaping portion of white rice which is covered with what is called legume. From what I understand, it doesn't have any legumes in it. I believe the main ingredients are cabbage, a little tomato paste, onions, some goat meat and bones for flavoring, parsley and maybe a few domestic herbs. Then, on the side we get a bowl of black bean sauce. The bean sauce is simply black beans mashed over and over with water added to make a soup like sauce. It is very good. Some seasonings may be added, but I am not sure. We pour this all over the rice.

Today we had rice with beans and a side dish of what seemed like legume but was a little different. The side dish seemed more like a beef stew. It had carrots, potatoes and goat meat inside. I poured mine all over the rice and beans.

As I mentioned, we get a heaping plate of rice, so much so, that I try not to drink too much of my Coke so I have room for all the food. I can fit the Coke in later. Well, today, I had slowed down and Marc destroyed me; he finished at least five minutes before I did. As he was waiting, he started watching the chickens that were passing through. He had a few pieces of rice on his plate, so he put them on his spoon and catapulted them across the table onto the floor. The chickens went nuts trying to eat it all. They were bobbing all over pecking at the concrete. I couldn't help myself and started shotgunning the rice all over the floor between bites. Now, it may sound like we were making a big mess, but let me tell you, the floor couldn't get any dirtier and these chickens weren't going to leave a piece untouched. It was all getting cleaned up...let me assure you. Besides, this isn't your 5 star restaurant. I was in this place one day when it smelled like diesel fuel. I didn't know why the smell was so strong until Mr. Ile told us that he had just cleaned off the table with kerosene. Lunch that day was a little difficult to put down, but we did it. So, I would compare us this day to someone who was tossing bread on the ground for some ducks. I mean, we weren't even wasting food. We'll eat that rice one day...it will just be in the form of chicken.

First Day

2009-09-02T20:58:00.002-05:00

Today was our first day of school! Everyone was excited to see the students and happy to get started again. This year I am only teaching four classes and then spend a few hours in the office helping out with some accounting work. I started today with Algebra II and had the Sophomores. Of course, since today was the first day, we went over rules and procedures and therefore didn't have a lot of time for the lesson. We did get through most of it and will finish up tomorrow. Lucky for them, they don't have to turn in an assignment tomorrow. The same went for the Juniors who I had after the Sophomores.

Following the Juniors, I headed downstairs to 6th grade to teach math. This was especially fun because I got to meet a new class of students. There are twenty students in this class of which only two are boys. Quite an odd balance, but I am sure it is going to be a lot of fun this year. I hope as much as it was last year! I will miss the old 6th graders, but fortunately for me, I get to see them upstairs in passing since the seventh grade is just down the hall.

The disturbing part of the day came in the middle of my 6th grade class. I was approached by one of our aides here and was told that Mr. Roger was being taken to the hospital because of a heart attack and was asked to pray for him. We immediately stopped and the whole class prayed. It is a blessing to be able to do this in our school. It's interesting, because Norma's devotion this morning was about this. She had mentioned that we have the privilege to pray in school and today was no exception. I am grateful for this.

Unfortunately, we didn't know too much at the time, but as I sit here and type this, I have been told that Roger is doing much better and is being monitored at the hospital. He was initially taken to a hospital nearby in a town called La Pointe. After he was monitored there for a little while, he was driven back here and taken to the airport to be flown out to Port au Prince by MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship). They were great because they flew here from Port au Prince as a chartered flight, just for Roger. I heard that the plane is so small that they actually picked up the tail of the plane after it landed to swing it around in order for it to take off again. Seems like something out of a comedy.

The only news I have heard since has been great. I got the following email from Carmen tonight:

Hey all,

thanks for praying for dad. Nader met the MAF charter and took them to the hospital. he and a deacon from his church prayed with dad before he went inside the hospital.

they are at Sacre Coeur (sacred heart) Hospital. the doctor is French. studied in Paris and did research at Harvard. he said definitely was a heart attack. he did an EKG and a sonogram of his chest. they gave him an anticoagulation shot.

the hospital is new and nice - AC, nice room with fridge, microwave, all new. they feel like they are getting good care.

they are sending up food for dad.

If you want to call them. they'd love to hear from you sometime! you know mom!

keep praying.
love,
carmen.

------------

So, as you can see, the first day of school was an eventful one. We're all grateful that Roger has been doing better.

As for the rest of the day, I had spent a couple hours in the office working on accounting, and then went back to school to teach Algebra I to the freshmen. This class was also fun because I have a bunch of new students that I had seen before in passing, but will now get to know. I did finish up early with them and they had some time to work on their homework assignment. It should be very easy for them as it is just review and an easy lesson at that. It will be interesting to see how well they do and how much they have retained from last year.

As for the classes, the first day was great. As I said before, we are always glad to see the students come back after we have been home for the summer. They are also always happy to come back and were excited as well, I am sure, to see their friends.

Thanks to all who help make this possible, for those of you who pray for Sonlight Ministries and all that you do. Please continue to pray for us and especially for Roger.

Blessings
Doug

Luggage

2009-08-23T11:12:00.001-05:00

Today was unexpectedly interesting, as I was just planning on making a trip with John down to the airport. As we headed out, we were going to take a different route because the main road is closed. There is some construction going on and it appears that some drainage is being put in. I just hope that it is done right and lasts. So, as we were driving along, we stopped to ask some taxis if we could pass. Most roads could taper at points where it was too tight to fit a car, or they could simply dead end. Well, there was a road that we were told we could pass through, but I remembered from the day before that it was a rough ride. I had come back this way on a moped (taxi) and we barely got up the hill. It was incredibly jagged (not a paved road). It was mostly rock and some dirt on the steepest part. I didn't know if we would be able to pass because I thought that we would go over one of the rocks and it would rest on the undercarriage of the truck. Fortunately, we got over it, but the shocks had taken a beating. I don't know if we could have gotten back up. It was fun because as we came around the corner, it was very close to the ocean and had we been going to fast, we might have just went though the small houses which were there and over the cliff. I took a picture as we had passed looking back, but I didn't get it in time to show the cliff. It does show how crowded it was though. You'll see that a police truck just went past us. It took about 10 minutes for people to move their stuff out of the road and make room for us to pass. I am still amazed that we got past the police, but fortunately, there was one wide spot for us to pull off and let them pass.

Once we got to the airport, we waited about two hours for the last flight to show up. When it did, we saw most of our luggage, but were told that we couldn't take our bags. It wasn't that big of a deal because I didn't mind waiting another day, but the principle of the situation was frustrating. We were told that we couldn't take anything because we needed to sign for it and the lady who would take our signature wasn't there. The director told us this. The most frustrating part was that he had the authority to let us take it and he knows us very well. John goes there two to three times a day whenever we have groups here. He's probably been there thousands of times (literally). Further, Sonlight has to be their biggest customer as we fly groups in nearly weekly and often fill well over half the plane. In any case, I did end up getting my luggage, and am thankful mostly that nothing was damaged!

SIM Card

2009-08-23T10:37:00.000-05:00

Today I had asked my friend Marc if he could go downtown with me to help me get my SIM card replaced for my phone. As I was walking around the construction site, where I thought he was, I saw one of my students, Kervens, who will be a senior this year. He was standing on the ground level while someone was lowering buckets of sand to him. As I shook his hand, he pointed at the bucket and said that, "This one is for you, Mr. Doug." I asked him where I was going with it and he pointed toward a room about fifty feet away. As we entered the room, I asked him where I should pour it. There was a guy sitting there sifting the sand to be used for mixing in with some cement. He pointed at the guy and told me to dump it on his head. I laughed but couldn't do it. It might have been funny, but I had to be nice and pour it on the pile next to him.

After I worked a little (very little), I found Marc and we headed to the Digicel store (Digicel is the main cell phone carrier here). I had a Digicel SIM card from last year, but apparently I somehow broke it while I was in the states. I was trying to duplicate it so I would have a copy, and think I ruined it. I knew I could just get another one, but wanted Marc to go with to translate for me so I could get a new card, but keep my same phone number. Fortunately, it only cost 120 goudes (3 USD)! I was not only happy about the price, but very much so about getting to keep my same phone number. We were in and out in about 10 minutes!

We're Back

2009-08-23T10:33:00.002-05:00

I arrived in Haiti today after a delay in our flight the day before. I was supposed to fly to Port au Prince (PaP) on Monday and stay the night. Tuesday morning I was to get up and take the last small flight to Port de Paix (PdP). Though I had a delay, I was happy that I didn't have to get my checked luggage at the airport and drag it to the hotel. We all got up Tuesday morning and grabbed the first flight out. The only problem was that when we arrived in Haiti, none of our bags had showed up. Between us all, we were missing 12 checked bags. For me, it wasn't a big deal because I have stuff here and didn't have anything of great importance in my bags. In the long run, though it was a little bit of a hassle, Sonlight saved a lot of money for several reasons. For starters, we didn't have to pay for the hotel rooms. Between us all, we saved on three rooms. Further, whenever we fly on the smaller flight from PaP to PdP, there is a 70 lb limit. We have to pay by the pound for any overages. At this point, it was the airline's responsibility and they had to pay for our bags to show up. To make things even better, for those who did have all their bags, some of us were able to claim one bag each, so they didn't have to pay any overages either. So, as I said, it was a little hassle but in the long run we saved close to $1000.00. I guess delays aren't always that bad!

At the smaller airport, we take a twin prop plane and this one seemed to be newer. I don't want to say it was brand new, because the instruments inside didn't look new, but the outside and the inside upholstery did look new. I think it just had a makeover, but it was nice nonetheless. Below is a picture of the plane we were on. I had to take a picture of it with my phone so the quality is lacking. I still haven't replaced my camera that I had dropped in the ocean last year, so bear with my pictures until I do.

After we arrived back at Sonlight, we all had lunch and then spent some time seeing everyone that we hadn't seen for several months. I was happy to see Ermilien who works at Sonlight, and a few of my students. I was standing at Roger and Norma's place outside and heard Jeffney, who is now a senior, ride by on his bike and shout, "Hey, Mr. Doug!". A little later, I saw Bendjy, who had just graduated, working at some of the apartments we have here. It is good to be back and to see everyone that I haven't seen since school ended. It's great to see their faces and smiles as we all came back.

End of the 08-09 School Year

2009-08-20T10:23:00.001-05:00

I guess before I begin writing about this year, I had better finish up writing about last year. I was planning on finishing up my blog for the 08-09 school year this summer and never got around to it, so here it is.

The graduation ceremony for Sonlight was planned out like any other. The main difference was only the size of the class. We had eighteen seniors, so as you can imagine, the list was short. In any case, we had gowns for them all, we had decorated the church, put up a backdrop behind the church's stage, and had the diplomas stacked up on a table ready to be passed out. It may seem strange, but to add to the decoration, we had a kid from the neighborhood (who is incredible at creating models out of cardboard) make a replica of our school. He spent a few weeks on the project, and we displayed it on a table in front of the entrance to the church. It looks identical to the school. It was so detailed that you could look inside the school and see stairs, doors to classrooms and lights as well. Below is a picture of the model. If you have never been here, this is exactly what the school looks like.

The ceremony started at about 4PM with many parents and siblings showing up. At the door and within the isles we had the juniors working as ushers. They ate it up. Mostly, it is fun for them because they all come dressed up and they get to play a part within the ceremony.

For me, it was great to see my first Sonlight graduation and to know that I played a small part in their achievement. Also, not only did I get to see a Sonlight graduation ceremony I also got to see the Sonlight Bible College's first ever graduating class the following night. The best part of the graduation for me was to hear the students' speeches. There were a few speeches from the seniors that were very moving. Those who spoke showed great appreciation for their education and the love they have received from the teachers here over the years. Those moments make all the extra effort worth it.

It is going to be strange not seeing the seniors again. I know there may be a few here that I will see, but for the most part, I know they are moving on and that I may never see them again. It is difficult in one way, but joyful in the other knowing that they are better prepared for this world and that not only did they get a good education, but they also learned about Christ and it shows in many of them in their selfless ways.

05/19/09

2009-05-24T12:13:00.001-05:00

Whenever we need to get cash, we can go to the school office and write a US check in exchange for Haitian cash. This makes it very easy for the Sonlight staff. So, today I was in the office and asked Gepson, a Sonlight graduate who has worked in the office for a few years, if I could change out some cash that I had. Sometimes when I exchange a check, he may only have big bills (1000 Haitian Gouds - the equivalent of about $25 US). I wanted to trade some bigger bills in for smaller ones since smaller bills are much better (most people don't have change). Fortunately for me, Gepson had some new money that he got from the bank. Haitian money is quite colorful and is very interesting when it is new. However, most money here is quite dirty. When you look at some money, you might think it is made out of dirt and sweat. It is pretty filthy and worn out. As Gepson was exchanging the money, he gave me some nice new clean bills. Then, he handed me some older worn out bills and said that I could use these for taxis. I laughed because it seems so funny to use "clean" newer money at a store or market, but to use your dirty money for the taxis. It does make a little sense though because I don't think the taxi drivers have wallets. They always take the money that you give them and shove it in their pocket. They don't fold it whatsoever. It is just shoved in. It's almost a rule that if you get change back from a taxi driver it is going to be the most worn out money. Mostly because of the way they treat it. Also, because they are driving mopeds and are sweating it up in the sun which adds to the nastiness.

Now, I know you may be thinking...what is the big deal. Well, in reality, all money spends the same, but if you look below, you'll see the difference between new money and old (taxi) money!

05/18/09

2009-05-24T12:12:00.003-05:00

This morning, before school, I was sitting in my classroom when I heard a knock at the door. I looked up and saw Lindsay, one of my 6th grade students, standing there. She said hi and asked if she could come in. Of course, I said she could and as she walked toward me she said that she had a question. I could see that she was a little nervous because she didn't seem to be able to think of how to ask the question. She eventually, after squirming a little, said that she was scared about math. She said it wasn't her best subject.

If you remember from one of my older blogs, Lindsay transferred to Sonlight after going to school in the Bahamas. She is a very sweet girl and speaks very good English. The problem was that the math she was taught had not prepared her for our 6th grade math. She was having a hard time keeping up and I tutored her for a few weeks, but she had to stop coming because it was hard for her to find a ride home after 4PM. I noticed that she was learning some of the new material, but was having a hard time with the new material that drew on the older material that was taught before she came. Unfortunately, there was no real way to get her caught up if she couldn't stay for tutoring. When we had visitors here, I would send her out into the hallway to work one-on-one with a visitor. She seemed to catch on pretty quickly this way, but it wasn't enough to get her caught up.

As we are nearing the end, it is clear that she will have to be retained. I talked to Mr. Thom, the 6th grade teacher, and he said that she is not doing to well in some of the other subjects; one of them being French. It's sad that she won't be able to move on with her class because she is such a great student. She is always quiet and paying attention and has a sweet smile. Whenever I ask for someone to read a problem, she is the first with her hand in the air waiving it with excitement as if it is the last time she will ever get to read out loud.

On a positive note, I will enjoy teaching her again next year and am sure that she will do much better. She is one of the students who will be retained that I have high hope for. She does learn quickly, but was unfortunately unprepared from her prior school. She had told me that they only taught, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Our third graders can do this with ease as I am sure is the case for many other schools in the US.

As I was talking to Lindsay, I reminded her of how much she has improved and how she is only having difficulty with new material that draws on older lessons. Such as conversion from yards to feet. She missed that lesson, so she has trouble with converting measures before calculating perimeter or area when two units are given. I have gone over this with her, but she hasn't received as much repetition as many of the other students.

In any case, it is always sad to retain a student, but I have high hopes for her and will enjoy teaching her again! She is fun to have in my class!

05/13/09

2009-05-17T13:34:00.001-05:00

Today I stayed after school to work with some of the students with Algebra. One of the freshmen, Jonathan, had his Nokia phone with him. He was fiddling with it and couldn't get the battery to stay in. Our students cannot bring their phones to school, but I don't mind if they bring them to tutoring as they might need them to call for a ride. I told him to hand it to me and I would keep it until the end of the tutoring session. I noticed that the battery which went into it wasn't the right size. It was a Nokia battery, the connection points were in the right spot, it was the right width, but the length wasn't right. It was too short, therefore it was sliding up and down. He had found a little round rock that he was trying to wedge in the gap, but the cover wouldn't stay on. He was telling me with a big grin, "Mr. Doug, Jesus didn't make this rock for no good reason." He was serious about fixing his phone with the rock he found. I am amazed at the way Haitians improvise here to make things work.

Since the rock wouldn't fit quite right, I grabbed an unused pencil and broke the end off. I then took a razor and shaved down the side in two places so it would fit nice and snug and wouldn't stick up and prevent the cover from sliding on. I then tossed the rock aside and he looked at me and said, "Jesus didn't make that rock for no good reason." I was cracking up because though he was happy to have a fixed phone, he really did attempt to make use of something so small as a single rock.

Later that night I was talking to another teacher here who said she saw a student who was using a match stick to operate their phone. He had lost the rubber keypad (I have no idea how), but had to use a match stick to press the buttons to make calls.

It seems to me that nothing gets thrown away here. People use things until they can no longer be used, and then they scrap them for some unknown future use. It sometimes reminds me of the movie "Mad Max".

05/11/09

2009-05-17T13:32:00.000-05:00

One of the things I like most about teaching math to the 6th graders is to be able to see their goofiness each day. For example, I always tell the students that they cannot go to the bathroom in the middle of a lesson unless it is an emergency. They can go right when I show up or just after their speed drill as I am collecting papers. If they don't ask at those two times, then they have to wait for their break. There are always a few who seem to forget and always ask just after I begin teaching.

One day, I had just started a lesson when Anne Regine raised her hand. I called on her and she asked if she could go. I told her that she would have to wait and just as I did, Vanessa, who sits behind her, leaned forward and whispered, "You're gonna die!". I looked at her and without being too stern (knowing that she wasn't really trying to be mean) said, "Vanessa, don't talk like that. It isn't nice." She gave me half a smile because she didn't think that I had heard her. Right after I said this, Anne Regine looked up at me and with a little puppy face she said, "Yes I am." as if she was doomed.

Well, today, Anne Regine noticed that I was sun burned from our trip on Saturday to La Tortue. She wanted to know if it hurt. I told her it did a little and that it would start peeling in a few days. She didn't quite understand that only the top thin layer would peel. I think she assumed that all of my skin would fall off. She is a funny one. So, a few days later I showed her and she acted all grossed out. I don't know why, because ten minutes after that, I looked over and she had a marker hanging from her nose. If that isn't gross, I don't know what makes sunburned skin gross. Then a few minutes later I looked over and she is mimicking that she is singing into the marker as if it is a microphone, but she is doing this without actually singing. It looked like lipsyncing with a marker. She might be the funniest girl in the class. I have a video of her, but won't be able to upload it until I am back in the States. Be sure to check back for that!

05/08/09

2009-05-17T11:04:00.001-05:00

Tonight my roommate, Jonny, and I were invited over to Norma's house for dinner to celebrate the April birthdays. We were going to go over last Friday but Norma was feeling under the weather, so we were re invited this Friday!

She had made several different varieties of pizza and had bottles of Coke on every table. We were very excited because Norma's pizza is delicious and tonight it seemed like it was the best yet. One thing that seemed to stick out to me about the pizza was that the cheese seemed to have the perfect saltiness. I like foods to be a little on the salty side and tonight I don't think the pizza could have been made any different to make it more to my liking. I would have been very satisfied to just have pizza and cokes. This was a treat in and of itself.

Well, Norma didn't stop there. Just as we were all finishing up, she headed into the kitchen and came back out with a pie sized dish where the bottom of the dish was a huge cookie and the top was covered with several scoops of ice cream. Then, she brought out a banana split and stuck that in front of Roger and I. We didn't hesitate... I mean, it is Haiti and ice cream melts fast here. We had to get a move on and eat that fast.

I don't know if someone sent a message to Norma or what, but the one thing I thought I would miss when I moved here was going to be banana splits. She must have known somehow. By the time we finished all of the desserts, we couldn't hardly breathe.

05/09/09

2009-05-10T15:55:00.005-05:00

My roommate Jonny planned a guys trip today for all of us to go to Tortue which is the island just over 6 miles away. The six who went were: Brice, Kyle, Jonny, Scott, Thom, and myself. We hired Emilien's dad to take us. Now, I can never remember his name, so I always have to refer to him as Emilien's dad. Emilien works at Sonlight and I am sure I have blogged about him before. He is a great kid.

In any case, we all met at 6:00AM to head out. We were in a wooden boat which is all made by hand. Most of the wood, if not all, was hand cut making it look very ancient and rugged. Below on the left, is a picture of a boat which is similar to what we were on.

Initially, we had some engine trouble which took some time to get going. It would run for a little while, then quit. The waves would push the boat a little and then we would get going again. This kept repeating over and over. Emilien's dad finally took the cover off of the engine and before I knew it, he was siphoning fuel through some tube. After that, we had no problems at all. We would periodically get splashed by waves and over time we would have to bail the boat out with an old rusted coffee can. It wasn't to the degree of being dangerous, however the boat would fill enough to submerge your shoes entirely, then one of the guys would bail us out as we kept moving.

A few hours later, we were fairly close to the island. For those of you who have visited, you probably have noticed that there is what seems to be a spot of erosion just left of center when you see it from Port de Paix. Once we were closer, I found out that it isn't just the ridge line that is eroded, but the erosion is in the shape of what a mud slide would shape. I'm not saying that it was a mud slide, but just the shape of it. It was interesting to see up close what I have been looking at all along from 6 miles across the ocean. If you take a look on Google Earth, you can sort of see the erosion. Of course, you may not give a rip unless you have been here, but it is a little interesting nonetheless. Above, you can see the dip within the island ridge. Here is a closer picture.

After we got a little closer, we turned and followed the coast heading toward Point West beach. From the pictures I have seen, it is a beautiful beach. We didn't go quite all the way (I think out of the concern for fuel) but we did end up at a very nice beach with a descent amount of coral. Brice and Thom had walked ahead and just as Jonny, Scott and I had stopped at a spot to look around, they came back. I guess they couldn't go further because Brice had an "equipment failure". His sandal broke as he tripped on a rock. Just as his body jerked forward, his camera fell out, hit another rock and landed in the water. So, we decided to hang out at the spot where we were.

When I first walked into the water, I was bare foot. After I passed the sandy portion, I noticed sharp rocks and coral so went back to get my shoes. Thom had brought some snorkeling gear and let me borrow it. I have seen plenty of reef pictures but had never been snorkeling before. It was amazing to see the tropical fish and other marine life in person. I was looking at some of the coral and noticed that there was some sponge looking piece so I grabbed it and it easily broke off. I then noticed a wavy piece of coral that looked soft, however when I touched it, I noticed that it was rigid. I twisted it and a piece broke off. Just as I heard the snap underwater I felt a pain in my hand. I hadn't thought of the possibility that it could have neurotoxins. Within seconds, my whole hand was hurting and the joints in my fingers ached. I didn't feel much of a tingling sensation but just a pain. Fortunately for me, it didn't travel up my arm and within a half hour it went away. In any case, I guess I should have left the coral alone.

After a little while, we headed back because we knew it would take longer to get back home and the waves would be bigger. We walked along the beach and as we moved, I kept stopping to take pictures. I was carrying a water bottle, waterproof case and a few other things, so I would set my stuff down, get my camera out and then snap a few pictures from time to time. Here is a picture of a rock overhanging the edge of the water.

Here is a picture of Thom in front of a few houses along the beach. Notice what the house is built from.

Just as we were getting back to the boat, about 80 yards or so, we stopped one last time to get pictures in front of some rocks along the beach. I set my stuff down and stood in front of a rock so Scott could take my picture. When we were finished, I walked back, grabbed my stuff and headed to the boat. We had to wade into the water about 30 feet or so which was about two and a half feet deep. When I got to the boat, I lifted my waterproof case over and noticed that it was empty. I must have dumped out my camera and phone along the way. I went back to where I started and didn't see the camera anywhere. When I turned around, everyone was waving to let me know that they found them. My camera, phone, multi-tool and a pocket knife all fell into the water. Of course the multi-tool was fine but the problem was that my camera and phone had been submerged in salt-water. As soon as I had them, I took the batteries out and put them in a case. Unfortunately, they were submerged for a minute or so and my phone was on when it had fallen in. Also, the trip back took three and a half hours so I couldn't clean them quickly. Either way, there wasn't much I could do, but wait until I got home.

As we were riding back in the boat, we were hitting larger waves, so it made for a fun ride. The bad part was that we were getting soaked so I kept dipping my sunglasses into the water to wash them off. I couldn't use my shirt because it was too wet and would just smear water. Dipping them left a few droplets of water on the lenses, but better than using my shirt. I wanted to wear them because I was getting salt water spray in my eyes at a regular rate and it was burning a little. Well, it wasn't but a few minutes and I dipped them in just as a wave hit my arm and I dropped them. I didn't have too tight of a grip on them and before I could grab them, they were long gone. Fortunately, they were inexpensive. I had bought them with my brother for fishing... glad we bought cheap sunglasses.

When we got back, I went straight home and started soaking my camera and phone in drinking water (the cleanest water we have) to get the salt out. I would have liked to use distilled, but didn't have any. Once I soaked them with two separate "washes" I then soaked them in rubbing alcohol to get rid of the water as the alcohol would evaporate the quickest. So far, my camera doesn't work, but I did get the pictures off of it. My phone wont start up either, but I am hoping that I can get my contacts off an internal memory card. I cannot remember if I put them on there or not, but I'll find out when I get home. I did back up my contacts about two years ago, but I have no idea who I'll be missing. So, if you are reading this, go back up your phone contacts!

04/30/09

2009-05-04T17:22:00.001-05:00

Today was the last day of SAT tutoring. I met with the Juniors for three hours after school for the last time before their test. They will be taking the test on Saturday and I am guessing they won't have their results for a few weeks after. We administer the test here, but once it is complete, we have to ship all the tests and supplies back to the States which I imagine will take some time.

I have to say that I am impressed by the amount of studying this class has done. They have taken it upon themselves to meet when I couldn't and they ended up meeting again on Friday to study one last time. One of the other teachers, Cara, had been meeting with them as well to cover all other sections besides math. I am hopeful that they will do well.

04/29/09

2009-05-04T17:13:00.000-05:00

As a first year teacher, I am still learning some tricks that help with class management and ways to help lengthen the time I have to teach by shortening the other mundane tasks. In 6th grade, one of those tasks is passing out papers. I used to pass them out by row which took some time because I didn't always have them in row order. Obviously, you simply tell the students to pass all papers forward and once they are forward, then you pass them down the front row without mixing your papers with the other row's papers. This sort of thing is easy. However, what seemed difficult to me is getting them to pass their papers forward in a timely fashion. I don't know what it was, but when the speed drills were done it seemed to take too long to get the papers passed up. It also took some time before I could get them to pass up graded homework after they were done looking at it.

So, one day I watched as they passed up their papers and gave candy to the fastest row. I then told them that you never know when I will have candy. I won't have it every day, but some days I will and if you are the fastest row, then you will get a treat. The second day I tried this, I noticed that once Sabina had finished her speed drill, she turned around before the time was up and was waiting for Freud. As soon as he finished his speed drill, she grabbed it and waited for me to call the time and then fired them forward. I get all the speed drills much faster than before, however they are a little wrinkled up because of the fury. The students also tell each other to hurry up and you can see that some are pushing for their row to be the fastest.

This has been going on for a few months now and today, Mike, who sits in the front of one of the rows, wanted to be the first. I don't think his row had won before, but today was a new day. As soon as I called the time, he jumped out of his seat, ran to the back of his row and snapped the speed drill out of Rose Glendine's hand. He then proceeded forward as he snatched each succeeding person's paper until he was back to his seat with a big grin of achievement. He won and the whole class erupted in laughter. This is one of the many reasons I love teaching 6th grade math.

04/24/09

2009-04-26T11:41:00.002-05:00

After school today one of my students had pointed out a sign to me and was telling me that I should go pay to see a movie that was playing. Now, when I say a sign, I mean someone had hung up a brown board (made from a similar material as a clipboard is made from) and written in chalk was an advertisement that someone was going to be playing a movie that evening and they were charging admission. I have noticed the board before but thought I would write about it before I start to think this sort of thing is normal.

Sometimes, after living here for a little while, you start to glaze over things you see and don't put much thought into them when is is actually very bizarre. Now, if I had satellite TV in the States and put a sign in front of my yard that I was charging admission if you wanted to come over and watch a show, no one would show up. Strangers aren't going to knock on my door and pay $3 (or whatever I would charge) to see what I was playing. I have heard of people charging a little admission for a pay-per-view boxing fight or something similar, however they invite their friends. No one puts up a sign.

I need to clarify one thing though. The sign is placed outside of a gate, which if you go through, opens up into a small field. I would guess it is a little less than an acre. The strange thing is that they don't have the TV inside someones house. It is on one of those TV carts your science teacher wheeled into class on movie day and it is positioned right under the outer perimeter of an overhanging tree (for shade of course). You couldn't see the screen if it was placed out in the sun. Further, there are chairs set up in rows, all outside and under this fairly large and much shade providing tree. I only know so much because I can see the whole thing from my classroom. I will try to remember and get a picture the next time one of these events takes place. It is quite interesting.

04/21/09

2009-04-26T11:41:00.001-05:00

Today we finally were back to school. I noticed that the students needed a little jump start. It seems that when students (and teachers for that matter) have a long break, it takes a little out of them. I was pointing out to one of the other teachers how I could barely hear the students during the pledge. I thought I messed up and should have brought a big pot of coffee. I have thought about bringing coffee for them, but then if they got all jittery I would never be able to keep them under control, so it doesn't look like that will ever happen. It's fun to think about though.

Once we got started, I spent most of my classes doing mostly review. I had noticed that there was a bit of a drop off the last time we had a break and I wanted to be sure that they retained everything they had learned right up to the break. Hopefully, after they take their first test (starting next Monday) I will be able to see if they are maintaining the level they were at before. I have been graphing the class averages daily as well as their tests as it helps me to gauge their progress.

04/20/08

2009-04-26T11:38:00.001-05:00

Today I woke up ready to start teaching again from having last week off. However, as I was getting ready we got a call notifying us that there was no school today. Yesterday there was an election and from what I noticed, things get a little strange around here. On election day (yesterday) there were no taxis. I don't know how true this is, but I was told that it is so people cannot go into a voting place, steal the ballots and take off. It will be more difficult without taxis. Again, I don't know if there is any truth to that, but there clearly weren't any taxis. For those of you who haven't been reading my blog, or who haven't been here, taxis here are mopeds or small scale motorcycles and they are everywhere. I feel like I can find a taxi here easier than I can in Chicago!

So, when I got up today, we learned that all schools are closed on the day the election results are given out. I don't know the specifics on why that is, but is seems strange nonetheless.

Citadel La Ferriere 04/14/09

2009-04-19T11:52:00.005-05:00

This morning we woke up and had a continental breakfast before departing to visit the Citadel. After a few negotiations with two different taxi drivers, we were on our way. The first thing that I noticed here is that the street are mostly paved which makes life for the residents much better. Travel is faster, more comfortable and cleaner. Also, the houses we passed seemed much nicer here in Cap Haitian. After about forty minutes of traveling we were at Milot, Haiti and at the base of the mountain where Christophe's palace, Sans-Souci, was located. Below is Sans-Souci.

After paying the entrance fee and getting a guide we went over to the palace to look around. Sans-Souci was built in 1813 and then destroyed in 1842 by an earthquake. There was still enough standing to see that it was a beautiful place. Once we walked through we got on two horses and headed up the mountain which is about 2780 feet to the highest point. It was fun riding the horses for a little while, but after about an hour it started to get a bit uncomfortable.

It seemed to have taken two hours including a short pit stop to get to the top. As we were approaching we could see the citadel as if it were a ship mounted on top of a mountain. We explored all over inside and out. There were numerous windows all mounted with cannons in each of them. Some were iron and others were bronze with very little corrosion. We couldn't tour the entire citadel because a film crew was there and a portion of the citadel was blocked off. From looking at some pictures online it looks like there were more interesting parts to explore. I'll have to come back another time. Here is a picture of the citadel from a distance.

I was amazed at the size and how all the stone was carried up the mountain by 20,000 men, including all of the cannons and cannon balls. There were hundreds of cannons and piles upon piles of cannon balls; some of which appeared to be exploding cannon balls.

The citadel, Citadel La Ferriere, had been built for safety in anticipation of an attach by Napoleon which never came. It was an incredible experience and definitely worth going back. Below is a picture of some of the cannons and cannon balls.

04/13/09

2009-04-19T11:39:00.003-05:00

For spring break I decided to go on a four day trip to Cap Haitian with Thom Wimpelberg and Marc Cadet (two teachers here at Sonlight). On Monday, we flew out of Port de Paix and arrived around 12:30PM. After buying some fresh roasted cashews from a lady outside the airport, we picked up a taxi and headed to the Christophe hotel. Once we arrived at the hotel it was clear to me why everyone suggested that we stay here. The hotel was built in the year 1724 and was built with Spanish architecture. There are a lot of archways and everything was open aired with two courtyards. The hotel also had a beautiful entry which had impressive landscaping and a nice pool that was barely visible because of all the trees, bushes and flowers.

After dropping our bags off in our room, we headed out to Fr. Picolet which was less than two miles away. On our way to the fort we came across Ft. Magny which wasn't much of a fort, but consisted of an array of cannons pointed toward the coast. There were little ruins left and one above ground tomb. We could see that other tomb had been next to the existing one, but only the brick outline of the foundation was left.

Moving on, we came to Ft. Joseph which was much bigger. We didn't spend too much time there but did take a couple pictures. It was getting later and we wanted to be sure to have enough daylight to see Ft. Picolet.

Ft. Picolet was located on a point along the coast. It was much larger than the two forts before. Much of it had broken down over the years however there was much to see. This fort had many cannons positioned to fire upon invading ships. There were a few levels and what appeared to be different buildings/room of unknown use. I was just observing and hadn't read anything about the fort so I don't know too much of its history. It was definitely worth the walk from the hotel though!

Afterward we came back, swam in the pool for a while, then showered and had dinner at the hotel's restaurant. I had a steak that was covered with a lightly creamy pepper sauce. It was delicious. After dinner we had coffee and then headed up to bed.

Marc had stayed downstairs and was using my laptop to chat with some friends online. After about fifteen minutes he came into the room and I must have fallen asleep soon after. Not too long afterward I woke up to him typing. I kept hearing a clatter as he was typing. I was going in and out of sleep wondering when he would finish. I do remember asking him when he was going to sleep but apparently I had shouted, "TWO RIGHT! (then at a normal voice as Thom explains it) Mark, you about ready to go to bed?" I have no idea what I was talking about with the "Two Right!" but Thom said that was what woke him up. He said I shouted it. Thom kept repeating it, "TWO RIGHT, Mark, you about ready to go to bed?". After that, we were all laughing because it didn't make sense at all.

Below is a picture of Thom and I at Ft. Magny. I am firing the cannon and Thom is about to catch the cannon ball.

04/12/09

2009-04-19T11:21:00.001-05:00

For Easter Norma had a special lunch at 2:00 a few hours after church. It was especially good since I had been sick the day before. I had caught something which only lasted 24 hours. I had a fever Saturday afternoon until late that night, but by Sunday morning I wasn't feeling too bad. By 2:00 I was more than ready to enjoy an Easter dinner. My favorite that day was the ham. We don't get much ham here so it was a treat to me. It was delicious as were all of the sides that we had. It is always nice to get together for lunch and to have a special meal was even better! As with Thanksgiving, I missed being with my family, but Norma does a great job making us all feel like we are part of the Alexander family and doesn't leave anything out.

04/09/09

2009-04-19T11:16:00.001-05:00

One night this week, I was sitting at the dining table working on my laptop and I heard an electrical gargling sound coming from the laundry room and noticed the lights dimming as it happened. It sounded like someone was sticking an electrical wire in water and it was causing it to boil. It happened once and then stopped. A few seconds later it started again, then there was a pop and the lights went out downstairs except for the kitchen. The wiring here is a little strange. All lights in the living room, my room and Jonny's room were out, however the kitchen worked fine except for the outlet that the refrigerator and water cooler are connected to. It wasn't that big of a deal because we just ran an extension cord to the refrigerator. The next day, Roger came over and changed a fuse. He thought it was the water heater. We knew there was a problem in the laundry room for some time because Jonny kept getting shocked when he put his hand in the water that was running into the washing machine. He had been shocked a few times. It was strange, because no other water sources shocked us. Roger shut the water heater off so it wouldn't continue to cause problems. Since then, we have been without hot water, but that hasn't been too bad because it is starting to really warm up here and a cool shower is what I would prefer anyway.

A week later, I went to Cap Haitian (which I will write about soon) and when I returned I found out that the water heater had leaked throughout the night and flooded the first floor. Fortunately for us, everything is concrete and tile, so nothing can really soak up the water such as wooden floors, carpet, or studs in the wall as you would find in many American homes. Jonny had been home and cleaned it all up himself, so I was grateful to come home to find that he had already taken care of it. This week Roger and Norma had gone back to the States and have purchases a new water heater and will have it put on the next boat, so we should have it later this year when we return to teach.

If I could have any appliance break down here, I don't mind it being the water heater as it is the least needed. It would stink if I was in the US and it what in the middle of the winter, but it isn't bad considering it is warm here.

Beef Wellington - A Dinner To Remember

2009-04-12T21:22:00.002-05:00

On Wednesday evening, we were invited over for dinner at Norma's. There were three ladies who had come in to visit and the word on the street was that each year they come and prepare a dinner that is exceptional. We were to arrive at 6:00PM for dinner, so I was sure to be there at 5:45PM. I wasn't about to be late to a special dinner. As I walked over to the tables, which were all decorated, I noticed we all had assigned seats. I found my spot and noticed a bag on my seat. It was a toiletry bag for traveling and was a very nice one at that. It had a few different compartments and when you unzipped the flap there is a hook inside so you can hang it for easy access. It was very generous of them to bring us all gifts on top of a special dinner.

Also at the table, we each had a little pouch of chocolates. Now, I have had some "ok" chocolate before and some high quality chocolate. I don't know what what brand this was, but the chocolate was very smooth and I just about ate it all before dinner. As you can see, so far, everything has been pretty much incredible and it doesn't stop here.

For dinner, we were served beef wellington. I have never had beef wellington before so I didn't know exactly what it was. When it came out, I noticed that the beef was wrapped in what I believe was a puff pastry. I also believe the cut was fillet mignon. We also had fresh asparagus and potatoes if I remember correctly. I am a little hazy on the potatoes because it was all like a dream and sometimes it is hard to remember all the details. In any case, everything was cooked perfectly. The asparagus wasn't "stringy" at all as some asparagus can be. I kept hearing many of the teachers saying, "I have paid for lesser quality steaks than this" to emphasize how good the meal was and that it was a gift to us all. I was sitting next to Janna, one of the teachers here and she only ate half of hers. She took what was left and split it with her husband, Brennan and me. After I finished eating that, I spotted Ashley's plate from another table over and asked if she was done. I just noticed her talking as if she was done and got a little scared that it might go uneaten. I wasn't about to let any of the fillet go back to the kitchen just because someone was full. I mean, I don't know the next time I am going to see that kind of dinner again! About five minutes later, Amanda who was sitting at yet another table asked if I wanted the rest of hers. Yes I did. Initially I was a little upset that I wasn't at her table. For our Christmas dinner, and also for Valentines dinner, I was sitting with Amanda, her husband Brice and their daughter Nayah. Since those dinners were over the top, I was eating up their leftovers since it was so good. This night, I mentioned to her that I wish I was at their table since they aren't big eaters. Well, I did get some of theirs too. After all of that, it was time for dessert which was raspberry souffle. The raspberry sauce was made from fresh raspberries. It was incredible.

Now, I am not saying that we don't normally get good food. We do, and we do every day. Norma prepares incredible lunches for us each school day. The lunches here are delicious and filling. She treats us very well, and also makes extravagant meals for us on special occasions. It was just very nice to have a special dinner out of the blue. I cannot imagine how much planning went into this dinner as each item had to be hand picked and flown in. It takes time and a great deal of effort to go to the store and buy everything, take it home, spend hours preparing, and then clean up after your guests, but they were the guests who were visiting us. So, it's like having guests over, but instead of cooking for them, they show up to cook for you. And not only just friends from your own town, but friends flying in from another country, who have taken several flights and carted coolers full of high quality beef, vegetables, and fruit in order to make a meal for you. It was an act of generosity that I won't forget.

04/08/09

2009-04-12T20:11:00.000-05:00

Today I brought candy to 6th grade and when I picked up the bag the candy fell all over the floor. It didn't really matter since everything was individually wrapped, so I started to reach down and pick it all back up. Most of it had spilled next to two students. Normally, they would have been kind and helped me pick it up but two students, Djenica and Catiana, were frozen as they were focused on my every move. I had noticed that one of the Laffy Taffy candies had slid behind Djenica's desk and was in front of Catiana. Djenica is in the front row and Catiana is right behind her. Each time I reached down and picked up some candy, they would watch me bend over and stand back up. Then it dawned on me that they were intent on getting that piece of candy and were hoping that I didn't see it. Now, they weren't going to blatantly reach out and take it, but they were hoping that I wouldn't notice. I think they didn't help because then they would have had to grab it and give it to me, but if they sat there frozen (and focused on my every move) then they were increasing their odds of getting an extra piece.

Once I realized why they were being so quiet, I stood up, looked at Djenica, then at Catiana and at the same moment I leaned to the left so they could tell that I was looking at the one last piece of candy. Just as I did, they both started laughing hysterically. I couldn't help but crack up. I wonder if they would have split it or if they would have each dove for it when they got the chance. I guess I won't know, but it sure made me laugh.

04/07/09

2009-04-12T19:36:00.001-05:00

Last week and this week I have spent a little time going over rulers with the 6th graders; both metric and standard. I would normally think this would make for an easy lesson, but here it has proven to be quite difficult. Most kids don't have a ruler at home nor do they ever measure anything. In the U.S. I would think that most kids become interested in rulers or tape measures when their parents start measuring them and marking their height on the wall. They see how their parents measure them and then they ask or are told how a ruler works. Of course eighths and sixteenths of an inch are confusing at first, but most kids would have the basics down before they ever see a ruler in school. I wish I had that advantage on my side. It is a reminder to me that most students here don't have parents who can teach them at home or buy educational books like most parents do in the States. From what I have seen, most children here are learning more practical things. They are learning how to survive.

I didn't learn how to survive as a kid so much as I learned how to break my arm, how to shoot my brother in the leg, and how to end up with stitches. I remember spending my childhood playing because we had free time. Kids here don't see to do as much playing as I remember doing. However, when I am leaving in the morning to go to school, I see Robinson (pronounced Row binson), who lives across the street, wheeling a wheelbarrow down the street. I wouldn't think he is much older than 11, but he is always helping his mother with something. If he doesn't have a wheelbarrow, he is carrying a bucket of water. They aren't all inside getting ready for school or reading with their parents in the evening. So, for those parents who are wondering if the educational toys and books they are buying for their children are working, I think they do. I believe they make school much easier as they are familiar with the simple things of life. From there, they can build on the foundations they learn at home and are capable of formulating more complex ideas on top of those. It is much more difficult trying to teach everything from scratch.

Of course, it is my first year of teaching and my first year living in a different country, and those two things combined don't mix to create the most efficient teacher. I have to assume that many difficulties and failures are also due to my lack of experience. One thing I have learned is that I sometimes need to slow down. I knew going into this that it is more important to make sure that the students learn the material rather than just pushing through to finish the book. Looking at the three lessons of measurements in the book, I would imagine that I should only spend three days going over these, however I am being reassured that some things are just going to take a little more time.

04/05/09

2009-04-05T10:59:00.002-05:00

Ever since I got here, I have been interested in growing different plants, vegetables, and trees. Unfortunately, the soil here isn't great at all, so I am working on making my own compost. I have been keeping coffee grounds, and some vegetable scraps. I also asked Norma to keep coffee grounds for me too since she goes through much more than I do since she serves all the groups that come in. In the back of our house there are some small rooms that were built. They are very small, smaller than a garden shed, but built out of concrete. None of them are used for anything, so I use one for compost. We have some bushes in the back that I trim up and throw in there. Earlier in the year, there were vines that were growing all over the roof of the buildings and I climbed up there and spent about an hour cutting them all off. If I didn't do that, they would have overgrown the backyard. I don't know what sort of vine it was, but it was taking over and growing over to the water reservoir. I remembered my hands turning black from the sap inside the vines. They were stained for two days and looked like I had dipped my hands in motor oil. I couldn't get the stains off with Gojo hand cleaner, alcohol, bleach, dish soap, or anything else I tried. In any case, I have been collecting whatever organic material I can and toss it in there from time to time to add to the pile. Well, one day, I had gone out there and was going to stir it with a shovel and noticed what looked like spores of mold going into the air. This may sound disgusting to some, but without mold, you aren't going to have anything breaking down and turning back into dirt. So, that was a good sign. Well, after I turned it, I noticed that the white cloud like particles were still rising. That's when I realized that it was steam coming off the compost. I had heard that when coffee grounds break down, they produce heat, but I didn't realize that it would be that hot. My first thought was that since it was hot, it had probably retained some heat from outside. But then, I remembered that it had rained the night before and cooled off quite a bit. The walls were actually cold to the touch. So, I borrowed a thermometer from Mr. Scott, the science teacher here, and stuck it inside a Ziploc bag and buried it in the center of the heap. Three hours later I came back, uncovered it and read the temperature at 118 degrees Fahrenheit. I couldn't believe that it got that hot.

I plan to used this soil in some of my planters and will give some to a few people in the neighborhood to show how a rich soil is better for growing plants. I am going to take some over to Emilien's house and plant some corn in it for him. His backyard is all sand, so there isn't much that he can grow. I had previously bought some charcoal and had hired a few boys from across the street to crush it up so I can mix it into the soil. At first they didn't have any idea what I was doing. They had asked why one of the pots in the back had soil that was so much darker than the other pots. I showed them what I add to the compost and they started helping. A few days later they started bringing me plants that they had pulled from their yard. One boy brought an almond tree, except he yanked it from the ground and the roots were destroyed. Someone brought two little plants that had just sprouted. I don't know what they are, but we transplanted them into a pot in the front yard and they are growing. Not sure what they are, but they are doing fine so far.

My next goal is to get some trees started, I have about five pomegranate trees growing, so when they get bigger, I will take a few over to the hotel and ask if I can plant two there. I also plan on planting one at the school. The others I will just give to whoever wants them and has space at their house. I'll try to post updates as I go along.

Minnesota

2009-03-29T13:32:00.003-05:00

A few weeks ago, one of my sisters, Sheila, sent down some stickers and candy for my students. I had brought some back with me when I returned from being home over Christmas, but didn't bring that many. I was only giving students stickers whenever they got A's on their homework. I didn't have enough for their speed drill too. After Sheila sent so many stickers down I started putting them on all of their speed drills. There were a few pages of stickers with different States on them. I didn't think they would be as interested in them as some of the other stickers she sent (I mean, there are glow-in-the-dark stickers, scratch and sniff stickers and a few hologram stickers!), so I started using the stickers with the States first (I like saving the best for last). I had a few students ask about them and wondered where they were, but that was it. Turns out, there was one student who became obsessed with Minnesota. He never asked me about it or his teacher, Mr. Thom, but was asking everyone else. Last week, there were a few college aged students here visiting and two were helping out in 6th grade. They kept telling me at lunch about Wensley and how he had all these questions. He wanted to know how much it costs for a plane ticket there. He wanted to know what it was like and if it snowed there. I remember that the sticker had a picture of a mountain and it was snow-capped so I guess he was intrigued. One day, he stopped his French teacher, Mr. Marc, right in the middle of class. He had his hand up and when Marc called on him, he asked about Minnesota. It just seemed like week after week I kept hearing from visitors about him and how interested he was about Minnesota. Today I stopped him after school and asked him if I could take his picture. Here he is!

03/25/09

2009-03-29T13:28:00.002-05:00

This week, I didn't teach 6th grade math on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday because the regular 6th grade teacher, Mr. Thom, was not able to teach. A few years back, he had a Canon copier fall on his neck. I don't recall the story exactly, but because of this, he has a lot of pain from time to time. This week, his neck muscles were inflamed and he could barely get out of bed because it hurt so bad. It also causes a severe headache for him as well.

Whenever a teacher cannot make it to class, we have to send the students home as we do not have any substitute teachers who can step in. Therefore, if the students are sent home, I cannot teach math to them. So, this morning, I was downstairs just hanging around and talking to some of the students who arrived early. Ally and Freud (short for Freuddensky and pronounced like 'Fred') usually come into the school yard early to help Thom get ready for class. Whenever I go in, I see them sitting huddled around a garbage can. Next to them is a bucket of pencils and they are busy sharpening them all before class starts. Mr. Thom gives each student two pencils to start with, then when they are both either dull or broken, they can trade them in for the sharp ones that Freud and Ally prepared earlier that morning.

Well, this morning I noticed Ally hanging around waiting for Mr. Thom, but at a little after 7:00AM it was apparent that he wasn't coming today. I hadn't seen Cara, his wife, to confirm if he was coming or not, but if he isn't there before 7:00AM, then I usually suspect that he isn't coming since he usually shows up at about 6:30AM. Since Mr. Thom hasn't been teaching all week, I think the students were getting bored because Ally asked me if I could give him some extra homework. I was glad to hear him ask, so we went into the classroom so he could grab his workbook. I showed him all of the additional pages in the back of the book and told him that he could work on whatever extra assignments he wanted. He was happy to have something to do and went away with a big grin on his face. Below is a picture of a few 6th grade students. Freud and Ally are the two in front with Freud on the left and Ally on the right.

03/23/09

2009-03-29T13:25:00.001-05:00

This week a group came to visit and a woman, Miss Rima, spent her time in my classroom helping tutor students who were having difficulty with Algebra. She teaches courses at a university and as a second job, she also tutors students at a learning center as well. Needless to say, she was a tremendous help to me and very effective with the students. Well, today, she told me that she wasn't going to be able to stay in my Geometry class. She said that a doctor usually comes to help a little girl, Theresa, who is in 5th grade this year with her prosthetics. The doctor couldn't make it this time, so instead, she trained one of the other visitors to fit the student for prosthetics and video tape it. She would then review the video and make sure that the procedure went correctly. When Rima told me this, I knew who she was talking about.

Each morning, I usually get to my class around 7:00 AM. I spend some time preparing, and then at about 7:25 AM I leave my room and head back to the preschool for our daily devotion time. As I am walking out of the school gate I usually see a girl who is early to school and is waiting outside the gate with some other students. I smile to her and say, "Good Morning" and she always smiles right back. I have noticed that she has little braces down by her ankles and always thought it was because she had weak joints, muscles or something to that effect. When Miss Rima said that a woman normally comes here to fit her for prosthetics, I asked her what she has them fitted for and I was told that she doesn't have feet. I had never noticed before that Theresa's shoes are a little bigger than normal.

I don't know how long this doctor has been volunteering her expertise, but I am always amazed at how many people come in week after week donating their time and knowledge for the students here. It's pretty amazing how God has made connections such as this because without this woman, Theresa would have to get around in crutches which means she wouldn't be able to carry her books or anything else she wants. It is from this doctor's generosity that Theresa has an easier life. It's really amazing to see how beautiful an act of generosity is when we respond to God's will.

03/15/09

2009-03-22T11:59:00.001-05:00

I had gone out today and when I came back, Josue (pronounced Jo see A), a kindergartener, was at my house with my roommate. They were sitting on the couch practicing Creole. I said hello and went on my way. I had been wanting to start planting some sunflowers along a wall that is just inside the gate. We don't have anything growing there right now and my sister, Sherrie, had sent some sunflower seeds to me. They aren't the typical sunflowers. They don't get quite as high and they are various colors, including red, violet, and orange. Well, I had gotten out some Jiffy brand starter pots and a bag of potting soil that I had shipped down here. I had them lined up along the counter when Josue came out to see what I was doing. Since he is too short to see, I pulled up a folding chair for him to stand on. He sat down on the chair and said he was too short to see. I laughed and told him that the chair was for him to stand on so he could see. He smiled and then gave me a big "thank you". I was tearing small pieces of paper towel to place in the bottom of the pots so they would drain, but also so the soil wouldn't fall out the hole on the bottom. I started giving him the torn pieces so he could place them in the pots, then began spooning soil into them. After they were all full, I had Josue hand pick each seed that we would use, then we watered them all. He asked if I was making a garden. I told him that they were flower seeds and showed him the packet. I pulled out a bunch of packets to show him and asked if he wanted to plant any of the seeds for his house. With a big grin he started sorting through the packets and found sweet corn. He said, "I like corn!" so I set the packet aside. I told him to pick more and he found a tomato packet and said he likes "tomat" (the Creole word for tomato). Since I didn't know how much space his family has behind their house, I told him that we would start a few seeds of corn and a tomato plant. He threw his hands in the air and said, "I MAKE GARDEN!" then reached over and grabbed my arm. My roommate and I started laughing. He repeated it a few times and was very excited. I told him that I would keep the pots here and wait for the plants to get big. Once they did, we would take them to his place and transplant them. I am planning on planting the corn for him and then plant some bean seeds next to the corn. The beans can use the corn as a pole to climb to maximize the use of the limited space. Below is a picture of Josue at the Christmas Program last December.

03/12/09

2009-03-17T21:52:00.001-05:00

At Sonlight, we have a rule that students have to speak English while at school. Initially, it sounds forceful to demand students to speak another language other than their own. However, it is required so they improve their understanding of English which in turn improves their understanding of the lessons. Since the teachers who volunteer to teach are English speaking, and the better academic books are in English (as opposed to the available Creole text books) it is necessary for the students to speak English. Further, if students want go to universities in the U.S., it is going to be necessary for them to be fluent in English.

Well, we had tried a positive method to motivate their English speaking and to prevent them from speaking Creole to each other while at school. Though we had incentives, they didn't seem to be working. We would give out friendly reminders, but it was blown off. This lead us to switch to the negative reinforcement. We had to begin enforcing "sentences" for anyone who is caught speaking Creole. Immediately, we saw a decrease in Creole use at school. Well, one of my freshman students, Baradina, was caught speaking Creole one morning before class (the rule is that you cannot speak Creole while on school property). She opened a folder and pulled out a page of prewritten sentences. I started laughing because she had already taken the time to write them "just in case". She told me that she was writing them and selling them to other students. It cracks me up when students do these entrepreneurial type tasks.

Our conversation had taken a turn and changed to Digicel, the cellular provider here. Baradina was going on about how you can get free minutes and how Digicel has a window at night where you can talk for free. She was telling me how people will make a lot of calls at night when it is free. Since all cell phones here are prepaid, minutes are a big deal. Well, she told me, "Free nights are for people without money, but not me, because I write sentences and sell them!" She is one funny student.

03/11/09

2009-03-17T21:06:00.003-05:00

This week, we had a group in who, for one night, prepared a Chinese meal for us. They spent hours setting up tables and decorating as well as cooking several dishes for us. They had prepared, white rice, fried rice, egg rolls, crab rangoon, and two different chicken dishes to choose from. I chose from them all. The Durbin's, Candi, Roger, and Brook were with the team and had lived here for several years prior to me moving down here. I found out that it was a tradition they had at their home while they lived here. I could tell they had experience as everything was delicious. They even had sriracha sauce which is a favorite of mine. My brother and I both think it is good, except I don't remember it being as hot as it was. I covered my food with it. Apparently, I was trying to act like my brother who always out does it with the hot sauce. The difference was that I had to slow down. Speaking of my brother eating hot foods. Below is a picture of him after he ate a raw habanero. Though it doesn't have to do with our Chinese night, it is worth posting.

03/13/09

2009-03-15T12:54:00.002-05:00

Today I took the seniors down to the fourth grade for tutoring again. They have been loving it and always ask when we will be able to go down there again. One of the seniors, Ern, was in our Christmas play and had acted the part of a "grandpa". Ralph, one of the fourth graders, apparently has not forgotten because when Miss Cady, their teacher, asks them who they want to be partnered up with, Ralph always says that he wants to be with "grandpa". The fourth grade is at the back of the school so we usually go outside to spread out. At the end of the tutoring session, Ralph wanted to have a pushup contest with Ern. Ralph won!

After school we had a soccer game; 7th vs 8th grade. I always like going to the games after school because it gives me an opportunity to talk to the students and joke around with them as I don't always get to see them outside of school. It is also great to see all the students there getting to hang out and have fun. A few of the seniors and juniors gather together a receiver and a mix of different speakers and DJ for the game. Its fun to hear their music even though I don't understand most of it. There are a few songs that are popular now that they like to play. I'll try to find out what they are and post the names and a link if I can find one for you to listen to.

Once I go to the game, I went and sat behind the concession table. The seniors had set up a concession table where they sell pop, energy drinks (Toro), as well as candy and popcorn. As I was sitting there, a handful of the 6th graders came running up to me asking, "Mr. Doug, Mr. Doug, will you buy us popcorn." Then they started asking Marc (who is an aid for the 6th grade class) if he would. He ended up buying popcorn for them and then they started asking me to buy Cokes for them. I told them to go and get all of the 6th graders together and to come back. It wasn't but about thirty seconds later and they were gathered around the table all giddy with excitement. I told them that I would buy Cokes as long as they split a bottle. I asked Laurah, a senior, to start pouring them and to let me know how many I owe her for. A few minutes later they were starting to get fired up. I think the sugar and caffeine shot straight to their heads. Particularly, there was one of them who must have ended up drinking two or three Cokes (as it seemed anyway). Djenica was standing next to me talking so incredibly fast and laughing while she was talking that I couldn't understand anything she was saying outside of her wanting me to now buy candy for them. I wasn't about to pour gasoline on the fire. I told them that I would buy candy for them at the next game (this coming Friday). Besides, my sister, Sheila, sent candy to me just recently and I have been slowly giving it to them. I gave them some Twizzlers while they were taking a test this week. I also told them that I have Nerds that I will be bringing in this coming week. They seemed to like the Twizzlers, but a little too much. I had one student, Marie Christie, playing with her's instead of taking her test. She was twisting it and blowing through it like a straw. I had to remind her that time was runing out. Below is a picture of her and her younger sister, Binah.

03/04/09

2009-03-08T14:35:00.001-05:00

This week and for the following two weeks, Ryan, my roommate's friend from Kentucky, will be here volunteering here. Today I got the opportunity to work with him a little. To get to that story, it begins with a comment I heard one of the other teachers say. Some time before school ended I heard Miss Cady, the preschool teacher, mention that water was backing up in her classroom but didn't think much of it. I figured that it was just a simple plumbing issue and would be corrected within a few hours. It wasn't but a couple hours later and I saw Roger with one of the workers digging out front of the school. They were working on digging down to the septic tank. I hadn't realized that there was one in front of the school. Well, they were digging down because he didn't think that the water was making its way to the septic tank. After standing there for about five minutes just watching and knowing that there weren't going to be very many volunteers at 5PM on a school night, I asked if he needed some help. He said that he appreciated the offer, but there wasn't much to do. He said that they would just continue working the next morning.

Then, he remembered and mentioned that there was some water in the preschool and they didn't have anyone to mop it up, so Ryan and I headed home to change. I was still dressed up from teaching and I needed to drop off some books. After changing, we went back to the preschool and met Roger there to find out exactly what needed to be done. Instantly, when I walked into the room it smelled like a few horses had lightened their load in there. It smelled pretty bad. Roger showed us the two places where the water had been pooling and went into the bathroom to grab a "mop". It turned out that there wasn't a mop in there but just a couple of hand made Haitian brooms. The brooms here have wooded (and a bit crooked) handles which look like they are made from two year old tree trunks that have been stripped of their bark. The broom end is made from what seems to be dried palm leaves or something of the sort. The particular broom I had seemed to have been made of just the fibrous part of the leaves. It was more like horse hair. I am not sure what they are made of exactly, but they are very much organic. In any case, Roger handed the broom to me and said that we should start by sweeping the water toward the drain in the bathroom before mopping.

Roger did find a mop and gave it to Ryan to start working with and then left. After we had been pushing the water toward the drain, Roger came back and asked how things were going. We mentioned that the mop would be much more helpful if we could ring it out. Neither one of us has seen a mop bucket. We did have a five gallon bucket but that was it. We asked Roger what we should do. Before I mention his response, I have to explain Roger a little. For one, he is very bright and usually can come up with a solution quickly. I imagine that is why he has been so successful down here where things always need to be altered at a moment's notice. He also has a good sense of humor and is quick on his feet. Well, when we mentioned that we couldn't ring out the mop he quickly said, "Just use your hands." Ryan and I just looked at each other with half half smirks as we laughed. I did stop for a second to wonder if he was serious. I mean, we are in Haiti and you do have to get your hands dirtier than you normally would in the US but there are times when you do try to be as sanitary as possible. Of course, there is no need to get your hands dirty if you don't have to. On the flip side, if there isn't a mop bucket then how are you going to do it? So, I sat there thinking, is he serious or pulling my leg? Well, during the three seconds that passed while this all went through my mind, he bent over and with one of those classic lines said, "Well, I just washed my hands, so I shouldn't get the mop too dirty." as he squeezed all the water out. Ryan and I just looked at each other and laughed at how funny Roger can be especially since it all happened so fast. Just as he rung the water out he stood up with his dripping hands, grabbed the handle, and handed the mop to Ryan.

A few minutes later he went back out to find a mop bucket. Ryan looked at me and said, "Did you see that? He just handed me the mop and the handle is dripping wet of the water from his hands." Which translated to me as, "This is dripping wet of something that was intended to go down the drain to the septic, but is now all over my hands." Which translated to, "My hands are going to fall off, I am going to die, and it was nice knowing you."

I was cracking up, mostly because I watched the whole thing, but was not affected by anything personally. Without hesitating, Ryan reached in his pocket and pulled out a little bottle of Purel and squirted it all over his hands. Before he had finished rubbing the sanitizing gel all over his hands, I asked why he was doing that since he wasn't done working. Mid sentence, as I was asking, he took the excessive amount of the gel and ran his hands up and down the handle of the mop in an effort to sanitize the entire thing. "That's why!", he said.

A little while later Roger returned and had some Pine-Sol. This was a relief because I didn't want to only remove the water and let the floor dry. I wanted to give it a nice disinfecting rinse. After about fifteen minutes of moping the floor it was nice and "clean" inside. We left some windows open for it to dry out and then left. The following morning, it was like nothing had happened. That is it was back to normal inside the preschool. Outside the school, it was a different story.

02/27/09

2009-03-01T10:57:00.000-06:00

Today, Thom, Brice, Jonny and I decided to take a trip to Anse a Foleur. I had been there before with Thom, but we wanted to go back because the beach was so much fun and the trip is an experience in itself. Neither Jonny or Brice had been there before so it was fun to show them. For the most part, the trip was the same as last time, so I won't write too much about it, however there was one fun part that I did want to write about.

For starters, it takes two tap taps (pickup trucks) to get out there. We ride one tap tap to St. Louis and then get off and find another one to get us to Anse a Foleur. The second tap tap is always larger. It is a much larger truck and holds more people. The first tap tap we were on holds about 19 people in the back. They are packed! I would imagine that the second tap tap holds over 30 people. Well, on the second tap tap, I didn't get on soon enough and didn't get a seat. That means that I have to stand up the whole time and keep from falling over. Well, the way it works is like this: One person holds onto the railing that is between the cab and the flatbed. The second person holds onto his shoulders and so on. We form what looks like a train, but we weren't doing it for entertainment. Well, I was the second person in line with Brice behind me. I remember Brice saying, "You're my rock, so if you fall, I fall." Well, we fell a few times. One time we both fell backward and so did the people holding onto Brice. He said that his butt went smashing up against an older lady who was sitting to the right of where he was standing. Ever since then, she held her hand against his butt cheek to keep him from falling. He didn't seem to comfortable with that, but who better than Brice to have an old lady holding is butt. I told him to flex it and he did. I guess she took it as a warning sign that he was losing his balance so she gripped it harder. Oops.

About fifteen minutes later, we were headed for this spot where the road gets very close to the shore and is deteriorated so much that the trucks actually drive along the beach and into the water. As we were approaching the water, the driver sped up and we went flying backward. Immediately, I felt as if he had hit the brakes because we went flying back forward. A split second later and a wall of water came flying over the cab and soaked everyone. I guess the driver didn't time it correctly and he drove into a wave of water that was rushing up the shore. It wasn't like a big splash of water, but a wall of water. I saw it coming over the cab and straight for us. It was brown, mixed with sand, and I couldn't see past it. I turned around to see everyone dripping wet and laughing. It was pretty funny. Other than that, the trip seemed much the same as it did last time. It was a lot of fun to have a few extra people with us this time and I look forward to going back again.

02/24/09

2009-03-01T10:34:00.003-06:00

This morning Thom and I had planned a kayak trip. I got up early and went over to his place at 6:15AM for breakfast. His wife, Cara, had made blueberry muffins for us which were very good. After we had finished, we went outside to get everything together. This time instead of just going out to paddle around, we decided to go to a lake that is a few miles away. We started off so early that there wasn't much wind at all and the ocean looked very calm. It looked as close to glass as the ocean probably gets. It was very easy to paddle along and we made good progress from the start.

After about a half hour of paddling, we got to a spot where we could see the bottom. We stopped and just looked down at the floor of the ocean. It was probably only around 12 feet deep or so, but very clear. We went a little further and it started to get deeper again. We stopped about ten minutes later and just looked around enjoying the quiet morning. As we were sitting there, I felt something bump the bottom of the kayak. I asked Thom if he felt it and he thought I had moved my feet. I said I didn't and we felt it again. He said he wasn't moving so something must have hit the bottom. It wasn't hard enough to rock the kayak, but definitely noticeable. I wouldn't suspect that it was a shark, but I don't know what it would have been. We didn't see anything either. About five minutes later a big fish jumped in front of us. I didn't see it come out of the water, but noticed a big splash in front of us.

We kept paddling on and finally got to the inlet where we could see a stream that lead to the lake. Kayaking through the stream was very interesting. Some parts were very shallow and then we would go around a bank that looked incredibly deep. I woudl imagine that it was over ten feet deep. The other strange thing was that we weren't surrounded by a solid bank of soil. To the right and left of us as we went through the winding stream were bush like plants that were growing straight out of the water. There were parts where we could see soil, but most places the bushes just grew right out of the water with their roots shooting downward. It was beautiful at the same time as it was a little creepy not knowing what was in the water or how deep it was.

We got to the opening and decided to cross the lake. Once we got to the other side, we got out and walked around. The bank that we decided to land on looked like a small beach. It wasn't at all. The shore was very muddy and the "beach" was dried mud. It was very light in color which made it look like a beach from across the lake. As we walked on it we noticed that it was sparkleing because of all the dried saltwater. I guess the water must rise when there is a high tide. When we arrived, the tide was coming in as the stream was going from the ocean to the lake. By the time we left, the water was still flowing in.

We didn't stick around for too long. I wanted to because there were some very cool cactus plants but we knew that we needed to leave because the wind was picking up. We put our life jackets back on and got ready to head out. I walked though the nearly black mud and jumped in the kayak. I didn't put my feet in though. I wanted to get far enough out so I could rinse my shoes off before putting them inside.

It didn't take us too long to get back across the lake back to the stream. On our way back, we anticipated the trip to take longer because this time we would be paddling against the current and wind. Once we got out of the channel we could see the waves had picked up and we weren't going to get back as easily as we got there. All in all, it is about five miles from where we started to the other end of the lake. Once we were back out of the lake, we had about three miles or so to go. The trip back took nearly twice as long; about two hours. It was a lot of fun and good to get some exercise on our second day off for the week.

Below is a picture from the trip:

"Water Police"

2009-03-01T10:33:00.000-06:00

I have forgotten to write about the "Water Police". We can get drinking water via two methods. The one is that we pay for five gallon water jugs and give back the empties. A truck will come around and pick up the empties and leave full jugs. The other method is a large water truck will come by and just take the jugs we have and fill them from the truck and recap the bottles on site. All they do is simply run a hose from the truck down to the bottles and fill them right on the side of the street outside the office. We call the latter truck, the "Water Police" because it has a siren that sounds like a police siren. When I come back home I will probably hear a police car and think that the water truck is coming. They run the siren in the same fashion as an icecream truck does. You have to let the people in the neighborhood know that you are coming down their street!

02/23/09

2009-03-01T10:22:00.000-06:00

Starting today, Monday, we have a week off from school for Mardi Gras. Today my roommate, Jonny, had planned a hike with his 8th grade students. He asked if I wanted to go along so I went and brought Jean and Amos from the sophomore class. Jonny and I wanted these two to go on the hike because we weren't able to go on a hike this past Saturday. The hike turned out to be between an hour and a half to two hours. It was a lot of fun. Jonny has some funny students in his class. I really enjoy hiking, but sometimes it is more fun just listening to the students having fun. It's good for a change to hang out with them when they can goof around and be themselves outside of class. After the hike, Jonny invited them back to our house to watch a movie and to have lunch. I didn't stick around because I was invited to have lunch with Thom and Cara. I went over to their place, had lunch and then watched a couple episodes of "I Shouldn't Be Alive" that I have on DVD.

02/21/09

2009-02-22T10:56:00.004-06:00

This morning my roommate, Jonny, and I were planning on going on a hike, but we had woken up to find that it had rained through the night. Normally, that wound't make a difference, but around here, things stay muddy for a long time after a rain since there is so much bare ground. Instead of going for a hike early this morning we just got a few things done around the house. I had some tests to grade so I spent some time going over them. A few hours later we wanted to get out and do something.

I called Thom and we decided to head over to a nearby fort. It is only about a twenty minute walk, so it didn't take too long to get there. I guess there isn't much history on the fort, but it was once controlled by the French and then taken over by the Haitians. It was very old and had begun to fall apart. One wall had fallen off and was lying on the coral just off the shore. You could see that when it was built there was a lot of coral used instead of rock to mix within the concrete.

We spent some time hanging out on top of the fort and then headed back down to where an old powder room was. I took a few pictures, but didn't go inside. The room was fairly small, but the unfortunate part was that it was filled with trash so it wasn't worth going in. Below is a picture of my friend Brennan shoving me into the powder room.

On the way back, we were walking down the street and Thom noticed a lady who was selling a number of things outside her home. She didn't have a lot, but she did have a nice variety. I was looking to buy some charcoal. From what I understand, charcoal here is made by first burying dry wood which is ignited and then covering it with freshly cut wood). This is then covered in sand to keep it smothering. I don't know the exact process, but the point is to burn it but not completely. This way you can cook with it without getting all the smoke that you would from regular wood. In any case, I bought some for the sole purpose of grinding it up and putting it in my compost mix. I have a compost pile I am using to get some rich soil for growing plants, trees, and vegetables. I haven't been able to grow too much with the poor soil that was in the pots that I have. It is mostly sand and what I want to grow isn't thriving like I want it to. I had bought the charcoal because wood charcoal has potassium (potash) which I need to add since I have a lot of coffee grounds that I put in as well. Coffee grounds are rich in nitrogen so I am working on making a fairly balanced soil.

The woman was also selling coffee in little bags (enough to make a few cups of coffee). I bought one bag and when I made it, the coffee came out nice and rich. It was vary dark, but that was expected because the coffee grounds were black. I don't mean they were really dark brown, they were black. I almost thought they might have been burnt, but they hadn't been. I also bought some "tablet" which is like peanut brittle. I don't know if I spelled it correctly, but this stuff is very good. After I tried one, I turned around and bought half the container that she was selling. It was very good. It's just like peanut brittle, but not quite as hard.

02/20/09

2009-02-22T10:55:00.000-06:00

At lunch today, Thom asked me if I wanted to go to the hospital. An old student who went to Sonlight had had a baby that night and needed a ride home. I had never been to the hospital so I gladly said I would. We finished up eating and then headed out.

The hospital isn't that far from Sonlight; maybe a ten minute ride or so. When we arrived I wasn't too surprised at what I saw. I had heard that the hospitals weren't very clean and this was no exception. The hospital was pretty dirty and I don't remember opening a door to go in. I believe the door was just left open. As I walked inside, there were a few people on beds in the hallway. As we reached the end, there was a large open room with bed after bed with mostly women lying in them. It seemed that most of the women I saw were pregnant, but I wasn't inside the room but a few minutes and then we were heading out. It was an interesting experience though we weren't there too long. It does make a person wonder how it is any better than just staying home. I guess the difference is within the care and knowledge of the doctors who are working there. From what I have heard, there are some very good Haitian doctors here.

02/18/09

2009-02-22T10:52:00.002-06:00

Today I came home from school and there was a knock on the door. I looked outside and it was one of my 6th grade students, Marie Christie (M.C.) with her little sister, Binah, who is in kindergarten. Binah looks just like M.C. but a miniature version. They had come over to see if we wanted to buy some roasted/shredded coconut. She had little bags which weighed about an ounce or so each. We asked how much they were and she said a dollar (a Haitian dollar). A Haitian dollar is about an eighth of a US dollar. So, we asked how many they had and if we could buy they all. She had fourteen and said we could, so we took them all. The coconut was like Baker's shredded coconut that you can buy at the store, but only this was toasted. It was very good! It was also fun buying it from them because they were like two little entrepreneurs going around to the teachers' houses. Hopefully, they will come back the next time they have something good to sell.

02/14/09

2009-02-15T12:59:00.006-06:00

This morning a bunch of the guys here were going to take a trip over to La Tortue. We had all gotten up just after 5AM but it had been raining. My roommate, Jonny, and I packed up anyway and headed out at 6AM to see if everyone was still going. Unfortunately, the decision was made to not go since the weather was looking like it could rain again at any moment.

Jonny and I walked back home and started discussing what we could do instead. An hour later the sun was out and the weather looked great. We had no idea where we could go hiking without going somewhere we had already been. The only thing I could think of was to call one of my students. I called Jean who told me that he could go but he would want to bring his friend Amos. These are both sophomores from my Algebra class. When they showed up they had brought one of their friends, Shilton, from the 7th grade. We told them we wanted to go on an adventure, not just an easy hike. We didn't care how long it would take or how far way it was. Since we couldn't go on our trip to the island, we had the adventure bug in us and had to do something.

Amos told us that we could go to his dad's church. At first this didn't really sound like an adventure so I asked where it was. He explained that we would have to hike into the hills to get to it. We didn't know of anything else to do so we all headed off to start the journey. About five minutes later we had all gotten on taxis and were heading out of town. After about 10 minutes, we had passed The Breeze hotel and stopped at an intersection where we were let off. We paid for the taxis and started walking down the road. I had brought water and had eaten, but our students stopped at a stand to get some crackers and water for themselves. While we were standing there waiting we had asked about a few things that the vendor was selling. A minute later and Amos handed me some of the pastries that I had asked about. He also handed me a package of orange flavored crackers. I thought it was a very generous gesture considering that we were the ones that were supposed to be treating our students with the expenses since they were being our tour guides.

Once we had our food, we headed off on the hike. I didn't expect it to be too far and we were all just carrying along at a casual pace until Amos said that we needed to speed it up. I asked him why and he told me that it was about a two hour hike. It always amazes me at how long a trip can be from the road considering how we have roads to nearly every destination in the U.S. It was fun to take a two hour hike into the hills to get to a church that was so far away. The interesting part was that it was a hike that constantly inclined. Each step was higher than the last. There was only one point at which we walked back down and then started going back up. It was the highest I had ever been in Haiti. By the time we made it to the top, we could see out in every direction.

After getting to the top, Amos and Shilton took off to look for some coconuts. We had talked about getting some coconuts earlier and I mentioned it was something I had been wanting to get. I had only had one coconut here since I had moved to Haiti. About five minutes later they came back and said they found a tree but needed someone to climb it. They found someone who took us to one of the other pastor's homes who had a coconut tree. We weren't there but two minutes and they started bringing out chairs to us to sit on and their boy had climbed up into the tree. He hollered for us to step back and he began tossing coconut after coconut down from the tree. The pastor grabbed a machete and began to de-hull the coconuts and we cut holes into them to drink the milk. Once we finished, we broke them open and ate the coconut inside. It was delicious and refreshing.

After hanging out on top for about an hour, we headed back down the hill which went by much quicker. Jonny and I were too busy taking pictures and fell behind a little. It made for a fun day and gave our students something to do that they don't normally do. Even though it was fun handing out with them, they seemed to always stay ahead of us and enjoyed hanging out and kidding around with each other as all students do. I didn't know if they were having as much fun as we were, but they did seem to enjoy stopping and explaining to us what the different trees were and the different crops that some farmers had growing in their fields. We had seen ugly fruit, bananas, red bananas (which may have been a variety of plantains), cocoa trees, coconut trees, sugar cane, as well as common vegetables like onion, carrots and potatoes.

Once we got back to where we were dropped off, we flagged down some taxis and made our way back to the school where we all met before going back home. Jonny and I had been talking about how much fun it was and that we should go again some time. Amos and John also seemed to have fun because Amos kept telling us that he has all sorts of new places to go to. He also asked us if we were going again next Saturday. We said, "Sure!". Then, as Jean was walking away, he looked back and said, "Whenever you guys want to go again, just give me a call!" It was good to know that they had as much fun as we did. Below are a few pictures from the trip.

02/13/08

2009-02-15T12:31:00.001-06:00

Today was a lot of fun as we celebrated Valentine's Day. I had forgotten about Valentine's Day when I was in the States so I didn't bring any candy in. Miss Faith, on the other hand, had brought in loads of candy for my students. In 6th grade, she had Fun Dips for all of the students. It is one of my favorite candies. I was glad that she kept the Fun Dips for the 6th grade because I always like introducing the candies that are goofy and fun.

Later this evening the group that was here had brought in food and wanted to cook us dinner for Valentine's Day. They had brought in pork tenderloins, potatoes that were thinly sliced and served in a pan with what seemed like scalloped potatoes. They also had a huge dish of steamed broccoli. At our tables, we had fresh baked bread along with a strawberry spread and a cranberry salad. After eating until I was stuffed, they brought black forest cake covered with cherries for desert. It was incredible. I was so full that normally I wouldn't have been able to eat desert, but it was too good to leave sitting there.

02/11/09

2009-02-15T12:11:00.001-06:00

This week a group was in from Kentucky and so I had a visitor named Miss Faith working in my classes all week. She teaches Algebra I & II, as well as Geometry and a few other subjects. It was fun having her here as she was able to share some ideas with me and helped answer students' questions. Today she taught one period for me in Algebra which covered probability. She had brought in colored beads which she passed out to the students so they could do some hands on activities to help them learn. At the end of class, she gave them smarties and told them they had to figure out the probability of picking one color out of their package based on the total number and the various colors inside before they could eat the candy. The next day she asked them about their results but I think most of the students ate the candy before they could figure it out! I know I did.

02/10/09

2009-02-15T12:10:00.002-06:00

Tuesday morning I had asked Mme. Brice, who teaches third grade, how Cedric is doing. I sponsor Cedric but don't see him every day since I am usually up in my class before he gets to school and he is gone before I get out of class. She was explaining that he is a talker and was having a little trouble getting him to settle down. She jokingly said she tells him that if he doesn't behave that she will send him upstairs to talk to me. Well, I had started class and it wasn't but a half hour into the beginning of school and he came walking into my room. It's funny because whenever a student from elementary school walks into class my students always giggle a little. I think it is because the little kids look so cute when they come tip toeing into the class as they practically walk along the wall hugging it for protection against the high school students as if they were sitting there like wolves among sheep. As he walked up to me he was holding a paper and handed it to me. I took a look at it and saw that it was his math test. He had gotten a 100% on it. I was amazed at the problems on it. There was one algebra problem which said, "Find the value of n and check. "n + 4 = 7 + 5". He also had ten questions about conversions such as bushels to pecks, quarts to pints, ton to pounds. He also had Roman numerals. I guess I had just forgotten how early some of this stuff begins.

02/07/09

2009-02-08T13:13:00.002-06:00

I woke up in the middle of the night and noticed that it was raining. I was feeling a little under the weather and think that I had caught a cold. Friday I noticed that my joints were aching a little as if I was catching a cold. Late Friday night, I was sitting on the couch and started to run a fever as I sat there shivering. I don't know what I had, but by the time I woke up in the middle of the night, I was feeling a little better. By the time I got up this morning, I felt much better. I had a little bit of a headache but figured that was a side effect of the virus my body had been fighting. I also noticed that my eyes hurt a little when I moved them and my lungs felt exhausted. I am sure that this will go away within a day or so.

When I had woken up, it was still raining outside. It kept raining all day. It rained so much that the alley in front of our house was flooded. I was going to get out, but didn't want to wade through the water so I stayed home. It was a very quiet day as no one really goes out here when it rains.

As I type this, I can hear the neighbors outside talking. There is usually something going at the house across from us. There is a lady there who we call "Babercue Lady". We pronounce it the way I spelled it. This woman is always barbecuing something and on the outside of her house, she had spelled it "Babercue" and had a menu painted below. We had ordered food from her a couple times and it was good. Just recently, she had the front repainted and now has Barbecue spelled correctly. She also had the menu repainted and it looks much better. Well, it is hot pink, but other than that, it is an improvement. After thinking about this, I think I'll have to order from her soon. I don't think I have had anything from her since we returned.

02/06/09

2009-02-08T12:50:00.004-06:00

The weather here has cooled off lately and this week it has been overcast which made it even cooler than normal. It affects the Haitians when it is around 75 degrees or lower. Many of them ask me to turn the ceiling fans off and to close the windows. Today in the 6th grade, I was walking around to help the students with some problems they were working on. As I was helping one student, another was tapping my arm to get my attention. I noticed he started to grab my arm with his cold little fingers. I turned to look at him and he said, "Mr. Doug, your skin is hot." as if he was amazed at how warm it was. I think the weather is comfortable but when I was talking to my friend, Marc, he said that he was really cold today.

After 6th grade I always go upstairs and teach Geometry. Well, this past weekend I had been flipping through the book looking at the remaining chapters and noticed that we would finish early if we kept going at our current rate. As a matter of fact, we would be finishing about a month early. So, I was talking to the fourth grade teacher and she mentioned that she teaches math at the same time. So, today, I brought the seniors downstairs to her class so they could work one-on-one with the 4th graders. Below is a picture of them scattered throughout the hallway and some of them toward the back of the school sitting in small groups. Miss Cady had written problems on the board that they copied down on a sheet of paper. They were working on those problems and also had a page from their workbooks to complete. It was awesome to see the seniors huddled around with the fourth graders helping them with their math problems.

While the seniors were working with the 4th grade, I went upstairs to take a look at the construction site. I noticed Roger had climbed out onto the steel I-beams so I took the picture below.

01/28/09

2009-02-01T09:45:00.002-06:00

After school today, Thom and I had planned on going kayaking. I had never been before and had wanted to ever since I got here. As I mentioned, I also want to make my way over to the island La Tortuga. I haven't been there so it would not only be fun to see it, but to kayak over there as well. Getting out once a week or so will help me get into shape and ready if Thom agrees to it. I have been working out on a regular basis but I also need to keep in shape aerobically if I want to make the jaunt over there.

While we were out, I took a picture of the progress the most recent team has made on the SonCenter building. Now that most of the steel is up, it really seems like it is coming together. Below is a picture of it from today. I'll try to get a picture of the kayak up soon, so check back to this day's post within a few days.

01/27/09

2009-02-01T09:43:00.000-06:00

Today there were two people in the sixth grade which was great. I often feel like I don't have enough time to go around and give the students my full attention as they are working on their practice problems. We usually have a page of problems that we'll work together on in class. I prefer to have them attempt them on their own and ask questions if they don't understand. I don't like doing all of them verbally because if there is a student who doesn't know what is going on, they will just copy the answers without challenging themselves. We are currently working on changing percentages to decimals and visa versa. They have also learned to change mixed numbers and regular fractions over to percents as well. Since there were a couple people helping out in the class today I was able to walk around knowing that two others were able to help the students who had their hands up. I have heard people from short term trips mention that they don't feel like they did too much, but from my standpoint, having someone in the class with me is a tremendous help. Further, that little bit of help for some students may be just what they needed to get past a sticking point that would have prevented them from moving forward with the class.

01/26/09

2009-02-01T09:42:00.001-06:00

In 6th grade today I met one of my student's, Rose Kerline's, sponsor. She had come in with a short term group and was helping out in class. I like when the sponsors take the opportunity to visit Sonlight so they can meet the child that they have been sponsoring. It's also fun for me because I get to share stories with them about their student. Rose Kerline is the student who thinks it is so funny when I wear black pants because I rarely do. I didn't wear black pants at all the first half of the school year because I had forgotten to bring any down. Once I did, she was cracking up. She seems to be of the personality that she always seems to have a serious face, but when she starts laughing, she just loses control. Sometimes I'll catch her laughing and when I look over at her, she'll stop and put on her serious face, then if I give her the slightest smile, she'll bust out laughing.

2009-01-25T10:19:00.002-06:00

Today was nice and relaxing after school. I didn't have much going on other than a few students who showed up. I wasn't going to work out tonight so I just came home and started doing a little grading. Afterward, I made some ice cream in my ice cream maker. While I was home for Christmas I had worked a little at my old office and while I was at work one day, Jan, a coworker, said that I needed an ice cream maker. I had to agree so she said that she was going to get one for me. It isn't an actual machine that you plug in, but a plastic ball about the size of a soccer ball. It is designed for camping trips, picnics, etc. There are two compartments. One compartment is for the ice cream ingredients. The other side is for the ice and rock-salt. Since we don't have cream, I mixed together some powdered milk, water, sugar, and vanilla. Surprisingly, it came out tasting very good. Haitian vanilla tastes great. I poured this into the metal canister on the one end and then filled the other end with ice and rock-salt. The way this works is you toss the ball around or if you are by yourself, you just shake it up and the freezing ice sloshes around the outside of the metal canister slowly freezing the mixture. After ten minutes, you open the ice cream side and stir it up after scraping the frozen sides. You then shake it for about ten more minutes and it is done. It was pretty easy to do and made great ice cream. The only thing is that it only makes a pint so I wasn't wanting to share too much! After making the ice cream I put it in the freezer, had dinner and I then watched U-571 with Jonny as we both worked on some homework. Half way through the movie I pulled out the ice cream and we devoured it!

01/20/09

2009-01-25T10:10:00.001-06:00

Today as well as yesterday I had a lot of students show up after school. Mostly juniors and freshmen showed up because both had a test on Wednesday. I always have a few students who show up but don't ask too many questions. It seems that they just want a place to show up at where it will be quiet and they can work on their homework. Lately I have had a couple students who are fairly consistent. One of them is Jean, a sophomore, who I often have to remind to keep working. He is doing well, he earned a B last quarter and currently has an A, but he likes to chat and joke around with the other students there. I like to keep a relaxed environment after school so the students feel welcome to show up and can have fun studying after school. On the other hand I want them to keep in mind that the main reason they are here is to work on their math and to improve their grades. I also don't want the students who are doing better to chat and disrupt the students who need a little extra focus to comprehend the new material.

The good news is that the the class average, for the freshmen, from the last test to this test went up by 10% so I am happy to see that they are making improvements.

Another student who shows up regularly is Martine, a freshman. At the beginning of school she seemed very quiet. I started noticing her showing up on a regular basis and her personality has turned around quite a bit. She'll come up to my desk and ask me to check her work. Whenever I point something out, she'll say, "Oh, Mr. Dooouug" and then laughs because it's usually a simple mistake. She is having some trouble with positive and negative signs (mostly the negatives). I have to remind her to slow down. It seems that she understands, but just rushes. It is always good to see a student work hard and be this persistent because eventually it will become easier and easier.