Friday, September 28, 2007

What a wonderful night of sleep I had and I actually got cold during the night, WOO-HOO. Before breakfast today I folded my laundry and chatted with Vogley about the day, and then we had some very good corn cake and leftover biscuits and gravy. After breakfast Roland and I took a walk around St. Louis to find an internet café so that I could make sure that the reason I could not access the internet was not my computer, because I would not be a happy camper if that was true. As we were on our way to our second stop, we were taken on a detour by a gentleman that wanted to show us his “school,” which turned out to be a church that was used as a school because they did not have a school. As it turns out he has some Haitian friends in the states that had sent him some money for school stuff and to pay the salary of the teachers as long as he did not charge the students and what he wanted me to do was give him money to build a few class rooms so that the children did not all have to be in the church sanctuary at the same time. Roland politely told him that he had to talk with Janeil if looking for money to build a school and to him that meant that I did not want to help him, so after that little discussion/argument I said, ok we are done and we left. After our second failure, we took a couple of mopeds to what turned out to be the greatest place in the entire world. These guys have this photo studio and international phone call shop and because of the international aspect of it they have high speed internet but do not charge for it, so I fired up my computer and found out that it was working beautifully. That made me feel really relieved and I got to get everything done that I needed to and so did Roland and I met this really cool young man named Peter. After we were done we headed back to the mission for lunch, and since we were a little early so I went down to Mike’s house to borrow his tape measure, a level, and a step ladder because Erin and I decided that the supply closet needed more shelves and I am going to build them next week, and then I GET TO ORGANIZE EVERYTHING!!! I am way super excited about that. After lunch Teresa and I joined Erin and Melissa in organizing a ridiculous amount of baby stuff for Heaven’s waiting room, the Baby Orphanage, and the Birthing center. There is so much stuff you just don’t know what to do with it all, but the girls are amazing at figuring that mystery out, I am just there for moral support really and to lift heavy things, of course. The girls decided to go to Sonel’s at 330 today so we cleaned up everything and headed to our boys house. When we got there he was in his new favorite toy and LOVING it. He said that he spends more time in this new chair than he does in bed, which is really good for him because it will help to heal his bed sores. Unfortunately we had to put him in bed so Mel could change his dressings. He showed us, his improvement on his arm workouts and I think he is going to be stronger than me pretty soon. I was telling the girls when we put that bar up that I was jealous because Americans have to be motivated to go to the gym and we put one right over his head for him. When we got back to the mission we had enough time to properly get ready for dinner and we found that a few of the girls from the Orphanage were there hanging out with Heather and Ne Ne so I hung with them for a while. After dinner, the interpreters went to do their own thing, Heather and Janeil turned in with their little ones and Mike, Teresa, Erin, Melissa, and I got some popcorn, soda, and the brownies that Teresa made and sat down to play Shanghi. It was a really long game tonight but a really fun game, because Mike and Teresa are practicing Creole so the whole time they are saying random phrases and words. Also, Mike was singing about 60 seconds of the most eclectic variety of songs you could imagine. We had to break in the middle for a very sad incident that poor Melissa had to deal with. She went to the birthing center to check this ladies blood sugar and could not find the equipment she needed so had to defer her to the hospital, and while she was down there a lady gave birth to twins that were like 2 months pre-mature and died almost right away. From hearing that I found out a couple other cultural differences, one of which I am not discussing. While we were playing cards, Jose came over and got the internet working for us, so after Shanghi, we all went our separate ways to get online and send out all that we needed to and check up on everything. Now I am going to go to bed. Peace.