Friday, September 14, 2007

Today was a full day at the Orphanage, after breakfast, I worked on some stuff for the Owens’s in the house and worked on my webpage for a little bit. All of the children were otherwise occupied and most have actually started school by now, so I spent until lunch by myself just working on upcoming events. After lunch I went down to the courtyard with my learn to speak Creole book and studied it for a while. The children began arriving home so that meant that I was no longer studying alone, I had help and was also teaching English. It was a lot of fun because I am starting to be able to have little conversations with the children; we laugh a lot more than we did. Tigens and I did a little structured English but not a lot; we mostly talked about what he would like to send to his sponsor. Erin, Maureen, and Melissa stopped in on their way to the Far West to see Miss Pat, which was fortunate for me because I had something for them to give to her. We chatted for a little bit about Fordge and swimming there and what was going on with them. Once they left, I hurried the children along with their lunch because we wanted to take them swimming today since they haven’t gone in a while and it was hot. While they were finishing lunch I blew up 8 beach balls for them to take and play with. This turned out to be a HUGE disaster because the children thought that I was just giving the 8 kids I chose to carry the balls, balls and no one else. Even though I clearly explained that they were for everyone, they were still mad because they could not carry a ball. When we got to the water I found out that when I say share and play with these, that really means use them as floatation devices. No one was sharing them so I took them and deflated them earlier than I would have liked. That did not make people happy and I heard about the whole situation all night. When we got back, it was more Creole-English conversational fun. At about 6 Larry asked me if the power came on later on the weekends because the latest it has ever come on has been 530. I did not think it should have been that late with no power so we sent Wisley over to check and he was told that the generator was going through some battery issue and hopefully would be back on before long. So we waited. While we were waiting, I had a few of the boys teach me how to play dominos. It was interesting to try to figure out their scoring method and to see how they punished the losers. We played that until almost 730 and it was really fun, but when the cook calls, you go eat. After dinner I went into the house to see if Larry and Diana needed a flash light and we wound up talking until 930 about the mission (past, present, and future), the Haitian culture and lifestyles, and our stateside family and lives. It was really good to talk with them and hear different perspectives on everything that I have been feeling and experiencing and what not. At about 945, they turned in and since the power was still out most of the children were already asleep so I decided to just change, journal, and hit the sack. Oh, one thing I forgot to mention was that I was going to go to town today to try and find some cooking salt for the popcorn but as it turns out there was a whole bunch in the storage depot, so I did not have to buy any, WOO-HOO. Ok, now I am going to go to bed. Peace