Home safe and sound!

I finally made it home a about 1:30 am last night! It was such a long day but it was so nice to see my mother and sister at the airport! I am already missing the people, kids, sights and sounds of Haiti! I am excited to be able to tell my story and hopefully inspire people to want to help out whether it be in their own country or in a third world country. I enjoyed my time thoroughly in Haiti and a piece of my heart is definitely left behind. Brittnei is still in Haiti and will be for 7 more weeks please keep her in your thoughts and prayers! I am so happy I got to experience Haiti with Brittnei and we have become so close, she was like my mom when I was there haha Thank you for reading my blog!

My last day in Haiti!

Sunday was another day of rest. Went to church, had breakfast and watched a movie. Went to bed at 8:30 pm which is crazy I know but for some reason I was exhausted.

This morning had my second last walk down to the main house for my full last day here:( In the morning played with the kids for a bit but then the nannies had to have a meeting so it was up to us volunteers to run the fort. Me, Britt, Cindy in the big nursery and Katie and Nicole in the NICU. Man do I have an appreciation for the nannies! Kids screaming, fighting over toys, crying, pooping and pretty much everything else you could imagine.

This afternoon had another pool party as it was extremely hot on the balcony! I took my little man J down to jump on the trampoline and he did not like it very much. As long as I held him he was fine. There were many times today were I was close to tears. I have made so many great friends and feel like every child here is my own. I know that they will probably never remember me, but I will never forget them. They all hold a special place in my heart, and my heart will break leaving them tomorrow. I know that they will all go to great homes and have wonderful families that will love them forever, but I know that even if it was for 3 weeks, I loved them and cared for them as best as I could. Everyone says I cant go to Haiti and work in an orphanage I would want to take them all home. No I can't bring a child home with me and yes it is going to be hard to leave but knowing that there are going to be others to love and care for them makes it a bit easier to leave!

What I'm going to miss:
-Walking into the nursery every morning and the kids running up to you and wanting to be picked up and taken upstairs
-the lovely nannies!
-my wonderful new friends, the people here are great and I hope to keep in touch with all of them!
-Brittnei, she has made this trip so much easier for me! Thanks for being my mom Britt!
-staring at the gorgeous mountains everyday
-how everyday is different and you never know whats going to happen
-the amazing meals
-and last but not least alll my little ones, who have stolen a piece of my heart!

Looking forward to:

-my family and friends
-paved roads
-warm shower
-sleeping in my own bed

Thanks for all who have been following my story!
-sharing my story

And the days fly by

I only have 3 days left and I can not believe it. I honestly have no idea where the last three weeks have gone! Friday afternoon I think the volunteers had more fun than the kids. We had water fights with the medical syringes and Dave decided he wanted to make a puppet show which we have yet to perform.

Friday night all of the volunteers came up to our house squished into one car and oh my goodness I swear everday we learn new ways to fit people into a car. It's going to be so weird going home and have to wear a seatbelt and not working about huge potholes in the road! We played apples to apples and just talked. Then some of the girls decided to stay up and watch a movie. I'm not used to staying up until 1:00 am in the morning anymore. 10:30 pm is usually late for me now haha

Saturday morning woke up, cleaned up the house a bit and headed down to Petionville for some more souviner shopping!!! I had to buy for Cindy since she wasn't feeling well! It's fun shopping with someone else money hahah Bought some more pictures, they are soo pretty here and I wish I could bring them all home. Then went to the Baptist mission for an American lunch and had Haitian ice cream!! It is delicious! Went to do some grocery shopping and had to convert my american money into gourds which is in haitian money and it was too difficult for me to figure out. I never got to buy my Haitian vanilla because I didn't bring enough money unfortunately. Played a board game this afternoon and brought some kids up on the balcony to play and found another dead rat. We now have caught 2 dead rats!!!

Dinner bell just went off!

Highlights of the week

Wednesdays morning went by really slow for some reason, but the afternoon went by pretty quick when we got the pool out and started bathing the kids and letting them play around in the pool. I unfortunately got peed on when I took a little girl out of the tub. So now I have been puked on, peed on, spit on, pretty much everything you can imagine! Wednesday night was bible study and theres only about 15 of us here so we had it downstairs in the living room.

Thursday was picture day! We had to take a picture of every child to send to their adoptive families so they can seem them growing every month. Everyone took a child, wiped them down, put lotion on them, changed their dirty diapers and then put a nice outfit on them. The theme was frogs this month! Most of the children cooperated pretty well but we did have to make some silly faces and use a pom pom to get their attention. It took about 3 hours to get everyone done, there is about 30 kids. Thursday afternoon Dave and I took on a job of cleaning the hallway out, it had tons of old dusty books and nic nacs. It turned out to be a bigger job than I thought but we finished before supper! After dinner last night all of the volunteersgot a child out of the nursery and brought them downstairs to the living room and I played my guitar for the kids and they loved it. They all wanted to try playing too:) It was an awesome evening, I felt like we were all one big happy family!! Definitely one of the best nights so far:)

Now to today we went up to Brandon and Nikkis this morning who run the guest house for breakfast at 7:30. We had this homemade breakfast pizza and it was delicious. We all shared our stories and just talked. I got up the courage to talk today about my experience so far and since me and Nicole are leaving next week Vince prayed over us that we would have a safe trip home and be able to tell our story and never forget Haiti. I can't believe I only have 4 more days here! This trip has been amazing and I wouldnt take back any minute!

Another side story on Tuesday on our way home from Fort Jaques there was a homeless man on the side of the road who supposedly have a mental illness. We stopped to give him a tent and blanket since all he had was a plastic tarp up. He said he didnt want the tent and didnt want the sleeping bag until colleen showed him how it worked. Having a mental illness in Haiti must be very difficult as there are not many resources for them. Colleen put the fly over top of his tarp since it had holes in it to try and keep him dry.

More this weekend!

Seeing it happen from start to finish

We had another new volunteer come from Indiana her name is Katie and she is 23. Sheila, Stella, Margaret, Mandy and Gina left today:( I woke up extra early Tuesday morning for some reason and we headed out in the morning to Fort Jaques to load up the bags we have made over the past couple of weeks to distribute to a community called Calebasse. It was one of the things I wanted to do before I leave. It was soo neat to be able to see things happen from start to finish. Starting with unpacking the containers, sorting all the containers, cleaning, packing it into bags and then seeing the Haitian people get their bags. This was a very orderly distribution and 100 bags were distributed only to people with green tags that the mayor the town passed out before we got their. I just stayed back and watched it all happen as Jussi one of the man volunteers did most of the handing out. I got to hold a ladies 3 month old baby, so cute. Also talked to lady in her late twetnies that came up to me and Britt to thank us personally for the bags and told us she had been praying for us to come and to pray for her and she would pray for us. She said to keep her picture in my mind and to not forget her. It brought tears to my eyes. This had been the first distribution to that town. She had no kids and told us she was praying for a husband. She had quite good english but said she didnt have a job, but she is taking a class for computers I believe. It was sad to know that not everyone could get a bag, but I hope that the people that did get a bag would share with others in their community. They were writing names down of ladies that had babies that didnt get a bag and this one lady was taking peoples babies to try and get on the list. After the distribution we went back to Fort Jaques and me and Cindy and Miss Vikki and Nicole packed 150 more bags for distribution!!!!!!! Supper bell just went off more later!

Monday

I apologize for not posting the last couple of days our internet has not been working at the toddler house and the main house we barely have enough time to write. So on monday I got two children assigned to me to take care of for the next week that I'm here K and Big J. K is about 4 months old and has a deformed leg that needs surgery and J is a busy beaver. In the morning played with the children and in the afternoon everyone seemed to be sleeping so sorted clothes into piles by size. A new volunteer came today her name is Cindy and she is from New Mexico. Also Vince and Nathan came from Calgary to help out. At night we had a camera crew of 3 arrive from CMT. They are here to film parts of Haiti and the orphanage because in August a bunch of country stars example Kenny Chesney and Tim Mcgraw are coming to do some sort of special where they sleep in tents at God's Littlest Angels property Fort Jaques that I have talked about. Its like a reality show kind of...I guess the stars are getting paid for this which saddens me and there airing it at Christmas to raise money for Haiti I believe is the whole point of it.

Sunday: another day of rest and relaxation

Went to bed last night with a little bit of a scratchy throat and woke up this morning with a sore throat!! This weekend has just been a do whatever you want weekend and since Brittnei hasn't been feeling well and I wasn't feeling well we decided to read, play on the computer and watch movies. Went to church this morning and went back to the main house to have lunch with everyone for Marks birthday and played with P and C for a bit. They are the two boys that Miss Vicki the nurse takes care of in her room. They are probably the cutest little ones I have ever seen. Everyone but me and Britt decided to stay at the main house for the night but I wasn't feeling so hot so decided to come back to our house and just relax since this week is going to be busy I think!!! One thing I've learned here is be flexible, we don't find out whats going on until about 9:00 am every day. Going to head to bed early tonight, was going to go down to the main house to watch Vancouver play Chicago but missed the ride down and im not allowed to walk down in the dark of course. Good night!

Tent City

I’m going to start off with a quote tonight. We can do no great things, only small things with great love. (Mother Teresa) Sorry for not being able to blog last night we got home late from the tent city and I was exhausted!

Friday morning started off with breakfast and Brandon and Nikki’s who run the guest house just up the hill from where I live here. We had banana bread and cinnamon rolls. Then after breakfast we had a chance to share our experience so far at GLA. I didn’t speak but a couple others did and it was a very emotional morning for everyone. One of the men that are here made everyone cry because he started crying when he was talking about his trip here so far. I just feel like my emotions all came out yesterday morning and I needed a good cry. Two ladies from our house left today and that was also really sad! I have made some great friendships and will miss the nights where we all stayed up talking about life and laughing.

After breakfast I was ready to go back to bed but headed down to the main house to do some baby loving for the morning. After lunch we all got ready to head to the tent city outside of Port au Prince. I was pretty excited to get this opportunity. As we jump in the car all crammed in we smell a gasoline smell. Our driver needed to go give gas to someone that ran out so we had to drive with it in our gar the whole way and it was making everyone sick! We all had huge headaches and stopped on the side of the road to grab some limes from a vendor as citrus helps with carsickness! You learn something new everyday! By the time we all got to the airport to drop Steph and Shelley off we were high on gasoline fumes I swear. We jumped in another vehicle hit the Haitian version of a Mac’s Milk at home and we were off. Driving through Port au Prince I was a little stunned at the damage the earthquake had caused in some buildings. It’s so weird how you can drive through the city and some buildings are just collapsed and some are not. We passed this one huge supermarket that had collapsed and a lot of foreigners were killed there. I believe they said around four hundred. I just wish they could clear the rubble away as it’s a constant reminder to the Haitian people everyday of the natural disaster that changed a lot of lives. I could not get over the tent cities, there are some many tents everywhere you look! The tent city we visited was outside of Port au Prince and housed 5,000 people. These 5,000 people moved there only 2 weeks ago from another tent city that housed 50,000 people. They got flooded out from the rain as we are in rainy season here so had to move someplace else. This was one of the most organized tent cities I had seen so far. They all had decent sized tents, a place to get water, a trench in case it rained, places to wash and go to the washroom and security. Our job was just to walk around tent to tent talk to the people and listen to their stories. I will share a couple of stories with you. One of the first tents we visited had a girl named Nadine who was 19 years old. Nadine had some sort of physical and mental disability. I just sat with her and she was soo excited to see us, laughing and smiling. We had Ryhan with us who knows a good amount of Creole so she could translate. This tent also had another boy who had some sort of disability and it broke my heart. At some tents we were invited in, this one lady lived with her mother who was around 60 years old which is quite old here in Haiti. She didn`t look too well. They invited us to sit in their tent and she told a story about the earthquake and how she was in her house when the building collapsed. I have no idea how she got out. Most tents had very little in them. There were flies everywhere and it was sooo hot in the tents. Just think when you go camping in the summer and go into your tent during the day, how hot it is. That is constant in the tent cities. They had some clothes, shoes, and a couple belongings but not much. There were things called mud cakes that the people had in their tents which are made of flour, water and mud. Yes these people eat these for food. One little baby that we met had a little bracelet made out material on her arm. Ryhan informed me that it is a voodoo bracelet and they do it to ward off sickness, etc. I don`t know all that much about voodoo but it is common here in Haiti. Halfway through our trip we had a following of children, holding our hands as we walked tent to tent. All of a sudden we saw a huge group of people hurdling towards us and we had no idea what was going on. Then a little dwarf man lands in front of Brittnei, I guess he is the water man that delivers water to them and they love him and think it`s funny since they don’t see that often here in Haiti. Stella joined in on a game of jump rope and the kids loved it. If you looked in the sky you could see kites made of anything they could get their hands on. One little girl who spoke a little English asked me if I loved children and I said yes and then she asked me if I would adopt her. I just wanted to cry she said she didn`t know where her mother or father were. I didn`t know if she was telling the truth or not, but for a child to have to say that is not right. They have no schools other than a kindergarten school at the tent city and a group of Haitian youth were there trying to see if they could start an elementary and secondary school up. Once it got dark they put a film on for everyone to watch called incomparable grace that Pastor Joel had made. It was about two hours long and I could not understand a word as it was all in Creole. I just stood in the crowd with two little girls one on each side of me holding my hand. By the end everyone was praying for each other. There were about 2,000 people watching this video. In the front row were all those that were disabled in some way. Some missing a leg from the earthquake, some old that were blind, deaf etc. I was so happy that they brought them down to be able to watch the video.

We left around 9:30 pm and I was soo exhausted physically and emotionally. I cannot believe that I have so much and these people have so little. Honestly, my problems are so tiny compared to the hardships that these people have. Some may wonder what the point was of just going to the tent city, well what it was for me was a chance to just be there and show the people that someone cares and we have not forgotten about them. It was a chance for me to have my eyes opened to the extreme poverty our world holds. It opened my eyes to the resilience of the Haitian people and how some way they always bounce back. It was a chance to let them talk and have someone listen to them even if I did not understand their language. It changed my life. Words cannot explain the emotions of yesterdays experience and pictures cannot describe it.

Saturday was a day of rest and relaxation. Got to sleep in until 9:30 am and then just lazed around all morning. Britt wasn`t feeling well so me, her and Amy watched a couple of movies. I went down for a bit and hung out with some of the older children as some of the volunteers had made balloon animals for them. At around 4:00pm me and Amy headed down to the main house for dinner, it was a nice walk today as there was a nice breeze and it wasn’t too hot. After supper headed upstairs to say goodnight to the little ones and get some cuddles in. Off to bed.
Sorry for the long post!

Tent City

Hello everyone,

Sorry I havent wrote in a couple of days last night was a late night and today the internet has been screwing up. I will post tomorrow about the past couple of days!!

I'm always the last one out of bed around here! I miss sleeping in at home! Robin left today and Im going to miss her, we had lots of good laughs and she gave me some great advice about life, dating etc. She was excited to go home and see her daughter.

This morning got some baby loving in and sorted through boxes of clothing into separate piles some for nursery clothes, dress up, going out etc. Went out for a walk after lunch with G, hes one of the NICU babies so had him in a little sling! He was soo tired by the end he fell asleep. It was a nice day out today, not too hot. Still havent got that rat either hopefully hes not on the balcony still somewhere. Had one of my favourite lunches today hotdogs and spaghetti!

Tonight after dinner played around the world(basketball) with Dixies sons and their friends. They were soo funny Mark can talk really good english so he would help translate everything they were saying. They are so polite since Im not very good at basketball, they would let me have two shots until I started catching up to all of them then they got scared and I told them we had to start playing fair since they shouldnt be treating me any different because Im a girl! haha

Steph and Shelley are leaving tomorrow. It seems like everyone is leaving and I have made some great friendships and will miss them all.

Tomorrow morning we are going to breakfast at Nikki and Brandons who run the guest house. It was a weird day today please keep everyone here in your thoughts and prayers!

Rats, Boxes and Babies

Sorry I didn't blog yesterday for all you faithful readers haha. I wrote out my whole blog and then it wouldn't save! Very frustrating. So I'll try to remember what happened yesterday. In the morning I spent some time with the babies. L's adoptive dad is here and he was really cranky yesterday. I went to the nursery and talked with Esther the nurse and she was translating everything I was saying to the other nurse that didnt speak english. She wanted to see a picture of my mom so I have to remind myself to bring it in my bag sometime this week. Esther wants me to teach her how to play guitar one day. Its so nice to be able to chat with the nannies, they are very interesting people and are very loving.

In the afternoon we tackled the balcony sorting out all the stuff up there. What we thought would be a small job turned into a huge job. There was soo much stuff up there that was old and needed to be thrown out. Then the huge turn off was the dead rat we found in one of the boxes all decomposed with just the eyes and teeth and it smelt horrendous. I grabbed a pair of gloves with Steph, Sheila and Britt and started chucking everything into garbage bags. Gross. Then at the end of the sorting, cleaning and packing we were grabbing one of the last boxes and all of a sudden a rat jumped out of the box, yes a live rat. And these things are huge here in Haiti. I didnt see it but heard all the girls piercing screams. So now we have a rat on our balcony, just wonderful we set a trap today.

Another volunteer came yesterday Ryhan who is taking Melanies job as she and Dixie leave tomorrow. Melanie's job is adoption update coordinator so Ryhan is going to do some of that work. Dixie is off to the states to see family, see childre n that have been adopted and then is heading to Europe to see more children.

Since Dixie is leaving we celebrated her adoptive son Steeves birthday last night at Fort Jaques. It was a big celebration as about 40 of us headed up crammed into vehichles to have a hot dog roast around the campfire. Lots of fun got to talk to the volunteers and just relax. Got in at about 9:00 last night showered and headed to bed. We beat the record of the most people in a vehicle here 11 last night. 4 in the back of the trunk part, 3 in the middle and 4 in the front one was a little baby. I forgot to mention about a little boy named Claricineu who came to GLA and you could see everyone of his ribs he was so malnourished. He has been hanging out with Miss Vicki the nurse everyday and she has been fattning him up! You should see him now I wish I could post pictures but its too slow. That lady is a miracle worker and she is such a kind hearted lady.

Now too today. Felt a little lazy and exhauted today for some reason. All the volunteers except for me, Britt, Amy and Dave went out to Kenscoff to distribute bags to the Haitian people full of goods. Since we are staying longer than everyone else we will have a chance to go next week Amy and Dave have been here awhile and I believe they have already gone once. So they had to take care of Peterson and Claricineu since Miss Vicki went to distributing too. Hung out with some of the kids in the morning and then me and Britt tackled the bathroom which had a bunch of things that needed to be sorted and given out for distribution. That was a messy job. We are all worn out of organizing and cleaning.

Theres this one little boy who is very interesting we call him spanky because his name is hard to pronounce and I cant post his real name on here. I believe he has some developmental delays and is one and on his sheet said he doesnt crawl, but today he crawled and I was pretty excited for him:) He just loves to be loved and cuddled and sleeps a lot so Im trying to get him to play more.

Had shrimp and curry today as per Mark's request who is another one of Dixie's adopted sons whose birthday will be while she is gone away. After dinner had bible study and I played my guitar again and man the strings on the guitar hurt my fingers.

Another little girl I want to tell you about is J. She is a chunky thing but has club feet really bad. And Dixie's been trying to get her a medical visa to go to the states to get surgery for her legs/feet but has been unsuccesful since trying to do anything in Haiti right now is quite difficult. It breaks my heart and a lot of doctors supposedly wont do it for free which I find very frustrating! That little girl deserves a chance to walk!

Anyways sorry for writing so long tonight but had to fill you in on two days!

Boxes and Bags Galore

Did not want to get out of bed this morning! It was nice to sleep in this weekend! Headed down to the main house grabbed up L for some loving and then got told the plan for the day. Stephanie the one who works in the office with Dixie left today to finally be with her adopted son in the States.

I was told I was heading to Fort Jaques for the day to work on making bags up for distribution. Every day i swear we pack more people into a car. Seatbelts are not a word here. I sat on the console on the way to the property and these days I wish I had shorter legs! We made about 250 hygiene bags, 70 first aid kits and 45 totes full of shoes, hygiene things, blankets, clothes etc for distribution to places around Haiti including the tent cities. It was a hard day of work and am exhausted tonight!

Dixie drove us back to the main house for dinner and about 7 more volunteers arrived from Canada. I feel at home here as half the place is made of Canadians. I swear Im gaining weight here from all the food. Made of lots of carbs and Im always so hungry at meals that I load my plate full!

Oh and apparently I missed two earthquakes in the last twenty four hours. There was one last night at 12:00 am while I was sleeping at about 4.o on the richter scale and another one this afternoon that the volunteers felt here while playing with the kids at about a 4.2 on the richter scale. I did not feel anything up at the property. Crazy to think there are still aftershocks going on 4 months after the earthquake!

Christmas in May

Slept in again this morning and headed off to church for ten thirty and Pastor Joel's and his wife Yvonne's house. Today was breakfast morning. They have breakfast at their house once a month with these delcious pastries and juice. One was filled with custard the others ones were with chicken and beef. The last one was a cheese bun.

After church headed back to the main house for some baby loving and lunch. Then decided to try our luck and some of the volunteers headed for a walk to find the "waterfall". Bad idea to hike in a dress and old navy sandals but it was soo hot that i thought a dress would be a good idea and my good sandals were back at the house. So after about 40 minutes of hiking sweating we gound the waterfall. Wasnt big by any means but sooo pretty. We saw some Haitians showering there. Britt climbed up even farther and slid down the waterfall I didnt feel like being soaked for the walk back up the hills. Oh did I mention I forgot my waterbottle at the toddler house too not knowing we were going for a walk so me and Britt were dying trying to walk back up the hill to get back. But sooo glad I went because it was definitely breath taking!

On Sundays we make our own supper so had some kraft dinner and there was a huge storm here tonight. Can't say that I have ever stood in the clouds but I did tonight. Add that one to the books. You could actually see the clouds moving beside you. So neat! Couldnt see anything but clouds. Then Amy came back from visiting her cousins and we decided to sing some Karokee! Oh geez we got a little out of hand can barely talk now. Even made some shakers with rice and brought out the christmas songs! Fun night:) Back to the grind tomorrow!

Come look at my stuff!

Ahhh relaxation!! This saturday was fun day:) Got to sleep in until 8 but awoke to hear a pig having his throat cut which is saturday ritual at the neighbours. Theres something you dont see everyday in Canada. We did a little bit of tidying and cleaning up around the house and then headed at about 10:30 to the market for some shopping.

The first stop had an amazing loook out where you could see all of Haiti and a lot of it was blue and white tents but there was also the pretty ocean. Pictures didnt do it any justice. The mercy ship is still in the water which is a ship that does medical care which was surprising to some of the volunteers who have been here awhile. I bought lots of souvenirs, the paintings here are beautiful! Once they know you want to buy everyone runs to your side asking you to "come look at their stuff" and you want to buy something from everyone.

The second stop was the Bapist Mission and we got to eat at a restaurant that has american food, so I had chicken fingers and fries, pretty good and the view was amazing not really many spots in Canada where you can sit in a restaurant and just look out at the mountains. It looked like it was the dating hot spot. I got my globe there that I really wanted that is made out of coconut. There was interesting pictures painted of the earthquake and they had a lot of collapsed buildings with ambulances and people stuck underneath buildings, and blood.

When we get back me and Britt sat out and did some reading and relaxing out on the balcony. Also played a monopoly card game which is sooo much fun! It seemed abnormally hot today 36 degrees celsius. Then walked down for supper which was pizza and salad. Decided to walk back up to the toddler house and realized that was a bad idea the hills are soo steep and we were all panting by the time we got to the house. I sat outside for a little bit with the toddlers and geez they love sunglasses and were climbing on my shoulders which are really burnt. Ow! I wish I could speak Creole and talk to the nannies because you can tell they want to talk to you and I try so hard but when you dont really know any its pretty hard. They know a couple of phrases in english like whats your name and how are you but thats about it.

There were some adoptive families here today seeing their children and celebrating one of them's birthday. They were from France. Good night!