I went to Haiti!
After messages, texts, phone calls, and face to face encounters with many friends and family demanding a blog post, (I'm looking at you Uncle Eric) here it finally is!!!
I WENT TO HAITI!!!
There was much time spent in traveling just to reach our destination. I counted on the way back, and we traveled for 27 straight hours, yes, that's more than an entire day. I will spare you the generic airplane wing photos that you all know I took.
I got to meet a lot of really awesome people. To start off my trip, I only knew two people on our team of twelve, David and Dara. The picture up at the top is our team in Haiti!
Here we are, in some glorious selfies.
After finally making it to the Dominican Republic, then to Haiti, I learned some things about third world countries. Did you guys know that you can't throw your toilet paper in the toilet? Nope. It goes in the trash cans. That's a new one for me. You also can't gargle water in the shower, because the water is dirty. AND WE HAD NO AIR CONDITIONER. The week away from the United States really made me appreciate and realize what I take for granted on a daily basis, for instance, brushing my teeth in the shower. I live in Kansas. I live in southwest Kansas. Here in southwest Kansas it gets hot, but the heat is dry, I'm saying 10% humidity at most. Haiti is not 10% humidity. Haiti is hot and humid. The entire week, I don't think there was a single time that I stood up out of a chair and it was dry. (yeah, it's gross, I know I lived it)
Here you can see the gate, the wall, and the medical center, there on the property of the orphanage.
We got a tour of the property, and some of my favorite pictures from the trip are some that I took from the windows of the medical center.
These photos, more than any other ones I took, really show Ouanaminthe. I love the way the beauty and the poverty of Haiti come together, you see both.
Though some things sucked, like no AC, Haiti is a beautiful country full of beautiful people. I can't speak enough about the kids I met and got to hang out with! The only time that the heat ever bothered me was trying to sleep at night, and riding in the safari truck. All other times that we were doing things with the kids, I noticed the heat, but it wasn't a problem.
Most of our time that we spent in Haiti, we spent with the kids. We played soccer, volleyball, card games, frisbee, jumprope, and so many other things. They loved playing subway surfer on my phone as well, it made me a hot commodity. The boy here in the green shirt, Junior, became my little body guard and was always within arms reach of me. He made sure he knew where all my things were at all times, and if anything ever got misplaces it was found within a few minutes.
One of the days, another kid had been holding my water bottle. I didn't notice that it was gone, until we were going to lunch. I asked Junior where it was, and Junior just patted me on the shoulder and said "do not worry, go to lunch." Not five minutes later, another kid taps me on the shoulder and whispers in my ear, and says "Go into the hallway." Sure enough, the water bottle was safely returned.
This sweet girl's name is Emmanise, she didn't speak much English, but she one day asked me if she could comb my hair. Two hours later I had cornrows. I just kinda went with it, they actually lasted the rest of the trip and kept my head quite cool. Taking them out on the way back led to chaos though.
I know that what you're really here for is the photos, and they say a picture is worth a thousand words. So instead of me gabbing on and on about my week there, I'll post thousands of words worth of photos.
Of course there are countless stories I could retell over and over, but I won't bore you. My trip was amazing. I can't speak enough for Danita's Children, the organization that runs the orphanage, and the people who work for it. I had such an amazing time. I feel so blessed to have been given this opportunity, and would take another trip again in a heartbeat.
