I have arrived in HAITI! :)

Hello everyone!!! :)  I have officially arrived in haiti!!! :)  I have internet at my house so I will be able to get online to keep everyone updated!!!

I flew out from indianapolis, IN at 6:15pm eastern time to Miami, FL on monday.  I arrived there at 9:00pm and met up with Megan, 1 of my new roommates, as soon as we both landed! :)  We then went and caught a shuttle bus to our Sheraton Hotel that was right by the airport.  That hotel was amazing and the bed was just oh so comfortable! :P  But with an amazing hotel comes with very high price for the restaurant food (cost me $7 just for a small bowl of french onion soup!)

We flew out of Miami at 6:15am which means we had to wake up at 4:30am to get ready and to the airport for our flight.  We arrived in Port-au-prince, Haiti at 9:00am but it took about 45 minutes to get through customs, get our bags and get to our shuttle van to go over to tortug.  Tortug is the small airport that the small planes fly in and out of to get to other parts of the country.

When we walked out of the large airport my Haitian friend Jackson was there to greet me! :)  I was all sweaty, but he stll smiled and was happy to see me! :)  He drove his motorbike over to tortug to chat with me while we waited on our next flight out.  We officially arrived at Tortug at 10am and we found out they were down to 1 flight a day and it wasnt going until 2pm, so it was a waiting game!  Jackson stayed with me the whole time (he also had 2 of his friends there).  They stayed for a total of 5 hours chatting with me before my next flight left!!!!!!!!!  Thank you soo much Jackson for being there with me! :)

After we arrived at Tortug though we also found out that there were only 10 tickets, but we had 11 people!!! So the question was who doesnt have a ticket to fly on the Tortug to Port-de-Paix!?!?!?  Well of course! it was me!!!!!!!!!!!! :P  Since I was just told a few weeks ago that I would be going to Haiti, a plane ticket wasnt ever paid for on the small plane.  Well, there wasnt going to be enough room on the small plane so someone was going to have to stay behind in Port-au-Prince!  We all discussed it and Mr. Scott said no way am I staying behind since I am the new one and didn't speak creole and he had a credit card for Sonlight so he could get a cab and get a hotel room for the night.  So they let me get a plane ticket and let him use his the next day.  :)

I wasnt looking forward to this plane ride at all!  In May when I visited this plane gave me a severed migraine while landing the plane but it was also a 9 seater as well.  The plane that we were getting ready to take was a 16 seater so I figured well its a little bigger so maybe it would be that bad!  Nope it wasnt but minutes after the plane started up in the air that my stomach started getting a little weak and my head started hurting!  Tara thankfully gave me some altoids to chew on (noone had any gum) and then I fell asleep, so my stomach settled back down.  It wasnt only me though everyone said that ride was pretty rough though!

We finally arrived in Port-de-Paix and had a truck there ready to pick us up and take us home! :)  We all loaded up in the back of the truck with a few of our bags (most of them all had to stay behind at Tortug and are to be transported here today sometime), but we rode through town and arrived at Sonlight ready to be officially "Home"!

Megan, Tara and I walked up to our house and I was shocked!  This house is huge!!!!! It is even bigger then my house in USA.  The house is called "The White House", of course because it is white :P but it makes me feel like I am in the presidents house! :P  We unlock our gate and walk into our "front yard" its a patio kinda and then we open our next gate that is to the front porch and then we unlock our actual front door.  Upon entering the is a laundry room and the stairs to upstairs to your right and a large kitchen to your left.   Straight on, there is a small hallway area that has my large bedroom to the right, my bathroom straight on and the spare bedroom to the left.  My bedroom has a full size bed in it, a dresser, armoire, bookshelf, lounge chair, closet and a lot of space! :P  So I am very gratefull to have this room... there is two large windows in my room, one looks onto the neighbor who is extremely close next door and the other on looks out onto our back patio space.  To continue the downstairs if you go back into the kitchen there is a door to the left and that leads into the dining room which then leads into the living room.  If you go upstairs you have a large common seating area and then to the right is a corridor.  In that corridor there is the bathroom straight ahead and to the left is Taras room and to the right our storage room that also was changed into the upstairs kitchen kinda when they had it as two seperate apartments.  Back out in the corridor if you went left then that is the master suite which is Tara's room this year.  The house has a upstairs outdoor patio as well which will be great to hang out on! :)  I will post some pictures in a minute if I can get the photo adder thing to work...

Today we woke up and had some breakfast over at Roger and Norma's and then Tara and Steven went downtown to Natcom to get both of our homes hooked up to the internet.  Then Beth, Megan and I decided we wanted to go get our phones so us 3 went downtown on taxis to get our natcom cell phones! :P  It is still kinda crazy getting on the back of a scooter as my TAXI! :)  But I truly do enjoy it!  The roads are dusty and covered in rocks and large holes and there is no system to the driving over here so it always feels like a game of chicken while riding out in the streets for me! :P  lol  Everyone just honks their horns constantly to let people walking know they are coming around the corner on their scooter or a mack truck blares their horn to say get out of my way! :P  Sometimes the trucks get really close to the scooter that I could reach out and touch the truck, but instead I just tell myself I know the taxi driver doesnt want to hurt his bike and that he is a good driver and just kinda grip onto his waist a little bit! :P lol  The taxi ride to town cost 25 gourdes which in american term was $0.50.  That is extremely cheap when you really think about it, but not being used to the money system that much yet it kinda felt weird handing over a bill that said 25 on it.  It felt like I was giving him $25 american dollars, but I have to remember it isnt that at all. :P

We arrived at Natcom, purchased everything we needed and then made it back home safe! :)  I tried out the phone and yes it does work!!!!!! :) I was able to chat with my friend here in Haiti and also talk to my parents in USA (hopefully it doesnt charge their phones that much!)

We then had lunch at 1pm, which was amazing homemade spaghetti and toast and a salad... YUM!! I dont know if I will be able to lose weight here if we continue to have this amazing food cooked for us! :P  We then have dinner at 6pm, but is a lighter meal then lunch.

Right now I am just laying in my bed, typing this and enjoying the fan blowing on me! :P  The house has AC, but that is in the main rooms such as the upstairs common room and the kitchen.  So I have my ceiling fan and then another fan that is plugged in that produces a great breeze in here!  I have another 2 hours of relaxing before dinner! :)  For the rest of the night I will probably be back on here and just enjoying my free time, because tomorrow after breakfast I will be going over to my classroom and getting everything set up and ready for next week when we have registration and start to meet the children! :)  Hopefully Cara is willing to do some Creole tuturing, but if she is too busy and isnt able to then hopefully I will get a Haitian tutor here and be able to be speaking Crole very soon! :)

Well for now, I am going to get off of here and I will continue to update everyone later! :)  Have a blessed evening nd I am so glad to have you all in my life! :)