Day 7

We decided yesterday (sunday) that we would wake up earlier and skip breakfast in order to work earlier to avoid the heat. That meant waking up at 6:30AM and loading into the van and working from 7:00AM to mid day. Skipping breakfast I didn’t really mind but the 6:30AM wake up was pretty rough. We started to work on putting together all the furniture we had bought in port au prince. We started with the beds for the visitors quarters and then moved to organizing the administration building. Its important that we get these two buildings finished as soon as possible so we can move out of the hotel and onto the orphanage property. This saves us money from the hotel fee and allows us to work more on the orphanage. We began work today by putting the beds together. I’m usually not fond of putting furniture together but putting together bed frames is easy. We put together about 6 bed frames and cleaned out the visitors quarters once more. We then moved to the administration building moving desks in place and situating the kitchen area. Thankfully all the furniture arrived in once piece on the truck ride from Port-au-Prince. After setting up the offices and kitchen area we once again cleaned out all the rooms. After doing all of this it was time to call it a day and head back to the hotel.

The past couple of days we truly have been living like Haitians. We eat maybe twice a day but today we only ate once. Diner is the usual rice and beans or spaghetti with a veggie tray, tray of fries and a tray of chicken. I stay away from the vegetables and chicken… I eat my usual tunariceandbeansfriesketchupandspaghetti plate. Its finally getting rough with the food situation, I have run out of granola bars and have a limited stock of cans of tuna. It doesn’t really make a difference what I eat as long as it is food. I’m pretty much starving buy the time they bring us our food so I’m happy for anything. I only have trouble when everyone in the group talks about all the food they miss back in the states… Chipotle, Ice cream, cool ranch doritios, Braums… We will even look at pictures of food we miss back home on cameras. It doesn’t bother me too much when we talk about all good food we miss after diner. The only thing that drives me crazy is when its about 3 in the afternoon and we have just worked a full day and I’m starving and we are driving back to the hotel and someone says something about a cheese burger and fries. I know its not a big deal but I don’t know. Diner is still the usual one to two hours late. We call it Haitian time. No matter what time we tell them we will eat diner its never at the time set. Tell the hotel staff we would like to eat at 4PM we will get the meal at about 5:30PM. Its expected and we usually show up to a planned 4PM diner at about 4:30PM and play cards till the food finally arrives. I taught Dustin, James and Jenna how to play the card game thirteen. I learned to play in middle school and we usually play thirteen or domino's in our down time. After diner tonight we hung out and played cards till it got late and we retired to our rooms.