I’m finally getting use to waking up early now, its not as much of a struggle to get up this early as the previous eleven days. I got up around 8AM today and headed for breakfast. For breakfast I had pineapple and nutella on bread. After breakfast I headed to my room to get ready for church. I decided I have gone long enough without washing my hair to I hopped in the shower. I normally wash my hair once every two weeks. The longest I have gone without washing it is probably a month. I would wash it more but it takes forever to dry. I have to use a hair dryer and it takes about a half a hour to get my dreadlocks completely dry. I wasn’t planning on washing them at all on this trip because they are just going to get dirty all over again but I changed my mind and I’m glad I packed my hair dryer. It kind of makes me feel like a girl to have to sit with a hair dryer and dry my hair, but I love my hair and kind of try to take care of it. What I like most about my hair is I don’t have to do anything to it most of the time. No hair cuts, no combing, wash it every once and a while and that’s pretty much it. My hair never stinks like most people might believe because I rarely wash it. When I do wash it I use a dread shampoo bar made with hemp seed oil, coconut, and other natural ingredients. Anyway enough about my hair.
We left for church about 9:30 and got their about 10:00 and service got over about noon. It really is hard to sit there for that amount of time in the heat and listen to a sermon and songs in a language I don’t fully understand. I understand bits and pieces of the sermons and songs but I find it hard to stay awake during the prayers. The prayers here are a minimum of five minutes long and I frequently fall asleep during them. After the service we had more stuff to pass out. James had more toiletry items to pass out to the kids that Jewish kids from New York put together. Dustin and Jenna passed those items out and passed out deodorant sticks and Kleenex packets. Passing stuff out this time was even more difficult than last time. You basically get mobbed by kids and adults everyone pulling and tugging asking for something… It’s a real big headache and I can now see why some groups rather not pass out anything at all.
After passing items out we headed the short walk to the orphanage and check on the progress of the electricians. They were still working on installing the generators. After checking on that we headed back to the van and went back into town. In town we needed to stop and pick up some drinks and ice. We visit the same shop to purchase our drinks and ice and I have become pretty good friends with some of the workers and their kids. Here are my friends Yoland, Ci Ci, and Stefanié:
Once back at the hotel we placed our diner orders then everyone headed to their rooms. During the day the hotel has no power so when we have a day off we are stuck at the hotel with no power. No AC… I decided to make some lunch and have a nap. For lunch I had a tuna sandwich, pringles and a coke.
Diner was only 30minutes late tonight which isn’t too bad considering how late it usually is. Instead of french fries we got plantaine. Which sucks because I don’t really like plantine. Instead of my usual diner of: tunariceandbeansketcupfriescorn , I had: tunariceandbeansketcupcorn. The food change really hasn’t bothered me a bit. I just get extremely irritated when I fix my plate and have to wait on the ketcup. They bring our meal to us on plates from the kitchen, and the last thing they bring is the ketcup. I usually fix my plate and have everything mixed up and ready to eat, but I have to wait for the ketcup to arrive. I try and be patient but if it take them more than five minutes to bring me the ketcup I get up and go to the kitchen myself.
After diner we played a few hands of 13 and then went to the market to do some shopping. Having done some shopping yesterday I only needed to get a few things. I got a bottle of Santa Ana a Cabernet Sauvignon produced in Argentina and a can of sour cream and onion pringles. I’m getting better at figuring out how much items are while shopping. The display price is in Haitian Dollars but you pay in Haitian gourdes. To convert Haitian dollars at this market to Haitian gourdes you just multiply Haitian dollars by 5 and you get the price in gourdes. For example the bottle of wine I bought tonight cost 50 Haitian dollars and the pringles 22 Haitian dollars. In Haitian gourdes the wine is 250 Haitian gourdes and the pringles 110 gourdes. So my total was 360 gourdes. In US this $9.00 with the exchange rate from gourdes to USD at 40 gourdes for every dollar. $9.00 pretty good deal for a bottle of cheap wine and a can of pringles.
After we finished shopping we headed back to the hotel and made plans to leave tomorrow for work in the morning at 7:30AM. We have just received some paint we ordered from Port-au-Prince and will now begin to paint the visitors quarters.
Tonight I watched the movie Once which is a low budget movie about a guitar player from Ireland. It was a very good movie with a good soundtrack.
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