Tuesday March 27, 2013

We spent most of today outside with the kids.   I can now put most of the names together with the faces.  It becomes more challenging when many of the names I have never heard of before.  Actually to be fair, I know many of the names but they have Kreyol pronunciations and spelling.  For example one of the boys has the Biblical name of Elijah but the Kreyol version is Eleize.

Early this morning we had a private art gallery showing.  Apparently word is out that we are at the orphanage so a Fine Arts broker came with a bunch of Haitian art for sale.  Learned that Flamingoes were in Haiti and might still be here.  One of the paintings portrayed mosquitoes prominently.  We purchased a few that we liked, one with mosquitoes.

We spent some time learning new words.  Most of which I seem to have already forgotten.  We hung out in the shade with two 13 year old boys and an 11 year old boy learning the Kreyol words for various body parts.  In the end we turned the tables on them teaching them the English words for all the parts they taught us.  After that we changed subjects and moved to colors.

Many of the boys were playing soccer, or football since I’m now outside the US, using a tennis ball.  Since we had some soccer balls donated for the trip from the college aged group, I re-inflated one and gave it to them.  I don’t think I have ever seen a group of boys so excited over anything.  They ran around for yelling for a few minutes then returned and yelled “Thank you” in English.  They played hard for hours afterward.

Even though we had three cameras with us, we never seemed to have one on us.  The kids (and I don’t mean Ben, Simon, and Heidi) would ask to use them then proceed to take pictures until the battery gave out.  At any time there was one in use, one charging, and one waiting to be charged.  I’m sure they have taken 500-600 pictures per camera minimum today.

We also learned various clapping games with the girls.  I don’t know what they are saying most of the time but there is a song that goes with each one.  One involves the alphabet or at least most of it.  Ben picked it up quickly.  Shelby got a bunch of “you messed up again” looks.  I was just comic relief.

Petoucheca has been very sweet.  She has been eating with us for meals.  During the rest of the day she is hanging out with at least one of us. 

She and Heidi play together often.  She is also the main cause of “Missing Camera Symptom”.  For the last day her favorite activity is to grab a camera and take pictures of everyone and everything.  For example:

The food has been a new experience for all of us.  Today we had a fish dish.  The fish were gutted and baked with head, tail, and skin still on.  Not used to having my food staring at me.  It took a little bit to figure out how to get to the meat.  We think that it was red snapper but not 100% sure.  It was very tasty.  For our supper we had Haitian kibe which is a deep fried beef filled pastry.  There was some type of spice in them too.  Shelby and I liked them.  Too much spice heat for our guys.  Another interesting experience was chewing on sugar cane.  The bark is peeled off then you chew on the rest of the stalk.  After you suck all the sweetness out, you spit out the pulp.  It was interesting yet messy. 

All of our kids have a touch of homesickness.  Mainly they are missing the comforts and food of home.  Overall they are handling everything very well.