*This is is being sent Saturday morning due to power outage and no internet.

I did not sleep well last night.  I feel as though there was a conspiracy by the mosquitoes against me.  I was bit numerous times.    The fans only work so well keeping them at bay.  Finally I just put on spray.  This was not part of my bedtime routine by any means especially since I had just taken a shower.  I pray that the three weeks of drugs I have to take so I don't spread some epidemic back to America, work.

I was cracking myself up last night because I realized that my friend Susan sleeps in two positions, perfectly straight on her back...like a dead person, and perfectly straight on her stomach...like a dead person.  I sleep like a two year old, I'm all over.  She looks like a Barbie in bed.  I look like a Barbie in bed that some boys play with.  And for clarification, played with as in taking a sibling’s well loved Barbie and beating the heck out of it because it's not a Matchbox.  I actually think I'm making wear patterns in my new sheets that were put on from tossing and turning.  At the moment I don't have to worry about that anymore.  As I was trying to write my blog sitting on my bed, I knocked over a beer all over it.  Long story short, my shorts smell like the next day after a night of partying gone wrong, and I had to switch mattresses.  I almost walked over to the kid’s area and put myself in a diaper.  This was not in my plans.  Being a news correspondent in a foreign country is a lot of work.  In fact, it’s too much work.  I need an assistant that I can dictate to and tell them what I want done.  I’ll do the wring and they do everything else.  I wouldn’t delegate my writing craft.  So, I’m in a time out in the kitchen sitting in a very uncomfortable chair.  I feel the mosquitoes looming.

I’m getting the hang of feeding the kids.  I’m getting the technique down and how to fend off the little buggers who want to take my food.  We took four kids after breakfast to horse therapy.  Totally up my alley.  Believe it or not, you don’t even realize where you are when you go into the equestrian center.  It’s really pretty.

I have a really hard time judging the age of the kids down here.  They are, I’d say at least 5 years younger looking and smaller than kids back at home.  Sometimes they are more than that.  I don’t even think those people at the fair who guess your age could guess them.

Paco and Jean Claude

Honestly, I was quite surprised how well the kids responded to the therapy.  The guy who runs the therapy program, Paco, I guess had horse therapy after a horse injury a while back.  Ironic that someone with a horse injury would want horse therapy.  Maybe he didn’t know better.  Paco, is a very handsome Domincian guy and when I see him I think of the old commercials with Fabio when he was promoting butter or lack there of.  Of course Fabio these days…ewwwww!  I swear I hear angels singing in the background every time I look at him.  Of course those ahhhhh moments are rudely interrupted by the children.  Children!  

I only gagged once while giving a kid a treat.   It just goes back to the bodily fluid thing.  The other one had the death grip on me.  Eventually it all worked out, and we are going back to therapy next week. 

I took my first tap tap today.  A tap tap is a truck with a covered top and the sides are open.  They are painted in really bright and bold colors.  Usually there is some reference to God.  Like “I’m driving with Jesus” or “Jesus has my back” or “Jesus said it’s ok to have more people than the Shriner’s can fill a car”  Sometimes they go up the hill, stall out because there is too much weight and then everyone bails, walks up the hill and gets back in.  It’s kind of crazy.

I was a little leery of going out but we know the driver since he works here.  We basically looked like three crazy white “blanc” chicks out on the town.  My friend Shawn was right; today I got a nose full of bad smells…all day.  I can’t believe how much dust I took in, I could feel a layer covering every inch of me.  It was just sick! 

Yep, Haiti is about as poor as I imagined.  I must admit though, even though these people have nothing, they smile and they still wear their cleanest nicest clothes while they are out an about. It’s hard to imagine because there are no dry cleaners and no one owns a washer or drying.  The ladies at the orphanage spend literally the entire day doing laundry in tubs sitting low to the ground.  I’d never get any wash done.  Although tomorrow I will be hand washing these stinky beer laden shorts.  I would change them tonight but I don’t have another pair of comfy shorts to sleep in and two if I washed them now, I’d be half naked.  Not appropriate.  I’ll just suck it up until tomorrow.

It was weird seeing cows, goats, and dogs all eating garbage.  Obviously the cows are not grass fed.  Not to mention they drink out of the ditches with the sewer water.  Totally gross!

Jewelry at Apparent Project

We went to an artist school called the Apparent project (www.apparentproject.org).  You have to be a good artist to sell you work here.  They have some nice stuff.  I wish it wasn’t about an hour and half away…and that was considered light traffic.  I think I’ve used half my nine lives on the way there.  There’s about 2-3 lines of traffic (they don’t call them lanes) and there are about 5-6 invisible lines of traffic for the cars.  I could literally touch every vehicle that came near us. After an hour drive, I convinced Jamie to let me have a beer to take the edge off of this life changing driving that I was enduring.  It did help.  Now I’m sure we just looked like some seriously crazy white chicks.  I’m also thankful that she knows enough Creole to let everyone know to step away from the vehicle.  Ok, she doesn’t say that but when they hear her, they leave us alone.

Port au Prince from Radio Hill

Crazy fog/clouds

We went up to this place called Radio Hill.  It’s way up there.  I think the temperature dropped 15 degrees.  I didn’t think I’d complain about being cold in Haiti.  It was a great lookout down to Port au Prince and right after I took a handful of pictures, serious clouds rolled in.  Tommy Skilling would have even been excited.  The clouds were whizzing past us.  It was weird.  Port au Prince from up above just looks like a giant garbage dump.  I'm not saying that to be mean or disrespectful but I may have seen only a handful of recognizable buildings, the rest just look like a meandering river of garbage.

When we came down, the driver decided to make a few extra bucks and take a few of his friends for their cab ride.  I think they were fearful of us.  I smiled and waved at pretty much everyone and they returned the favor.  I love to shout to the kids “hey you” because that’s what they always say to outsiders.

It’s going to be an early night because one it keeps raining and two my brain was over stimulated today.