Like I mentioned, yesterday I went to brunch in Petionville with the girls. It was a beautiful drive up there and I love getting to see more of Haiti. We drove through the downtown area of Delmas as well as some main streets of Petionville. Delmas was very nice and because it was Saturday there were even more people on the street than there usually is. Usually there are a lot of people, so yesterday the city was packed. The streets were clean though and there were even some street signs that one of the cellphone companies had installed. When we got up into Petionville, the roads were a little bigger, much less crowded and the views were amazing. Petionville is so green and tropical, it was beautiful. There was also a lot of nicer, more unique artwork. We got to the hotel where we were eating and Sister Judy told us a lot about what everything was like before the earthquake. I guess the hotel was near to where the Father Wasson Center used to be. The Father Wasson Center building was used as St. Damien Hospital and then it became an administrative building and housed the volunteers. During the earthquake, the Father Wasson Center collapsed as well as the majority of Villa Creole, the hotel we were at. Sister Judy said that before the earthquake, on the weekends she used to come down to the hotel and swim in the pool and study Creole. Sounds like an amazing Sunday afternoon to me! Luckily, some of Villa Creole remained intact, including the outdoor café area and the pool. Breakfast was delicious. It was a buffet with lots of fresh fruit, eggs, coffee and pancakes. We sat at a nice table right next to the pool and a view of the half-crumbled building.

Back at home, I was going to go sit and do some work, but Wynn was setting up a little nerf basketball hoop and playing catch with two of the boys from FWAL and I decided that playing sports would be way more fun than doing work. The boys were about ten years old and totally stoked to play with the sports equipment. When they were batting, I taught them a proper stance, although once they got the hang of it, we lost the ball a couple times. They taught me some very necessary Creole words for playing with kids like, ‘throw’ and ‘bat’. Ivy lent them some books from the “library”… we’ll see if the books make their way back.

After sports, we took the boys back to FWAL and brought cake and soda for one of the high school girl’s birthday. She turned 13! The girls are super loud and totally move as a pack, just like any other group of high schoolers, but they’re really sweet and it was fun talking with them. Of course they wanted to take a million pictures on my camera so I’ll post some of them. The girls are in the Don Bosco program which is temporarily at FWAL, but they all grew up at the St. Helene orphanage in Kenscoff.

The birthday girl with some friends and some cake

Hanging out with Alianne and Claudia

Wynn, Alianne, Alain and the 2 boys from FWAL

Ivy getting her hair greased and braided Haitian-style

I made a lot of progress today inputting inventory into the computer system, but other than that it's been a pretty lazy day. I was able to talk to a bunch of people on Skype/FB today which was nice. I'm probably just going to read my book for the rest of the night, who knows what will come my way tomorrow!