Haiti. The First.

You might think I am crazy.
Blogging about my trip on the day of my return after traveling since 5:30 in the morning, crossing three(?) time zones and having no energy in my system.
And all the facts prove that I am crazy.
But I know myself. And I know that if I don't get this out of the way now I will procrastinate until I forget everything that happened.
So here you go.
The quick and to the point story of my missions trip to Haiti.

Day 1:
So the day of departure was hectic..and busy..and confusing and for the most part I just wanted to get it over with.
Not only was I leaving the country for two weeks but it was also baptism Sunday, barefoot soccer, Halloween..Oh, and my Birthday.

But the drive down to Van. was pretty uneventful.
We stayed the night at Ryan K.'s grandparents house.
And there was even a 'surprise' birthday cake for me. So special(only a little bit of sarcasm there,folks.).

Day 2:
Everyone woke up early and we loaded all the bags into the three trucks and headed off to the airport where we met up with all the other people who had come separately from the group. And everything started off normal.
We filled out Custom forms..and checked our bags, went through security.
This is where one of the first incidents happened.
Curtis A. for some reason has a special mark on his boarding pass which meant he had to do some heavy duty search thing so he got a full body x-ray done.
But since he was wearing the same blue Haiti shirt as 4 other people in line behind him it meant that Cade, Trevor, Matt and I think one other person had to get the intense search done too. Hah. Sucked to be them.

This whole time Behn, Dad and I were waiting for Cade since we had filled out our customs form as a family so we had to go through as a family.
So we go through the next checkpoint fine and we have one more to go and we are almost through and BAM! There is a note on our form saying we have to go to this special little room off to the side. Where we waited and waited and waited. This whole time we did not know why we were even in there. But time was going by and it was getting closer and closer to our departure time. And the American Airline employees were trying to figure out everything for us but in the end all that was figured out was that they had a problem with my father so we the children could go on but poor dad had to stay behind and wait some more.
So we trotted off to our gate with sad faces to tell the team of the loss.
Okay, I might have been laughing the whole time..but let's look past that.

The rest of traveling that day was most uneventful so it's hardly worth going through every detail except maybe one funny thing.
We went to pizza hut for lunch and Behn was getting all excited that you could buy beer at the pizza huts in the states..until we gently reminded him that you could in Canada too.

A couple of us slept in the airport that night. Terrible idea. Worst idea ever. Never doing that again. Especially since it was a crappy airport and all the stores closed early and then didn't open until after we left in the morning.

*Setting up camp for the night. There was a man sleeping by us who was snoring SO LOUD which did not help my insomnia.*

P.s. FIRST Time ever going to the bathroom in an airplane. But it's actually not as bad as they make it out to be.

Day 3:
After getting the worst sleep EVER!
We boarded our last flight non stop service to Port-au-Prince.
We landed.
It wasn't at all like I remember it from last time. That could just be my faulty memory or maybe alot has changed especially since the earthquake.
We had to take this little shuttle bus to the immigration part and WOW! was is ever Jam-packed! And confusing. And hot. And confusing. So many people everywhere and no order to everything(But now that I think about it that was pretty much the same as all the rest of our dealings with Haiti so no biggie.)
When we finally got all checked through we went on to baggage claim which was just as confusing. But add in some men who pretend to be officials. They are nice and find your bags for you..but then they hide them until you give them a tip.
It was a lot of work collecting all of the bags together but when it was finally finished we walked out and..were bombarded with more people trying to 'help' us with our bags and get us to come back to their taxi's. We just had to single file it and attempt to follow Rod Wray and his helper back to the bus.

Driving through the city was and interesting event. It was actually not that busy. Rod was pretty surprised at how quick we managed to get out of Port. But I managed to snap a few pictures before we left.

*Some lovely piles of garbage*

*There were hundreds of tents set of all over the place with survivors of the earthquake. Still living in the tents 8 months later.*

Overall I wasn't really shocked at the state of things. To be honest I thought it would be worse but I couldn't really tell the effects of the quake. I'm sure if we had gone to other parts of the city it would be more visible though.

Then the rest of the drive was a blur of snapping pictures and trying to get some sleep. Easier said than done..it was a very bumpy ride.

When we got to the camp we were amazed at how nice the guest house was. It was 5 times nicer than the one we stayed at last time. And that one was not terrible by any means. We somewhate settled our stuff and then the men went out to start work already..


and the ladies went to a nearby little market thing they had going..not sure what it was for but this is where I experienced another first.

FIRST ever energy drink.


Toro. Made in Port-Au-Prince.
It was very, very good.

Then the rest of the day was just getting used to the place and preparing for the next day by sorting clothes to give away and other such nonsense.


Okay I am drooping here. So I guess I will have to finish tomorrow.
P.s. I am only putting about 1/20th of my pictures on my blog. If you want to see the full extent look on facebook in a bit..
If you don't have me as a friend..well, maybe this will give you the nudge.