By the numbers

Weeks 4, 5, and 6 have each brought their own challenges and rewards.  In a nutshell, weeks 4/5 were dedicated to work trips (visiting 6 of our 7 partner hospitals) and week 6 was a rather stressful and confusing work week. Between weeks 5 and 6 was Fete Gede- a Haitian holiday similar to the Mexican "Day of the Dead" celebrations. Fete Gede provided us with a nice, long 3-day weekend, and we used it to travel to Jacmel, which is a small beach town south of Port-au-Prince.  I have been very lucky to have seen so much of this beautiful country already.  I'll spare you from a day-to-day recap and just give you some stats on my first 6 weeks in Haiti (this idea was stolen from a friend's blog about her time in Kenya):

SIX:
-weeks in Haiti....which means I've now been in Haiti longer than I have been in any other country! (besides the US, of course).

ZERO:
-illnesses (fingers and toes crossed that this continues)

ONE:  
-new apartment
-quart of pikliz consumed. I am obsessed.  Pikliz is a spicy cabbage slaw that people put on all of the tasty fried snacks (fritay) here

TWO:
-bowls of bouillon (delicious Haitian soup with dumplings)
-LOUD coworkers (although they also have two of the best laughs I've ever heard)
-beaches visited

THREE: 
-bottles of Barbancourt rhum

EIGHT:
-roommates in our cottage on the beach in Jacmel

TEN:
-LONG car trips (the road to Jacmel included approx. 360 curves in the road)
-cities (Jacmel, Cap Haitien, Milot, Pilate, Limbe, Gros Morne, Fond-des-Blancs, Fond-des-Negres, Croix-des-Boquets, Port-au-Prince/Petionville)

ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY SEVEN:
-minutes stuck in stand-still traffic on our drive back from Jacmel (the president decided to have a concert on one of the biggest travel days of the year)

Too many to count:
-beautiful places and people
-broken conversations in Kreyol/Spanish/English
-times I've tripped going up a flight of stairs in front of a coworker (it probably doesn't help that my only work shoes are a full size too big)
-ants swarming in my apartment after leaving even a crumb of food out
-times the power has gone out (luckily we have a generator, so it *almost* always comes right back on)
-International Development or CRS-specific acronyms I didn't know
-times I've awkwardly greeted someone with a handshake only to realize that they were going in for the typical two-cheek kiss greeting
-adorable kids in uniforms, holding hands and walking to school each morning

And last but not least, some pictures of the beautiful Haitian countryside:

On my first road trip (we went to Southern Haiti to visit a couple of our partner hospitals):

On my second road trip (we went through the Central Plateau and up to Northern Haiti, also to visit hospitals):

On my weekend getaway in Jacmel (first row is pictures of our little oceanfront cottage and second row is from our visit to Bassin Bleu-- a waterfall near Jacmel--- photo credit to Lam for the Bassin Bleu pictures):

 





I don't have anymore trips scheduled until my much anticipated trip to the DR, so I will start putting up blog posts more regularly :)

DISCLAIMER: This is a personal blog. Any views or opinions (or grammatical errors!) represented in this blog are personal and belong solely to the blog owner and do not represent those of people, institutions or organizations that the owner may or may not be associated with in professional or personal capacity, unless explicitly stated.  All pictures are mine unless otherwise stated