Sean and I are finding it hard to believe that we are finally en route to Haiti! We have been dreaming about this day for what seems like forever and it's difficult sometimes to be fully present to the fact that we are nearly there. So many of you have seen us through the huge range of emotions we've gone through during this process and we can't thank you enough for continuing to be here, standing by our side telling us you believe in what we are trying to do!
The night before we left, my Grandma made us a final dinner: gluten-free beef stroganoff and also a final breakfast: gluten free waffles, fresh fruit and coffee. She and Grandpa have been so supportive of me being gluten-free and frequently report when they find cookies/cakes/pasta in gluten-free form. They drove us to the airport, we had a teary goodbye and then we were off! The flights were rather uneventful so I'll fast forward a bit. ALL of our bags made it in one piece and so did we. No concussions this time! :) We took a taxi to our guest house, a steal for $20/night with our own bathroom a fan, wifi and electricity. I tried to connect to the internet on my phone, ipod, kindle and laptop and couldn't get it to work on any of my devices. Sean got it to work on his laptop but as soon as I tried it, I couldn't get it to work there either! It made me realize how out of practice I am living on this island. In reality it's not the end of the world if I can't get online for a few days, but since I do the majority of my work online, it was extremely frustrating when I couldn't connect. So I went to bed frustrated and when I woke up today I could connect! After working for about an hour, I decided to plug in my computer and then found that it wouldn't charge! I tried several outlets and once again even though Sean could get his stuff to charge, mine wouldn't work. So fortunately our good friend Jared saved the day by calling Apple for me and getting a reset code from them. It worked!
After a while we set out in search of food and solar panels. We wandered around in the rain for a few minutes and finally came across the Caribe Tours bus station where we purchased our tickets to go to Haiti in a mix of English, Creole and Spanish. Since it was raining so much we hired a taxi to head to the solar panel store. Sean had found them online and they had small, inexpensive panels he thought we could use. Long story short, they didn't have small panels, only gigantic ones and after two more taxi rides, 4 more stores and a membership purchased to a store similar to Costco, called Price Smart, we have a small solar panel system! This will allow us to have some lights and internet most of the time without using city power or a wasteful generator, and we couldn't be more excited! Unfortunately while we were in Price Smart trying to purchase our membership, our taxi driver came running in and said his wife had been taken to the ER and that he had to run. We of course told him to go and be with her but it meant we didn't have a ride back to our hotel. We quickly resolved the situation when one of the store's employees made a call to have a taxi sent for us.
Once we got back to our hotel, we got an email from our renter saying that our furnace quit. Again. So we are trying to get that resolved while we are a few thousand miles away. Fortunately we have insurance and those supportive family members to look after our place. I will write more when I can.
Thanks for reading!
Dokte Sarah
