First Birthday!

Molly is now one year old! She had three celebrations, one at the gym, one at the other grandparent's home and then one with our family.  McKenzie requested that I make a red velvet cake for her birthday, it is a tradition that I started when she turned one, I think she has had one for each of her birthday's. Molly loved it. Molly loves food and wants to eat all the time. She still will not drink anything but the bath water, but she eats lots of fruits and veggies and eating most "real" food. She started walking just around her birthday and is getting braver each day but she can still crawl faster than walking so she chooses to crawl most of the time.
She owns the gym, she goes wherever she wants and she yells at the kids just like McKenzie does. When we take Molly out in public she is saying hi to everyone and watching everything around her. She expects people to stop and say hi to her, and most people do much to McKenzie's dismay. She is a pretty happy baby and fun to just sit and watch.

Choosing to Help!

I met Jean Francois Aristide aka “Marco” in October while in Haiti working with another great NGO. He was my personal interperter  He followed me around making sure that I understood everything everyone was saying to me and telling others what I was saying. We had some down time and had a chance to talk about life and kids and Haiti, and America and we just became friends. He has a great sense of humor and we quickly started joking with each other and the other team members joined in on the fun.
After returning home Marco and I started talking about the school he was trying to run. I just kept thinking to myself, “How is he able to do this and why would he put so much effort into this?’  He convinced me to start helping him, and again I thought to myself, “If he is doing all this work with the limited means he has how can I say no?’
So the journey started. My sister and I jumped onboard or maybe is was more like being dragged on board, but we started helping Marco and his school. We decided to take a trip to Haiti to see the school for ourselves and we came up with a plan to help him.
We fell in love with all the cute children going to school. There are teachers that are dedicated to giving these children more than just an education they want to teach these children how to be good loving and kind adults. They give unconditional love to each child and it is evident in the smiles that each child had while they were at school. The school itself isn’t much to brag about. It is a make shift shelter, and while I was in the school for only about 20 minutes I started feeling like I was getting heat stroke. How do these kids sit in there and actually learn? I am not sure how they do it but they do and with a smile on their face.
With the permission of the parents we took pictures of all the kids and we are hoping that we can get our friends, your friends and others to sponsor a child to go to school. This money will be used to buy more textbooks, get uniforms, and start saving for a better school structure.
For $20.00 a month, we can make a difference to this school and community. We can help these children have a brighter hope for tomorrow and learn the life skills necessary to be productive good citizens in Haiti.
I will be posting pictures of the children on the blog, once they are sponsored I will mail you a picture of the child you are sponsoring and you will receive a thank you note after each trip we make to Haiti and an updated photo. You will be able to follow the progress of our efforts on the blog and on our FB page.
If you are interested in sponsoring a child leave a comment on FB or on the blog and I will get in touch with you to get your mailing information and get everything set up. We will be using PayPal it is easy to use and really convenient.

If you are interested hop on over to the school's blog and check out the kids that need to be sponsored I will be adding more everyday! 

carrefourcca.blogspot.com

Sunday Night in Haiti

On Sunday night after our long walk and after we got cleaned up we decided to go check out the crowd at the hotel pool party. There were a ton of people there. We were safely up on our own private balcony, that only the hotel guest had access too, so we felt safe being out there. Michael and one of his friends came over and Sheree and I convinced him to give us some dance lessons. Marco would have none of it. He was being a party pooper or maybe he was just embarrassed for us, two old ladies dancing with two twenty-something guys trying to look cool. We even had some video of us dancing but Marco took Sheree's phone and deleted the video, he thought our husbands would see us dancing with these young guys and never let us come back to Haiti to help him. Or maybe he was just saving us the embarrassment of having proof of our dancing. Anyway, we had a good time, it was fun to feel young and wild for at least an hour, safely tucked away up on our private balcony. We might have been acting like we were drunk but we were completely sober, maybe it was the music and the people watching that made us a little crazy! But then again there is no proof of our dancing so I guess we are safe for now...

Sunday in Haiti

We got up Sunday morning and walked about 10 minutes to the church building, it was day light savings and Haiti decided to participate in the time change, but we did not know that. We thought we were 30 minutes early and it turns out we were 30 minutes late. We were lead right up the isle, across the front of the chapel and over to the other side. We listened and we had one of the interpreters translating for us, and then one of our other friends that we had met on our trip in October got up to speak and he was excited to see us and a little surprised that we were sitting in church.  The best thing about church was that there was air conditioning, it was heavenly to be able to sit there and be away from the loud music, the honking cars, the dusty streets and sit in peace in a nice air conditioned room. After church there were several other people that we had met from Timo that were there and they came and talked to us.
After that we went back to the hotel and sat by the pool for about an hour while they were cleaning and the music was not blaring. We then started hiking up the mountain to go get lunch, it started to sprinkle and then pretty soon a downpour. We found shelter in a store front and waited out the storm then continued up the mountain to lunch.
We arrived at the in-law's house and were treated to yummy Haitian food. But across the street were about 20-25 boys playing soccer with one of the balls we brought. They were laughing and having a great time, I was so happy to see that a simple soccer ball could bring so much joy to those boys. I took way too many pictures but I couldn't help it they were entertaining me.

I also took a few minutes to take a few pictures of two of Marco's boys, they are darling and sweet boys and I fell in love with them.

This was the lady that was responsible for all the yummy food we ate throughout our time in Haiti. She was kind and gracious and a really good cook.

This is her house and where she cooked our meals.

Sheree and I tried to bring these cute boys home but Marco stopped us, so I guess we will just have to go visit them again.

After eating and watching the soccer game we headed back to the hotel, and the music was blaring, the crowd was growing, so we decided to go for a walk. I think Marco thought we were crazy for wanting to go walk the streets of Carrefour, but he was a good sport and he walked us around for 4 hours. He wanted to make sure that we didn't ask him to do that again. By the time we got back to the hotel we were worn out, we cleaned up and that is when the fun started.

Haiti Continuted

On Saturday we had plans to go to the "nice" beach in Haiti. We looked on the internet and saw beautiful pictures of the seaside town of Jacmel so that was our plan for Saturday - a beach excursion-  Our first stop was to the bank to set up a joint account with Marco and Sheree so that we can easily get money to Marco when needed. The bank was heavily guarded the security guards had shotguns and bags were checked and people frisked before going into the bank. They lack the urgency and customer service that our banks have here. It took us almost 2 and a half hours to set up the account and deposit the money. By the time we started on the trip to the beach it was almost noon.
We crammed into the back of the Toyota 4-runner there were 4 of us in the back seat, but it had air conditioning so we were not too hot, just a little crowded. We drove for over 2 hours to get to the beach town of Jacmel. We drove over the mountain pass that took us past Timo the destination of our last trip. Finally we arrived in the town. It did not quite look like the pictures on the internet.

Marco had never been there so he hopped out of the car and asked a guy on a motorcycle to show us the way to the beach. Marco jumped on the back of the motorcycle and we followed them for about 20 minutes to the "nice" beach. Once we got there we quickly noticed it was nothing like the beach pictures on the internet. There were a ton of people, and once we got out of the car and they saw that we white and started swarming over to our car. Once guy had a huge machete that he was using to cut coconuts with and asked if we wanted one. It took about 3 minutes for the guys to decide that this was not a safe place for us to be and told us to get back in the car. We had a good laugh about the "nice" beach and headed back. I didn't even have enough time to take any pictures of the "nice" beach.  But I did get a few of a car accident we saw on the way in and out of the town.

 One more shot of the trail leading to the school

That guy had a bad day! We didn't want the day to be a total fail so we stopped at some beaches closer to where we were staying and we looked at them as possible spots to stay the next trip. We found the perfect spot and checked out a couple more places then went swimming in the ocean. Yes I actually went in the water and went swimming. By that time the sun was setting and it was getting late.  At the last place we stopped there was a Haitian singer filming a music video so we watched and then all the dancers from the video put on a show for everyone there, it was fun to watch. The day was not totally a bust we had fun at the beach and found the spot to stay next trip.

 

After we got back from the beach it was time for more yummy Haitian food, it was waiting for us at the hotel when we got back, along with the loud blaring music.