The simple things

As I passed the four week mark (yesterday) I realized a few things:
1.

Time has flown by! I can hardly believe I’ve been here four weeks already!
2.
There are so many things that I haven't been able to post about yet!

And I bet that there are some things that many of you are wondering, like, "what is the food like?" Well, sometimes, like yesterday, the food is really good! Yesterday after church we had white rice, a kidney bean sauce, chicken, and some veggies. It was VERY tasty. My favorite breakfast is peanut butter and jelly with bread and coffee or hot chocolate (and sometimes a banana). But its not always quite so good. One common breakfast (which we had today) is spaghetti with a minuscule amount of tomato paste. And oil. LOTS of oil. Marsha likes to say that she never has to wear chap stick because the spaghetti has so much oil. And then there's one meal, which I'm not quite sure what it is. I think it might be some sort of corn meal that they cook with beans and who knows what. If you turned it upside-down, the whole thing would fall out of the bowl in one clump, like jello, but not as tasty. That's a hard meal to eat much of.

I sleep in the boys' house, which is right across from the girls house and the school. I've got my own room, which is wonderful. The kids just finished the school year last week (they were delayed because schools were closed after the earthquake), so now much of our time is consumed with just hanging out with the kids. They watch movies, play computer games, send emails, play card games. We're going to have some of the kids help paint the hallways of the school while they're out. We'll take the boys (and girls if they want) up to play soccer. Mark, Marsha, and I are going to try having some Bible studies over the summer, and we'll see how that goes. They don't really have Bible study like we do in the US. Church is just culturally different than it is in the US. Some of that is fine, but some of it really grates on me, but that's for another post.

We don't get out much, cause its hard to get around without a vehicle and we don't always have one. We don't really need to go anywhere often, but it would be nice to be out and about a bit. Maybe in the coming weeks we'll be out and about more. We did go over to the church the other day and talked with a pastor there, and it was good to hear about what they're doing. And we've been making a few connections with other NGO's and hopefully we'll make some more soon.

I'd like to ask for your continued prayers as it can be very challenging sometimes to deal with the overwhelming poverty and all the frustrations that come with living in Haiti.

I'm trying to upload pictures, but the internet is being very slow, so bear with me.