Outside the School Gates

This is the entrance to the school, which faces the market. Every morning, as it is getting light, people descend on the market with their things to sell. This area seems to be more about produce. Lots and lots of people with a few mangoes or oranges arranged on a blanket in front of them, for sale. Today I saw watermelons, tomatoes, and eggplants. A block over there are household goods like soap and dishes for sale, too. There is a little section just for charcoal. The white truck you see here in front of the school is being repaired; this is a streetside mechanic who works right in front of the school every day. Today I took a long nap. I was so tired I must have really been sleeping deeply. Jeff was talking to his family on Skype, he told me at supper, when there was an explosion from the mechanic's place in front of school. He said they must have been filling a tire that blew. His family thought it was a bomb. I never even woke up, and my room faces the street.
It is pretty safe here, except for the crazy motorcycle drivers. I will try to take a video of them sometime to show you. People tell us they are the most dangerous thing here. Last night at Foun's we were talking to different NGO workers who are here building things and trying to get community involvement and participation going. One of them said that Haiti is in the same level (of dangerous foreign places to be) as Iraq. She thought the danger was way overstated. "I mean, where are the IED's? Where are the landmines?" I had no idea Haiti was rated that low for safety. People everywhere have been so nice and welcoming.
We finally got to the grocery store today. I wanted to get coffee and milk, and oil and vinegar. Tomorrow I'll go to the market for a few fruits and vegetables. The common people buy almost everything in the market-- even staples like I bought today. On the way home, a woman passed me on the way to her market stand. She was carrying a big bucket, and in the bucket were 1 or 2-quart jars of all the kinds of things like I bought today- the oil, vinegar, vanilla, and so on. I guess if you want to buy that, rather than spend a lot of money on a quart, you would only buy a half cup or so-- just as much as you need. There are lots of stalls that have little piles of even something as small as boullion cubes, that you can pick up and buy one at a time.

First Day of Class

Hi everyone!
We are getting ready to go meet some friends, after a very busy day. This morning I met Sister Marie, the principal, and got my schedule of classes to teach. I am to teach ESL on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. And they wanted me to start today!
So Jeff and I taught together. We did numbers with 4th, 5th, and 6th grade. We played ‘More or Less?’ the numbers guessing game. It was a nice start. The fourth grade has over 50 kids in it; the sixth and 7th grades are much smaller.
Then from 2:00 to 3:00 we had science class. This class I will teach every day with Wyteline, their Haitian science teacher. They are learning about the properties of water right now. So we talked about ice, liquid and gas. We pretended to be water molecules and stood close to each other for ice and moved apart for liquid, and then further apart for the gas. It was fun.
Tonight we went to the Foun’s. Foun and his wife Maggie are Haitians who came home after living in the U.S. for several years. They have a beautiful restaurant around the corner from the school. I did not have coffee since Wednesday morning in the airport- and when I asked about it, Mrs. Foun sent up a pot of Haitian coffee, and milk, and raw Haitian sugar (the tan, crunchy kind). In her silver coffee pot and cream and sugar bowl from her house. It was sooo good. We still have not been to the store to buy groceries for the kitchen, so there won’t be coffee again tomorrow morning.
It is midnight now, and the dogs are barking again. They get very active at night. The electricity is off- it went off about 10PM tonight, and at Foun’s it was off maybe a minute and they started their generator, so it was on again and I forgot about it being off in the town. When we walked home (it’s only a block away from the school) the street was pitch black and quiet for once. Not one motor scooter to be seen or heard. Normally, all day long there is a buzz, like bees, and these scooters are everywhere zinging up and down the street, their drivers looking for riders, like taxi cabs. It was so nice to be out walking and not see any of them. The town goes to bed earlier if the electricity goes off.
It was so dark I went onto the balcony to look at the stars. The Milky Way is visible, and the stars all seem to glimmer.
I’ll try to post this before I go to bed.