Early to Rise...

I woke up around 2 AM this morning and had too many thoughts going through my head to just lay there. So I wanted to check out the internet connection at this time of the day (it is a little faster), post to the blog including pictures (this is the last post), and spend some time with God (that is coming up next although it is my priority).

Yesterday, I didn't feel as productive. There was trouble with the phone line in the Hospital Admin office that we didn't resolve. I still haven't figured out the new Landcruiser's signal issue. I had to grease up a Mitsubishi Canter truck and had a difficult time finding a decent grease gun and when I found one it was empty. The second one was empty, too. The one that I wanted to use wouldn't work right. So, I had to use one that was as easy to use...anyway, we all have troubles sometimes and yesterday was one of my days (although it certainly could have been much worse).

After dinner, I started working on what I hope will be an Access database of the vehicle and related maintenance (scheduled and unscheduled). I started the tables in Excel and hope to bring them into Access. One problem...I don't have access on my Vista Machine with the Student version of Microsoft Office... :-( Earlier in the morning, Carter and I went around to all the vehicles while Kayla stayed back to plug the vehicles VIN into the spreadsheets. We used the walkie talkies and it worked great! Kayla was a big help and Carter was, too!

At 6:45, I was just sitting with the family when a call came in from the director. He will take advantage of an American mechanic here locally when things get tough. Before I got here, he had taken a Nissan Pathfinder to this guy and he was bringing it back. The director wanted me to meet him and talk with him about this vehicle and a couple others (including the Landcruisers which he couldn't figure out either after looking at it). He is a really nice guy and seems to do good work (I'll check it out later this morning at a more reasonable time). He can do some things that I cannot - like weld the frame up which was bad). It was great to meet him and make a connection with another mechanic-type fellow. He gave me his phone number so I could bounce things off him. I got back around 8PM and everyone was sleeping - I headed off to bed, too.

Madame Ken (which is what the Haitians call Tina) made some great cookies yesterday (inbetween keeping the kids fresh with schooling)! I am looking forward to eating them later today!

One more thing that I wanted to mention just so you get an idea of our life here. We separate garbage here quite a bit - just like in the States. But, it's a little different. We burn paper in a fireplace, we collect food scraps for the three pigs here at the mission (No, not the three pigs with the wolf), we let the bull cow lick the pig bowl clean, and then we throw the stuff that doesn't fit into those catergories into a bucket to be tossed elsewhere. That bucket gets picked up by some workers and brought somewhere...where I do not know.

I hope you enjoy the pictures that I posted in today's postings!