Our First Week

We have been here for a week now and have not had any big surprises. There are some things that we have to adjust to or put up with that we didn’t expect that may take some getting used to. Some of those things are:

• Poor water pressure
• The water heater is in the bathroom near Kayla and Carter. That means that the hot water in the kitchen has a ways to travel and is nearly useless by the time it makes its way to the sink combined with the low water pressure.
• There is an electric showerhead in the master bath, but it isn’t working (I’ll have to take it apart or get a new one – cold showers are getting old fast.
• Rinsing and washing dishes in special water because of bacteria adds quite a bit of work to the eating process.
• Termites in the kitchen means that every time we want to use the countertops, we have to wash them (they leave their little wings all over the place). The kitchen is one of the few places with a lot of wood for them to dine on.
• Food prices are incredibly high here. I cannot imagine how many Haitians pay for food. We will probably end up spending twice as much on food here compared to the States and eat half as much. It’s the new Haitian weight-loss program.
• Washing our hands after everything.
• The bed is super stiff (we may get this changed out today for a softer, non-fragranced version).
• The internet is SUPER SLOW!!! I thought dial-up was bad… that would be a treat now.
• Dogs barking for 45 minutes until about 4am… again.

These are mostly things that we’ll have to get used to. It adds quite a bit to the overall significance of the changes that we have made in the recent months and to the mental stress. Tina has either a cold, bad allergies, or something is up with our mildew-bed. She is pretty drained.

Our Sunday wasn’t as restful as I had planned. It is difficult to sit through a 1.5+ hour service in a different language and we did it twice – once at 6:30am and again at 9:00am at a different church down the road. During the first service, someone came to sit in between Tina and I to translate the message. During the second, Chris (one of the missionaries here at BHM) was translating a little for me, but Tina couldn’t hear it. The kids did amazingly well – that’s a lot of sitting without being able to understand anything.

Immediately after the second church we went grocery shopping. That took quite some time. After shopping, we ate at Len and Adele’s place – they invited us over for lunch. Right after lunch, there was a mission vehicle that needed working on. I played with the kids for a half hour, ate dinner and then at 5:30pm we went to the Mission’s Sunday night study and prayer time. This lasted until 8:00pm.

Right now, we need more down time to process things in our brain. We cannot be doing that many things any longer. We are getting little sleep and need to find ways to relax more. We don’t (and we didn’t) plan on going to two services every Sunday and I think that unless it is something MAJOR, I will not work on Sunday (Saturday is pretty much just like Monday through Friday). That should help our Sundays to feel a little more relaxing.

We thought that electricity was something that we all split, but yesterday we found out that we have to pay for our own (it is metered). That changes the way we do things around here. We have very little plugged in and it means that I will no longer leave the computer on all the time (which I did so I could receive phone calls via Skype).

Time to get going…