March 10th

Hi friends!

I realized that I haven't talked much about what I have done thus far while I have been here, so I am going to give you all a little update.  I got in on Thursday instead of Wednesday because I was delayed for a day in New york.  Ever since I had left, I brought along a sickness that would not leave no matter how hard I tried, and it only just recently stopped bugging me on Sunday.  So, I basically was laying on the couch for the first two days coughing up a storm and loading up on the medicine to try and get better.  On Saturday, I bought a bike (yay!), and it is blue and beautiful:)  It is a basic mountian bike, and all of the bikes that you buy here have already been used, but mine looks like it is in really good condition.  I will send you all a picture here shortly!

I also was able to go to the clothing market for the first time EVER.  It is the coolest place! It is basically a really big yard sale of clothes that have been sent over from the states, and people shuffle through them all and sell the ones that would fetch a price.  I love it.  I bought my first tank top with the help of some lovely teachers that are fluent in creole.  The people that sell there can be tough on you if you don't know the language and are unaware of the prices of things, so taking a well informed friend is advised.

Yesterday I took inventory of the food that we currently have in storage for the Nutrition program.  I am now in the process of creating an inventory sheet that allows for the need to be easily addressed as to what we will need and when.  Working with Excel is one of the most humbling things that you can do as a human being and reiterates the fact that I will never be a computer whiz for as long as I live.

Today I was able to hitch a ride to the outskirts of town to the local rice factory.  It is a beautiful state-of-the-art facility that makes Haitian rice readily available to individuals who would like to purchase it.  This facility buys rice from the farmers that it is surrounded by, and cleans it all with this big, beautiful machinery.  If someone had wanted to purchase Haitian rice before this facility was built, the cost would have been much higher because all of the cleaning of the rice would have been done by hand.  This new facility allows for Haitian rice to compete within the local market, which is quite a beautiful thing.  I tried to take pictures, but the man in charge did not seem to keen about the idea.  Oh well.

I am also currently looking into everything that I can find on the Moringa tree.  It is something that I am thinking I will start to experiment with to see if I can make it into a powder to supplement within the Nutrition program.  So the rest of my day today was research on the good ol' computer.

Anyway, that is my update for now.  I will post pictures of my sweet ride once I paint flames on it.  (Ha ha, jk)

-K-