Haiti

I made it! It was a little rough having to get up at 3:20am to make my 6 o'clock flight, but I'm glad to report that my trip here could not have gone much better. My sisters even managed to drag themselves out of bed to drive me to the airport!

I thought to myself 'I bet I'm the only Montrealer flying to Haiti today!' as I wandered around Dorval, but no, the couple sitting right behind me on the plane to New York were going there too. My first flight arrived right on time, and after wandering the terminal for a bit and buying one last magazine (figured they'd be kind of hard to find over here), got on my connection to Port-au-Prince!

Haiti from the air is beautiful; it's incredibly hilly, green, and the islands were all capped with huge pouffy white clouds. The final descent into Port-au-Prince gave a first rapid glimpse into Haitian city life: wide dusty streets filled more with people than with cars, narrow winding alleys, rusty tin-roofed shacks, with those big green hills looming in the background.

It took a little bit of time to fill in all the paperwork at the PAP airport, but had no troubles getting through immigration or customs, and my bags didn't explode en-route (yay!). The first person I saw when walking out the exit was holding a sign with my name written on it as well, so things couldn't have been easier! After waiting a while for folks on other flights to arrive, we drove up to Petion-Ville to the area I'll be spending the next 3 months in.

The GLA orphanage is made up of 2 main compounds: one housing the babies and youngest children, and another (called the Toddler House) with all the kids over 2 or 3 years old. In all, there's around 170 kids here right now! I'll be staying in one of the volunteers rooms in the Toddler House, and will go down to the main orphanage building (about a 15 minute walk away) every weekday to work with "my" kids :) More on that tomorrow!!

Ahh I'm so excited to be here... :D