Haiti, Day One

Arriving in Haiti

Loading our luggage into a tap-tap

Following our luggage to the hotel

Then we got a tour of Cite Soleil, inappropriately named "The City of Sun",

There is a strong UN presence here

It is called the most dangerous place on earth by the UN. The average home in this area is 5x5 or 8x8.

After the tour of Cite Soleil, we went to the orphanage. The kids were all singing to greet us when we arrived and Patricia and I both saw each other right away, smiled and gave each other a small, simultaneous nod. It was an instant connection and the fact that we both had the same reaction made me smile even bigger. We were told we had to wait to go to them until the other kids were removed, so they both came up to the porch wall of wrought iron and were looking at us and we were looking at them and it was so hard to wait with them reaching their arms through the openings of the wall. Well, the chaos of removing the other kids took too long for some and kids were coming out to their parents. Patricia was first to come to us because Philippe was also told to wait and he didn't even see her come out. She hugged us both right away and then called to him. A minute later we got this picture, from the other post:

This picture was taken right after our first family photo. We were only there a few minutes! We sat down on the porch and the first thing Patricia did was grab my camera and she took this picture herself!

Thanks to our pal Kathy, we have a shot of us looking at this picture on the camera!

Patricia also took this photo:


Of course our hearts melted when she showed us this!

Philippe took this picture

They wanted us to meet their nanny

As you can see she immediately took to her Daddy! And you can see that she is playing with his hair! They LOVED playing with our hair. She didn't like it when Lee's hair was spiked up and was always mashing it down. If you know anything about him, he does NOT like people touching his hair, but he didn't care about that with them!

This is Lee's favorite picture. You can see that they are both so proud! Patricia is looking over at her friends!

Can't remember who took this, but I think it was one of the other kids

Philippe showing us where he sleeps - on the top bunk. I worried that he didn't have a mattress, but we were told that all the kids have mattresses, but that they often take them off the beds during the day

Patricia showing us her bed. If you look, you can see that there is a top sheet on the bed - it stretches over three or four beds

They ran into the room and jumped on the hotel bed within seconds!

We didn't bring out any toys the first day, just books and coloring books.

Patricia fell asleep on Lee's lap at the devotional time.

This is a great sign of trust!

Our first family dinner - Patricia is hamming it up with her spaghetti hanging out of her mouth!

Sweet perfection

We could not believe we were looking at our kids sleeping!

What good humor this is! He slept 10 hours this night and we still had to wake him!

More to come!