Sunday 12 June 2016

Nearing the Finish Line.

Less than two weeks until we get to head back to Canada for a much, much needed rest. We count down the days to keep ourselves sane on days when the kids can't hold it together at school. All our teacher friends will understand the exhaustion and chaos that is the last few weeks of school. Compound that with the extreme heat that we're getting here right now as we head into the summer months, and you understand why we're counting down the days.

Life in general has been slightly chaotic and unscheduled for the past few weeks. If any of you have been following the news, you might have heard about the Report that came out that suggested that the election results were not considered fraudulent enough to throw out. The Haitian people were very upset by this, because they are still convinced the election was riddled by fraud and there should be a re-election. It's more complicated than that, but because they were unhappy with this Report, there was significant unrest, more-so in Port and the surrounding areas. The only thing we experienced in and around our village were roadblocks, which is great that there were no riots or injuries, but roadblocks meant that our bus couldn't get to the school, and since 80% of our kids are from outside the village and rely on the bus, we missed 3 days of school the week before last. The one day that we had to stay home from school, we did hear a police force firing gas into a crowd that was trying to cut down a tree to make another roadblock, but it sounds worse than it was- we stayed on the compound and it blew over by the next day.

Last week our Haitian co-teachers finished their French testing, which means we are finishing up our English testing this coming week. On Friday, we have our Kindergarten graduation and end-of-school party, so every morning we pep-talk ourselves that we only have to get through one more week before we can breathe again. As I mentioned above, it is getting SO stinkin' hot, which is making it hard to get through a day of school for us teachers and the kiddos. It's getting to the point where we sweat even if we're sitting down in front of a fan, and some nights it's so hot that we don't sleep very well. We are definitely excited to experience air-conditioning again. After graduation, we have one last report card session, and then we're home-free.

In other Mission Haiti news, we have another short-term team down right now, and a new missionary couple living at the compound for at least the next year- Gerald and Lexi. They're from South Dakota as well, and moved down a couple of days ago when the short-term team travelled down. We are so excited to have more people living on the compound. Gerald is going to be teaching Grade 1 at our Christian Academy, and Lexi is going to be running short-term teams with Bethany. It's been giving us a lot of deja-vu as we think back to last July when we moved to Haiti and jumped into a crazy, new, unknown life. We have nearly made it through our first year here in Haiti, and boy has it been an adventure.

We'll be heading back to Canada at the end of June and will be flying back to Haiti at the end of July- one sweet month back home to sleep in, soak in some air-conditioning, eat an outrageous amount of food, buy some new clothes, and spend time with friends and family.

Sending love from Haiti!