July 13, 2006

Today is Talley's first birthday.

We did not get very much sleep last night. We woke up every half hour, thinking it was time to go, only to look at the clock and realize it was not time to get up. When it was time to get up, we both struggled. We were so sleepy. We rushed to shower and dress and made it down in the lobby barely on time. We ended up having to take the second shuttle to the airport, so we had time to sit around and wake up. I quickly checked email and sent a brief message out to my list.

When our shuttle came, we piled in our luggage and left. We were over on one of our pieces of luggage (a cook stove for the orphanage), and were charged from Salt Lake City to Fort Lauderdale, but when the lady checking us in to Haiti found out what it was, she didn't charge us extra.

We went to our gate, grabbed some breakfast croissants and orange juice and then boarded the plane. Tim and I were by each other on this flight. We were in an exit row. The man next to us was in our seat (window seat) and wouldn't move, and then said he refused to assist people out of the plane in case of an emergency, and so he was moved to a new seat. The guy that took his seat was rather large and so poor Tim was squished the entire flight and was feeling pretty miserable. They overbooked the flight by one person and so had to move her into first class. Lucky!

I felt so excited and impatient when our plane started descending into Port-au-Prince. We de-boarded right on the tarmac and walked to the airport. There was a band at the entrance of the airport playing music. It was fun to hear and see. I couldn't wait to meet my girls at this point.

The airport was kind of hectic, but nothing terrible. It reminded me quite a bit of the airport in Viet Nam. Our group was together. We gathered everyone's luggage and left the airport. Outside there was a large fence-gate with people pressed against it, yelling at the people leaving the airport--many holding signs up with names on them. There were lots of men trying to help with the luggage carts. Our cart tipped over a couple of times--the sidewalks were very damaged. When we arrived in the parking lot where the truck and school bus were waiting for us, the man that helped with our luggage asked for a tip. We were told not to tip anyone and our coordinator was in charge of tipping for everyone. The guy would not leave Tim's side, no matter how many times he was told to leave by our Haitian coordinators. It was awkward.

We loaded as much luggage as we could into the pickup and then put the rest in the back of the school bus, and we all piled in. As we exited the airport parking lot a man high-fived one of the guys in our group and then said he wanted a dollar for the high-five. We all laughed. The school bus ran over a luggage cart and started pulling it a little bit, until someone pulled it out of the way.

Continued...