Haiti Arrival!

We have finally arrived in Haiti. The hotel, Ibo LeLe in Petionville, is beautiful & is probably the best hotel to stay at here. There is a pool, a restaurant, wireless service, & great view of Port Au Prince. The hotel staff is treating us very well & does a wonderful job with all the upkeep that this place requires.

Upon arrival at the Haiti Airport, we were escorted to a bus in which took us less than a mile to passport control. When finished with passport control you went directly into the baggage retreival area. It was EXTREMELY hot! Coming out of there, we were greeted by all sorts of luggage carriers begging to take care of our luggage for us to an outside area where pickups are permitted. A little frustrating, but, we managed. I did have to yell at them once because the 3 men began to fight. I told them I would have to separate them if they didn't stop. They laughed & did stop fighting. I don't want to tell you what we paid for this service. We always do seem to "live & learn" about the first day.

We were greeted by John, the owner of the company who put this incredible job together down here. He had a van waiting for us. When loaded, we drove straight to our hotel which was a ride not to be forgotten. We drove thru Port Au Prince where the earthquake in January shook their world here. The tent cities were everywhere along with other make shift housing. The people had their shops set up all along the streets where ever there was room alongside the ruins from buildings gone down & the heeps of trash that I don't imagine gets picked up too often, if ever, by the size of the mountains we witnessed.

The men woke up early around 4:30ish, met at the restaurant / bar that we hung out at last night for awhile at 5:30am to have breakfast, in which they were dissappointed because it didn't happen. It's the first day & there are inevidiblely always kinks to still work out. The trucks were on time though to take them to their jobsite, so that was good, and they left around 6am. It'll be a very long day for them.

The tempture hovers around 98f everyday here. There was a welcomed storm last night in the evening that cooled things down a little. We are located outside Port Au Prince on a mountain side & are up higher so it's a little cooler here than it is down there. I pray the men fare well today. I feel for them.

When we pulled up to our hotel, the parking lot was filled with UN & Red Cross vechicles. Last night I seen many workers come in after their day & today I will try to connect with them. I'd like to do some sort of service while here if even only for a couple days a week. I will also go to photograph the jobsite at least one day a week, if not 2, & then work on other projects that I brought along with me for the rest of the week.

The electric goes in & out here, not that that matters, & they still experience earthquakes / tremors, around 4 on the rictor scale. The last one was Friday evening.

I will keep in touch as often as I can.

Please leave comments, if the blog will allow it, I would love to hear from all of you as well! If you cannot leave a comment, please email me or facebook me as I will come up to this one certain place that I will be able to recieve them.