March Newsletter

Visitors
During the spring time, we get a lot of visitors at Sonlight. It is great to meet all kinds of new people from all across the United States...but during March we had a group from my church in Lexington (including several of my close friends). It was absolutely the best week I have had since being in Haiti. Ashley and I got to show off where we live and what we do...and in exchange, our friends made us laugh (A LOT!) and encouraged us in ways they will never know (They also brought us A LOT of chocolate, which was welcomed with open arms!). It was so refreshing to see familiar faces and share my little babies' hugs with them. Thank you to Jonny, Sheila, Amanda, Adam, Blake, Cletus, Katelyn, Kelly, Jessica, Ryan, Sam, Jeremy, and Marijo for making our week so amazing! We love you and hope to see you in Haiti again someday!!!

Amanda with my class


To see all the pictures from this week, click here.


Spring Break
I am just coming off Spring Break! We had a week (plus Good Friday) off from school. Some of the staff took some mini-vacations and some stayed around Port-de-Paix. Since I had my vacation during Mardi Gras Break in February, I stayed around here and we did a few things that we don't normally get to do. We ate at a restaurant downtown owned by some of our students' family (The Marausse's) and we took a nice trip to the beach (see previous post).

And last Thursday, Ashley, Scott, and I had an outing with the Juniors and Seniors at the beach, which was one of the highlights of the week! The kids had a lot of fun and it was really fun getting to know some of the students. It was also nice to be greeted this morning before school by several of the students that I didn't know before the trip!

Me and Ashley with a few of the students after our "Day 'O Fun!"


Cute Clarvensky posing


Prayer Requests:
My 29 beautiful children
My 3 wonderful classroom aides (Mme. Emmanuel, Mme. Aules, and Mr. Thony)
Spring Evaluations--to determine which children are ready to move to Kindergarten.
Babies! Babies! Babies! Pray for all the pregnant teachers and aides (there are at least 5!!!)
Please pray that our men can continue building at the SonCenter.

My Old Kentucky Home

Yesterday was the first time I REALLY, REALLY wished I was at home MORE than I was glad to be in Haiti.

My hometown has hit the big one this past week. Our high school boys basketball team just won state tournament, President Clinton is visiting my high school, and of course, all the media around this:

Ledger Independent Article

seriously, i feel like it's "hip" to be from maysville.

A day at the beach...

Things I love about Haiti/teaching:

1. All 29 of my sweet little babies

2. Hugs and Kisses from 29 sweet little babies

3. Spring Break (a whole week away from my sweet little babies!)

4. A day at the beach with other teachers

5. God's Beautiful Creation

blah!

when you think about moving to haiti, one of the first things people think about are all the diseases that readily available...like a buffet of illnesses to choose from. everyone thinks, "oh, you are moving to a 3rd-world country...you could get hepatitis and aids and malaria and meningitis..." seriously, the list goes on and on and on...

well, i finally got my first haitian "disease" (although, i'm pretty sure i had this when i was younger too). i got ringworm (most likely from one of my kids). i have a little spot under my arm, which isn't that big of a deal...but i also have a spot of it on my face. seriously...on my face??? how is that even fair? it's really not that bad, and norma has given me some medicine for it, but it seriously grosses me out.

i didn't want to talk about it a whole lot last week, with the southland group here visiting because i didn't want to freak any of them out! it's not really a big deal, it's just annoying.

don't worry, i am not planning on posting any pictures of it on here! yuck!

old friends, new friends (part 2)

it would only let me post 5 pictures, and i had 6!

old friends, new friends, i love my friends!

After many tears and sadness, our friends left in the big red truck to fly home to Kentucky this morning. I have so many stories and funny things to post from the week...it was AMAZING! I will be putting all my pictures from last week on facebook very soon, but I promised I wouldn't do it until they got home and could put their's up first. So, here is a sneak peek with just a few pictures from the funniest week I've had since moving to Haiti. I am so glad I got to be with so many HILARIOUS people who CONTINUALLY had me and Ashley cracking up! We love you all so much and we miss you a lot!

let me see your grill...

first of all...yes, my friends are here and i am having the best week of my life! it's so great to have so many familiar faces around...and it's such a blessing to have so many funny people to make me laugh. i feel like i don't laugh nearly as much in haiti as i do in america. except this week. oh my, the laughing that we have done has been ridiculous! there are no people in the world like kentucky people and definitely no people like southland people!

but, that's another post for another day (with other pictures and lots of crazy stories!)


anyway, on to what i was really planning on writing about. after our dentist's visit last week, several of my children were glad to show me their new clean teeth. one of my poor little girls had to have 5 crowns, 2 teeth pulled, 2 cavities filled, and something else. they had to knock her out 2 days last week just to get it all done. but she was definitely a trooper.

my dear friend, alai, didn't have to have quite as much work done...but he was definitely proud to show me his mouth...and here is what i saw:




he's got a nice shiny new grill. hilarious!

so funny!!!

Check out Ashley's video on Youtube:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpFunLt4-JU


It's so funny you might just pee your pants!

you've got mail...really?

Yesterday was mail day...what a glorious day! I love it when Carmen gets a big bag of letters to pass out!!! The best part about mail day was that I got 4 pieces of mail yesterday! That's the most I've ever gotten (usually I am lucky to get 1 thing!). So thanks to Dad and Bonnie for my Valentine card, Nancy for my letter, and Kimmie for the card and newsletter! What a great surprise!

When it rains, it pours...

I don't know whose idea it was to have a visiting dentist AND for the "Health Department" to give our kids vaccines all in one week, but it has been NUTS!

Having the dentist here is bad enough! Of course, my students have the worst teeth since most of them have never seen a dentist before. I have already had 2 students get "knocked out" for extensive dental work (one of them has to go back for more) and I have at least 1 more. Many more of my students have to go in to have cavities filled, etc.

And to top it all off, today, the "Health Department" showed up to do vaccines...so not only are 1/2 of my students getting tortured by the dentist, they ALL had to have a shot. And apparently, the people giving the shots aren't really trained medical professionals. I saw some of them sticking the needle in, pulling it back out and sticking it back in the child's arm. I also saw several of my kids wiggle and wriggle because they were in such pain.

There are no pictures today. Preschool was too sad for pictures :(