Sarah's Day 2 Reflections

Good morning! It is Sarah, I just wanted to give you a quick overview of what we did yesterday. First of all it was a holiday in Haiti, so there was no school. It was Chrostophe Day. Also it was our first full day in Haiti. We woke up and had some breakfast at our hotel. Angelina and Elena came to our hotel. Anglina is the founder of the school we will be working with and Elena is the principal of LPES(Le Pepiniere Emmanuel School) They told us all about their school. There are about 200 children and eight teachers. They teach the younger children in the morning from 8-12 have lunch and teach the older children from 1-5. Wow! That is a long day for the teachers!

Rodney posing in the traditional Cap Haiten market

We learned they have to pass a test to go to the next grade and can not move up if they don't pass it.  After our meeting, which was a couple of hours, we went on a drive around Cap Haitien. We saw historical markers from the Slave revolution and overthrow of the French. We drove past the biggest market (you can see Rodney above standing near the entrance.) Driving around we saw so many things. The streets are very, very busy. There are people, animals, cars and buses going everywhere. Thankfully, we have Edy (the local person that works with CPP) to drive, he is a very good driver. We swerved around the people and other cars barely missing them by inches!

Checking out the beach near Cap Haiten

After our city excursion, we went to a beach on the other side of the mountains. It was the most beautiful beach I have ever seen! We swam around for awhile and walked along the beach. After we left, we headed to have some dinner at the same place we went to last night. It was great food. Finally, we went back to our hotel and finished up some projects. Martel, Gracie and I did some glueing of CPP cards to the journals and laid out all the suit cases and took pictures of everything we brought (over 300 lbs. of "stuff"). We brought a lot! We're looking forward to sharing everything with the school--our first thing to do will be to put together 200 journals with the kids. Finally to bed at 12:15.  

Overlooking Cap Haiten