Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Day 1

Greetings from Port au Prince!!

Happily, we made it to our destination this morning without much of a hitch. Our leader, Jennifer, briefed us on navigating customs and the Haitian airport last night, because "this is the most dangerous part of our trip"...

We all followed her instructions to a tee, but were stopped by the customs agents and had all our checked bags searched (which included all our medicines and supplies). Fortunately, they didn't confiscate anything, but sent us off with a warning that we need a letter from Haitian officials next time to bring in drugs (Jennifer thought they were just wanting us to pay them some money....).

After eating some lunch at the Methodist Church Guest House where we are staying, we headed to Three Angels to set up our clinic supplies. This is a small complex of buildings (behind a cement wall with barbed wire at the top and its own security guard) which houses not only the medical clinic, but an orphanage and a school with 325 elementary students. (The boys wondered where they put all these kids given the small space, but I guess we'll see that on Monday). I instructed the boys in taking blood pressures this afternoon, and they practiced on all the other team members--they seem to be getting the hang of it!! The remainder of the afternoon was spent in the orphanage (the upstairs room which houses the babies and toddlers). About 15-20 little ones who all just wanted to be held...so that's what we did. The boys were troopers and often had 3 kids hanging from them at once.

Luke: This was the most exhausting day of my life. I can definitely wait a long time to have kids (that's mostly for you, dad)

Daniel: So far, it's great.

Thanks for your prayers--We'll try to keep in touch...

Love,

Paula, Daniel and Luke

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