Home Sweet Home

Phew, it feels good to be home! I just came in from literally 19 hours of packing/travelling/waiting around in the airport; I am BEAT. This morning we woke up at, no joke, 4:20 AM (even though we didn't have to be ready until 5:30). On my watch, when we are leaving at an hour such as 5:30, wake up time is 5:15 - especially if we've already packed (which we had). I love love love all of the people on our team, but some are way too willing to wake up unneccesarily early. So yes, woke up at 4:20 this morning, layed in bed for a while, refilled my water bottle with clean water, brushed my teeth, ate breakfast and was out the door with the rest of the team at 5:45. We took a 3 hour bumpy road ride from Los Palis, Haiti to Port-au-Prince. Many of the roads in Haiti are unpaved, so the van ride from Los Palis to Port-au-Prince was kind pretty rough. I ended up laying on the floorboard to prevent myself from vomitting. Our van was set up kind of like a limo - minus the excessive space, air conditioning, cushioned seats, iced champagne and neon lights. Or maybe it was like a limo only in that the seats were facing each other in order to more quickly cause nausea... The poorly positioned seats + the bumpy roads + the smell of smog and burning trash + 95 degree stagnant air + 5 people and their luggage = a very green Abbey. I had my head positioned next to an open window just incase, but I felt much better when I moved to the floor and luckily the other five people in the van didn't mind the awkward position. Right now this is probably sounding like I had a terrible trip. So wrong - I had a blast. It is one of the best travelling experiences I have ever had and I am so glad I went. I learned so much about Haiti, medicine, Catholicism and more. But travelling from Los Palis to Port-au-Prince to Miami to Atlanta to St. Pius Catholic Church and finally to 555 Mountain Trail Monroe, GA was pretty rough. I have so much from the trip to blog about, but I don't want to overwhelm my readers (that's for you Caroline). So on the plane today I made a list of events and characteristics of Haiti that made my trip the awesome experience that it was. For the next ten days I am going to blog and hopefully paint a picture of what my experience in Haiti was like by describing these ten things: 1. The Haitian people 2. The showers 3. My obsessive compulsive measures of protection against mosquitos 4. The food 5. The land 6. The poverty 7. Mass 8. The pharmacy 9. The transportation 10. Port-au-Prince Now I am going to go take a real good shower. More on that situation on Day 2.