Worth Noting...

This last week has afforded a few things worth writing about:

A couple nights ago on the drive back to the toddler house, Kristin and I were sitting in the back of the SUV facing behind us. Barely a minute after leaving the mainhouse, we began to notice a significant increase in the amount of people wandering the streets and as the murmurs of "Wow" and "What's going on?" grew more apparent, I turned around to see a wall of people only made more shocking by the headlights that illuminated them. They parted slowly and without much concern for us and we rolled ahead cautiously while a few members of the crowd took the opportunity to punch and hit the exterior of our vehicle. They were lively and excited and music played from the steady line of vehicles that rode the wave down the steep street that we ascended; music that blasted through the open windows of our vehicle. After the crowd cleared, Molly explained that what we'd driven through was a Voodoo March; a time where people gather to roam the streets blessing and cursing the houses, depending on who resided there. Creepy stuff.


The second interesting thing was that Thursday morning, me and 2 other volunteers joined Stephanie (one of the GLA staff) and James (the driver) to bring 5 kids to their psych assessments down in Port-Au-Prince; a requirement before the adopting process can begin. How did we get them down there in one vehicle, you ask? One in each of our laps and one (the oldest) sitting between us in the back seat. It took a little over an hour because of traffic down the steep roads into town. As I was sitting in the middle, I had no door to lean against and since my one arm held a 2 month old infant and the other was around a sleeping toddler who spent most of the hour with her head against me, drooling on my stomach, I was constantly being thrown from one way to the other. One of the most amazing parts of this trip is that none of the 5 kids made a single sound during that whole drive down. We arrived at the Dr.'s and spent the next hour and a half sitting in a small, hot, dimly lit office while Stephanie took in each child, one after the other, in to see the psychologist. We were all very happy to see sunlight and breath in the fresh air once the appointments were finished. Again, amazingly, the kids (2 months to 3 years) didn't make a single complaint for the whole of that time. The ride home was much quicker, but still plenty entertaining.

Lastly, on Thursday night, a bunch of us were sitting around in the lounge hanging out. In the middle of our conversation, a bat flew in through the open door and proceeded to do 6 or 7 laps around the room above our heads while a number of the girls screamed and ducked their heads before it flew back out the way it came; at which point, we all burst out laughing and continue to do so whenever the event is brought up...but you probably had to be there...:-)