Success!

The internet lost anchor of the Santa Maria has been found! Of course it hasn't moved in many years, but according to the internet, and my newest nemesis Wikipedia, the anchor supposedly had been destroyed or in some distant non-existent museum built in 1938. Not so.

I took a quicker trip with the motorcycle across town to visit the National Museum, the one across from the National Palace. The security guards out front were not very enthused about my wanting to park in the parking lot, but they did not have the parking lot gate open, even though they had been open for an hour. I guess that is a special privilege. So I smiled sweetly and asked politely so they let me jump the curb and park in the lot. I feel better leaving the moto inside the fence than out on the street.

I paid my $1.25 entrance fee and got a personal guided tour of the museum in Air Conditioning. Suffice it to say, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and was about 20 minutes late getting back for school. There the rusty anchor was, standing some 8-10 feet tall, 4-5 feet wide and looking just as I had hoped and imagined. Unfortunately, I abide by the rules and took no pictures. Looking back I really should have asked my tour guide if I could.

The museum is small, but well done. It does a great job of covering the history of Haiti. There are not that many artifacts, but what they do have is well displayed, and tell a great story. Most memorable are the anchor, slave shackles, and the gold crown of King Faustin. There is also a great art exhibit of great Haitian artists.

Looks like we will actually get to take a field trip with the kids soon. And I am excited to share more with them what we have been studying: In 1492 Columbus made the first of four trips to the Caribbean in three Spanish ships, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.

Now I am off to correct Wikipedia...

This Week's Adventures - The Anchor of the Santa Maria!?

by Jimmy

This week's adventures were not nearly so long and exhausting as last week's, though you may not know that from my wife who is sleeping at 7:00 PM. Today she graciously let me choose which direction to drive, and I chose to explore across town to the Musee National. (National Museum)

Now this is no ordinary museum... OK, yes it is. Every museum is an ordinary museum according to my wife, but THIS museum is said to house the very anchor of Christopher Columbus' flagship, the Santa Maria! And what have we been studying in school, but that very same Christopher Columbus. Just a little historical background - Columbus sailed for the New World (or the ocean blue) in 1492, landing first in the Bahamas, then to the larger island of Cuba, and finally having been told of gold in Haiti, set his sights there. On Christmas day of that year, the ship struck a shoal and sunk off the coast of Haiti. They did discover the king of Haiti possessed gold, and trading him trinkets for his gold, started back to Spain, to spread the word, and thus began the first gold rush. Unfortunately for the then owners of the gold, they neither possessed the weapons, or immunity to disease to resist the relentless European Explorers.

And now that I have thoroughly bored half our readers... my quest for iron not gold. At least that is what I am assuming the anchor is made of. We departed the property just after lunch, and quickly met a not uncommon long line of slow traffic down our main road. After a quick stop at the Haitian Home Depot, MSC, (yes, literally the Haitian Home Depot, same colors and everything, though they do sell Vodka at the checkout lanes, and huge industrial size electrical transformers) we ventured to the opposite side of Port-Au-Prince.

We started out strong, traffic after MSC was not all that bad, and driving past the airport we saw the JoyHouse bus in the parking lot. JoyHouse is the place we visited last weekend, and where Becky and I first worked in Haiti just after the earthquake. We pulled into the parking lot, and got to visit with Norma the founder of JoyHouse for a little bit as she was waiting for an incoming team. After trading contact information we proceeded to the pin marked location of the Musee National.

We arrived, I in excited anticipation and pulled into the Quisqeya University parking lot. Higher education and museums go hand in hand don't they? And it was right at the pin mark. We exited the vehicle, and scoured the newly constructed and in construction premises. Students milling about, and a couple of classes in session. I was excited just to see a functioning school. But alas, no museum. It must be up the street.

So up the street we drove. A security guard at the only promising gate kind of laughed at the object of our quest, and sent us back down the street. We traversed down, back up, and back down, stopping back at the University to ask there. Much to my chagrin, and quite honestly I had been keeping my hopes and expectations down all morning, we found not the anchor of the famed Santa Maria, nor for that matter the entire Musee National.

(And just as a side note, I am sure that we just had a trembler, the first I have felt since we have been here.) At first I thought it was thunder, and big trucks crashing big trash cans, but that makes no sense, and big trucks cannot shake our concrete apartment.

Well, I guess we will just have to try another day. I might have to strike out on my own though. Becky can only take so much exciting history at a time.
Sorry for the lack of pictures, we were explorers this week, not tourists like last.

3 Months

9 months ago I started dating this guy from church named Jimmy.
6 months ago we got engaged.
3 months ago (June 11th) we were married
1 month ago we moved to Haiti.
In 6 months we will have a new born baby in Haiti.

Life sure can change quickly...
As we finished an excellent first week of school on Friday, my husband mentioned that we were done with the first week and that we had more than 18 years left to go. I looked at him quizically and said "18 years! How do you figgure that?" He reminded me that if we are going to school our children and plan to have many of them, than 18 years is the absolute minimum amount of time that this sort of teaching lies ahead of us. That sort of freaked me out. My response... "What happened to my life?!"
Being married, having and raising and teaching children... these are all good things. Just different things, and very permanent things. I am used to thinking about my life one day at a time and as far as making plans/commitments have never ever done so more than a year at a time. I guess those days are gone. I am excited for what's ahead though, and thankful for my wonderful husband.

We have enjoyed an excellent weekend thank you to the Lovely Livesay family who loaned us their car. We were very excited about all the adventure we would be able to find with such transportation.


Friday night we enjoyed a social evening with some of the other younger people involved in Heartline. We got to hang out and eat MEXICAN food and play games. I had been craving such a night since we arrived in Haiti. Much fun! (This would have been impossible without the use of a car since all of the roads were flooded and we can not be out on the motorcycle after 6 pm anyways due to safety and the fact that the headlights don't exactly work.)

Saturday we decided to use the Livesays car to go exploring. After a bit of houscleaning in the morning... you would not beleive how much soot, dust and dirt it is possible to collect in one house in only a week.... We took off for the Dominican border. We had heard that it was not far down a road that runs closely to our house.

Here are a few sights outside our gate. We see them everyday, but have not shared them with you yet.

This is the beautiful trash pile that is always outside our wall.


The market corner of the "intersection" (no signals, signs, or rules of traffic) right by our house.


The flooded streets.


The crowded "taptap" (taxi)...Driving a car with only 2 people in Haiti really makes you feel extravagant/wasteful since most every other car is crowded full and most people are just walking.


So, when we got to the Dominican border, it turned out we were missing some sort of authorization for our vehicle to be able to cross. Of course it was difficult to determine what was really needed, because our Creole is basically non-existant and we're pretty sure everyone was just trying to make money off of us...they wouldn't have minded us not having the paper so long as we gave them money. So after quite a bit of confusion we turned around and thankfully were returned our passports and allowed to leave without too much trouble. We'll have to save exploring the D.R. for another time.

The pretty countryside near the border.


Since we were unable to explore the D.R. after spending some time working on the car due to trouble with the radiator, we still had time to make a trip out to Gressier. This is where JoyHouse Ministries is located and where Jimmy and I had come on a trip with our church in 2010. Gressier is only about 15 miles away, but in Haiti this equates to a 2 hour drive. In order to get there we had to drive through the west side of Port-Au-Prince which we had not been to yet. It was even 10 times crazier than the area where we live! We successfully found JoyHouse and our Haitian friend Fito from our previous trip there. Everyone else was gone and will not be there until this weekend. It was still fun to see all the progress that has been made on the church there and remember our trip. We also got some phone numbers to get in contact with old friends.
The church building that was only rubble when we visited after the earthquake. Looking good!

It was a long drive home from Gressier in the dark, but my husband is an awesome navigator, and we were able to stop near the airport and eat at the restraunt we had eaten at with our team the first time we came to Haiti. Another neat memory. We were stopped twice by policemen this weekend. Seems like some paper for the car needs to be updated. Being stopped by the police is the one time I am thakful not to speak Creole... since they can't speak English and get easily frustrated with not being able to communicate, they let us go pretty quickly.

Ok, so today we enjoyed a great morning of fellowship at church and then went on up the mountains to try and have lunch at the Baptist Mission. However it was closed. So we kept driving in the beautiful mountains. We didn't know where we were going, and the roads were even more horrible than city roads, but the air was cool and the countryside was beautiful, so we just enjoyed the ride. We found lunch around 3:00 on the way back into town.

The mountains


All in all, good weekend, full of driving and exploring and learning.
It is funny how in Haiti you come to expect things not to work out and so you find things that could possibly somehow be counted as a success and celebrate them.

First Day of School

School Starts Tomorrow!

We are so excited to begin the adventure of teaching these 7 unique kiddos.

Here are some pictures of our mostly completed school house. It looks so good! Thank you to all of the people who have worked so hard to get it ready!