Milot

So we're here in Milot for the first week of three attempting to learn as much Creole as possible. We're staying in a volunteer house in a mission near the hospital and having lessons 2 hours a day. The lessons have proved to be quite frustrating (especially for Kurt:)), since our teacher doesn't give instructions in English and can be very hard to understand. We'll probably learn better this way in the end, but it's a tough way to start. With her amazing French background, Laura wins the prize for pronunciation, while Kurt overemphasizes the accent and drowns in the sweat of embarrassment. In the midst of Kurt struggling to survive, Laura helps a ton by giggling like a little girl in church. To make it even better, our teacher sits there falling asleep in front of us. But, when we're not focusing on our Creole, we have a lot of free time to read and relax and catch up on sleep without babies crying.

In our explorations of Milot, we walked over to the only somewhat touristy place, the palace of King Christopher. It's set up at the base of the mountains and a good place to sit and relax...except when you're trying to study Creole and a huge group of kids sit around you and try to help. It is nice when they wipe ants of your leg for you, but personal space is limited under the voodoo tree.

We're still waiting for one more box to come of our stuff, including the Heroes DVDs we got as a gift from the most awesome Bible Study ever. So when that comes, we will probably watch it all day long when not studying Creole.

Our host at the volunteer house is an American named Jess, who has been here for over 2 years. She started a program for street kids in Cap Haitian and has given us a lot of insight into Haitian culture.

-couple with constant back sweat