A Typical Day for the Sloans

Happy Thanksgiving!!! We hope you have a great holiday. We are missing home today but also having fun trying to get in the holiday spirit in spite of the 90 degree weather. We will take pictures to share later!
Today I'm going to write about what a typical day here looks like for us. While not every day is exactly the same, this is a pretty accurate picture of what we can expect!

-Wake up about 6 or 6:30 (this has definitely changed since living in Haiti)
-Get some water boiling for coffee (first things first... :) and eat breakfast
-Devotions (We were given a great devotional for our wedding, it's led to many a good discussion!)
-Around 8:30, Chris heads down to clinic (We will have to take some pictures of the clinic sometime), and Kath heads up to the Thede's to be around to help with school.
-Chris and Dr. Kris see their patients, while Kath reads or works on a paper with Eli, or checks email and tries to help Eli and Anna focus!
-By noon, Chris and Kris are back and we eat lunch which the cooks have prepared (sometimes Haitian food, sometimes American, if we are lucky, we have bon-bons, or cookies, for dessert!)
-After lunch=SPELLING TIME! Kath and Eli and Anna work through a spelling list or sometimes play a spelling game. (My stellar students got 15 words in a row right the other day! They are so awesome!)
-Chris and Kris head back down to clinic to do labs.
-After labs, Chris and I prepare for English class, going through the curriculum and coming up with a plan. (Sometimes we enjoy one of these huge Sprites bought from a friendly older man named Maurice a few seconds down the road. No, we don't get to keep the sweet bottle!)
-Other afternoon activities include: studying Creole, talking to kids (Walfie in particular, who still comes by everyday), reading, cleaning, grading papers, sometimes a little nap!
-At quarter til 4 we go to class. Our first class has about 35 students, who know little or no English. Our second class, which is back to back with the first, has about 22 students. A typical class consists of (All in English, by the way! We don't use any Creole): A welcome and prayer to begin, vocabulary words that we write on the board and do our best to explain, some kind of grammar..usually practice with pronouns, adverbs, or something, A few exercises in their workbook which they do with a partner or by themselves, A dialogue which a few come up front to try, and sometimes a Bible passage which we read and work through the meaning. Sometimes we will listen to an English song too and write the words on the board so they can follow along. They usually always start singing along by the end! It's only a little over 2 hours, but we both leave so tired by the end!
-On Wed. and Thurs. we have Creole class with our teacher, David.
-After class we come home and begin cooking dinner. The bean picture shows the first step of making beans and rice...separating out the dirt and rocks from the beans!
-Eat dinner, clean up, finish up any work that needs to be done, hang out (sometimes watch a movie, play Scrabble or Rook)
-Usually we are asleep by 10, or sometimes earlier! They call 9:00 "missionary midnight" here...which we used to laugh at, but now
understand! It gets dark so early, and we get up earlier, so by 9 we are ready to sleep!
We're so thankful for this time. We totally realize that while there are challenges we face here and things that are hard, we are so blessed to be here. Thank you for reading! I hope this gave you a little better idea of our life here. This last picture is from the retreat, but I think it is so cute I thought I'd throw it in. Happy Turkey Day!