In the Swing of Things

This week we've been getting back to our regular life, I guess you could say! We started teaching again on Monday, and Chris is down in the clinic shadowing again, for the first time since the earthquake in January. Teaching English has been such a nice surprise. I remember a few weeks before we started teaching back in September, thinking, I don't want to start! and I don't want to do this! But it's been huge for us. We have gotten to know so many Haitians through our classes, and believe it or not, it is easy to not interact much with Haitians here. Not knowing the language at a comfortable speaking level (as in...sometimes I don't want to sound like I know Creole well because I know they will speak back to me at their normal speaking pace and I won't understand) and other factors can keep us pretty isolated. But English class has let us get past that, and God is so merciful. He knew that I, especially, would have trouble meeting and interacting with Haitians--I'm not as outgoing, and am more a homebody than Chris--and so he gave us the opportunity to interact daily, while mixing Creole with English (it's pretty effective, actually!) and helping them with something that is very important to them. Though we drag our feet to class some days, we are so thankful to have been English teachers here. With no previous experience, being younger than most of our students, and not having a real passion for it beforehand, God deserves all the glory for what we've been given here.
I hadn't planned on writing about that, but a sudden wave of thankfulness came over me! In the picture above are Gina and Thelusnor. Gina is our class accountant (takes money for class) and is always changing her hair! That is one of her many do's that we've seen. Thelusnor knows English pretty well and sits in on our first and second class just for practice. He is always making random comments and asking complicated questions. He laughs constantly at his own jokes! Ha!
The Compassion school on the compound has started up classes again, which is great. They haven't had more than a few days of school since the earthquake. It's so good to see the uniformed and eager students milling around in the mornings again. (As you can see through the trees in the picture) It's great that they have something productive to do, although not every kid is part of the school. It is always hard to see the few kids who hang around the school without uniforms. We don't know their specific stories, but it's true that not all children get to go to school here.
We forgot the camera, but we had a fun St. Patrick's Day party with the Thede's and Bailey's on Wednesday. We went to the Thede's for a dinner of Irish beef stew, soda bread, green juice, and even green frosted cream puffs that Anna had made! We sat around for a long while talking afterward and it was fun...Chris entertained us all with stories of falling off horses. We will definitely miss the Baileys when they leave next week!
Thanks for reading and hope you have a great weekend!