Day One

I'm heeeeeyurrr! What a trip... Stephanie and I were on the way to replace my Walmart watch that broke when I jumped in the pool with it on (because it said water resistant up to 100ft!! I was incredulous) when I discovered that my shampoo had exploded in my suitcase (I put it in the protective plastic pouch of my suitcase too, but it still leaked. Again, incredulous). So instead of enjoying breakfast we had to go home and clean that up. We then raced to the airport. The ticket counter lady threatened to not let me on the plane because she didn't think I had a return ticket... after I got that straightened out I found out my flight was delayed. I really wanted ice cream, but I was in a pretty lame terminal that only had newsstands and a gigantic rum bar, so I picked up a banana instead. After about 4 hours of trying to entertain myself in the lame terminal, we finally took off. I made a nice Haitian friend on the plane though and our snack included Toblerone so I was quite happy.

I could make out some of the island through the clouds before we landed. The deforestation was very evident as was the abundance of tent villages. I could see some rebuilding taking place as well though. It was overall rainy and very dreary when we landed. I was SO happy to see Megan at the airport, REUNION! We grabbed my stuff and drug it out of the "terminal" which was this one room complete with customs, a restroom, and one luggage carousel which would rotate your luggage out into the rain if you didn't grab it the first go-round. Outside the door there were lots of dudes hanging out trying to grab your suitcase so you'll ride in their cab but Megan shooed them off with her excellent creole. We drug my stuff through the mud puddles and to the van that awaited us, owned by a lovely Australian couple that run a guest house in PAP.

The traffic was really bad so I had plenty of time to gawk at the sites of a rainy day in PAP. There's a lot of cement and mud and people running around. We drove by the largest pile of trash I've ever seen stacked in a ditch between what looked like people's houses. Trucks would get impatient and swerve off the road driving through these mega pot-holes (yes they rival those of New Orleans) splashing mud everywhere to make it a small ways ahead of the crowd. Our driver that was supposed to meet us at the guest house and take us back to the Gressier tonight got sick of waiting for us and left before we got there so we're staying the night here.

It is NIICE. I'm getting so spoiled tonight. We had Haitian spaghetti for dinner which means someone put shredded chicken on top of the pasta. And we had cheese! And a salad!! It was too awesome. This place is large and equipped with lots of fans, a very functional shower, and computers. Megan says this place is luxurious and all the rules are changing when we get to Gressier tomorrow. Did I mention you can flush the toilet paper here? Oh yea. Well we leave the PAP Lap o' Luxury guesthouse bright and early tomorrow, and then the real adventure begins!

P.S. We actually don't have real internet yet in Gressier so unless that happens soon I won't be able to update this thing very often, unless I do it from Megan's iPhone. Blogging from a phone - yikes. We're hoping to get a wireless card before the end of the week though!

P.S.S. I'm about to sleep under my first mosquito net! Weee!