Life in Haiti, straight from Haylie!: A crazy week!

This post is going to be about this past week here in Haiti!

We been experiencing a lot of nature and wildlife so far. I am pretty enthusiastic about wildlife, so coming to Haiti was DEFINITELY the right decision! We have lizards and frogs and all different kinds of insects in our house all the time!

Here is one of the little guys I happened to catch....

Just this past Saturday we went to the beach. I don't know how you imagine a Haitian beach, but I think you're probably wrong. Its the most beautiful sight I have ever seen in my life! It has crystal clear water and a coral reef! They have beautiful fish and pointy sea urchins!

You know Dori from Nemo? At the beach there is that same kind of fish! And there are angel fish and pufferfish too! We have a snorkeling set, so I got to get so close I could almost touch the fish! I wish we could have gotten more pictures of the fish and the beach though...

Thats a picture of the view we had during the ride there...

so it looks like the water is blue, but up close it's really clear.

Ok, this is a totally different topic, but I really want to tell you about the fruit here. There is this weird fruit called grenadia. The inside of the grenadia look like snot... but it tastes really good!

There is also a fruit called citwon here.

It's like a lemony lime type thing.

The green fruit in this picture is citwon.

The light yellow fruit is grenadia.

And the dark yellow (or orange) fruit is an orange (or in creole zoranj).

We have a variety of different animals here at the seminary ranging from goats...

to dogs...

(The black dog is Boone...)

(This is Ella....)

(And this is Danny...)

We also have animals like...

A hermit crab I found on the beach...

(Which I thought it was going to be super cool to have a hermit crab from Haiti, but it's not...)

The reason why is... I did some research and all the hermit crabs I have ever had in my life were from either Turks and Caicos or Haiti! Because all hermit crabs in New Jersey are imported from either of those two places! I don't know about you, but I think that is pretty cool.

Earlier this morning, my dad and I decided that our hermit crab cage was too small for him...

So we built a bigger one out of rat wire, zip ties, and a few parts of a five gallon bucket! Our hermit crab loves to climb around, so such a big cage is perfect for the little guy! We even gave him a little swimming pool....

The shell with the sandy colored stuff in in is hermit crab food from N. J. that I managed to bring with me.

Again, totally different subject, but I want to tell you what happened to my toe.....

About a month ago I noticed my big toe kinda hurt. But I just told myself that it was a splinter, and that

I would get it out when I had the time to do so. After a little while, I looked for a splinter in my toe, but there was nothing in there. So, eventually, I just kinda dealt with it.

Just this past week it really started to hurt. In fact, I lost three nights of sleep, because it hurt so badly. During the 2nd night of no sleep, I decided to tell my parents about it. My mom gave me some ibuprofen (which did NOT help), and she promised the next day we'd talk to a nurse.

Slowly, the next day came and we asked Elida (a smart and super sweet nurse) what to do. She said,"Come to Bethesda Clinic tomorrow and we'll fix you right up." It sounded promising, but the pain was so bad I didn't think I could wait that long. Again, slowly the next day came and we finally made it to the clinic.

Of course, we had to wait a bit....

Don't let my smiling face fool you.... I was itching to just STOP waiting.

Finally we got into the surgery room (or in creole chirurgie).

I was excited....

...until I realized that the doctor had to stick me 8 TIMES with a shot of anesthesia in my ONE toe.

So I figured I'd be safe behind my book. But even though the shots were supposed to make my toe numb... The shots seriously HURT. Fortunately not as bad as my toe hurt before I came to the clinic.

Soon after surgery they wrapped my toe in gauze till it looked like a fat snowman, or in other words, till I couldn't move it anymore.

The doctor (Dr. Rodney) gave me amoxicillin to take to help my toe to not get infected while healing.

The ONLY thing bad about that is that the medicine here is JUST medicine, with NO flavor. Which means it tastes TERRIBLE.

AGAIN, totally different topic, but I also wanted to tell you about seasons here.

I bet where most of you are the trees are probably starting to change from green to orange, green to yellow, or green to red. Which means its most likely fall. It is kind of the same here right now accept theres no winter afterwards, and fall is only a week or two long... and trees go through that change at different times of the year...

That's one of the trees that is in its fall season...

The last thing I wanted to tell you about is that,

I GOT MY OWN ROOM!!!

Today was the day that the VPs (visiting professors) left.

That means that my brother moved out of my room and into the spare room. So I got to decorate my room how I want it! We LOVED having the VPs here, don't get me wrong! It's just really nice to have my own room again... even if its just for a little while! :)