Fresh Off the Boat

I specifically remember a chapel in elementary school where some guy with a safari hat talked about God asking people to go to the jungles of Africa. And I prayed, "God, please don't call me to the jungles of Africa." So we compromised. It's not the jungle.

I have time for a quick update since our car is late. I got to the airport and made it through immigration, a health check, getting both my bags, and customs and still hadn't found my guy. I considered getting panicky, then saw a Doctors of the World person outside, so I figured I had one last option. Walked outside and didn't see any sign, but then I heard someone yelling my name. And there were three other people with him, so I wasn't alone on my boat trip.

We took a bus from the airport to the speed boat. There are stars here. There aren't any in Port-au-Prince. There are also crickets. Because there's vegetation!

I really enjoyed the boat ride. Mostly because of these two people I was facing. They were all decked out in their tactical gear, complete with zip off khaki pants (some of you know how I feel about these). They were the only people talking. It was a language I didn't recognize. So they would jabber and then both laugh really loud at the same time. It made me think they were minions.

Our luggage came on a separate boat and we had to show tickets for our bags. One of the guys in my group handed me my ticket, and, since I had a bag for each hand, I promptly stuck the ticket in my mouth. Going to have to quit doing stuff like that.

We stayed at this nice hotel/resort. Air conditioning, water heater. What more is there to say? Land Cruisers everywhere. IFRC, MDM, UKAid, China Aid, CDC, etc. All the humanitarians swapping stories and name dropping ("Sudan" and "When I got evacuated from such and such place...") to try to subtly outdo each other and speaking whole sentences without any words besides acronyms.

Got picked up this morning and came to the IMC office for a very brief orientation, and now we're hanging out waiting for our car. It had to make a 4 hour trip to the airport for the poor person who missed their boat.

Not sure when I'll have internet again. And I realized I have adapters for my plugs but no converter, so who knows when I'll charge my phone again.