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Unfortunately, not everyone got away for the break, and March was a difficult month at work. The teachers at the other house were having roommate problems, and things escalated to the point where one of them was fired. As she taught US and World History, my favorite two classes, I volunteered to take her two classes and get rid of my sixth grade English classes, who were little monsters. Although I no longer have that class, adding the two others has been hard, and I really felt like March/ beginning of April was difficult. I did manage to get away for a beach weekend at Kaliko, and that helped, as it was quite nice (thank you, Chris).

Lisa’s parents, and then Pia’s mom and sister, came down to visit us and had a wonderful time. I was starting to feel pretty lonely so I managed to talk Hunter into coming down for the last weekend in March. He agreed, and we had a whirlwind tour of Haiti! We visited the Montana Hotel for drinks, hung out at Monica and Andy’s house for drinks and dinner, went out in Petionville with everyone (to Boucane, MacDoo’s, and Barak), went to Jean Marc’s beach house, and ended up at Monica’s mountain house for a night and a day of relaxing. Along the way we had lots of rum punches, more than one wahoo, bought a live chicken (that was pretty damn funny), and generally had a good time. But I was exhausted by the time he left.

My homeroom had to sponsor Easter activities, and that added to the extra class, was really starting to take its toll on me. I was still recovering from Hunter’s visit, and I only had four days back at school before I had to leave to go home for Amber’s wedding. Stupid American Airlines cancelled our last flight out of the day, so I had to leave Friday morning, and I got home too late for the rehearsal. I did, however, make it to the dinner, and Amber was so happy to see me. Saturday was the wedding, and by the time that was all over, I was exhausted to the point of not being able to do anything else. I spent all Sunday in bed, and was supposed to fly back to Haiti on Monday. But I just couldn’t do it. The tiredness, a sinus infection, thoughts of Easter activities…. Combined together, I couldn’t face it. I changed my flight to Wednesday and stayed home an extra two days, in bed, trying to get well again.

Because American Airlines (also known as The Evil Empire) is so stupid, and cancelled 1/3 of our flights, I couldn’t get back into Haiti for another 8 days, so I went through the Dominican Republic. I had to take a 6 am flight from Dallas to Miami, then go from Miami to Santo Domingo, then cab across the city, and catch a one-way on Caribintair into Port-au-Prince. The whole thing was exhausting, but finally, by 6 pm, I was “home” again.

On Thursday Lisa and I were supposed to leave for our big island adventure, a trip to Guadalupe, Martinique, and Dominica. Her boyfriend Vlad picked us up for the airport- an hour late. About half way there, his car broke down. We grabbed a tap-tap and headed the rest of the way to the airport, but it was too late. Our flight was just about to leave and it was too late for us. Well, we changed our tickets to June and we’ll go on our adventure then. For this week, we decided to just plan small fun things for the area, and we went to the beach with Tom and Sue and baby Jordan, and yesterday we went up to The Lodge and had a long lunch, and we were thinking of going to Jacmel this next weekend. Yesterday my friend Yves, who works for a USAID program, asked if I could be an election observer for the Senatorial elections on Friday. I agreed, and it looks as if most of this week will now be spent training for that and then going to a city- possibly Jacmel, so that works out well!- to observe the elections and make sure they are not fraudulent. I thought it sounded like a pretty good opportunity, so here I go!