The Start of Something New…

The program officially begin on August 7th.  But, I didn’t go directly to Haiti.  In order to be an effective volunteer and to successfully work in another country, it is absolutely necessary to be able to communicate with people.  For me, this meant being able to speak Creole.  So, on August 7th, I arrived in the Bronx to begin my three weeks of Creole lessons.  Now, the Bronx is not known for its Haitian population (surprising right?), but the sisters have a house there and we were going to be taking lessons at the house from a sister who had spent around 17 years in Haiti.  It also meant we could fly directly from JFK to Port-au-Prince, Haiti without any layovers - something that happens when flying from other airports.

In the Bronx, I met up with the two other Quest Volunteers.  Beth graduated from Catholic University in the spring and has been to Haiti twice before with the sisters for summer camp.  Frankie graduated from Towson in Maryland in the spring and has never left the country!  Starting on the 8th, we had class Monday through Friday twice a day for two hours.  Just when I thought I was done with school, I found myself back in a classroom!  Although this time, we sat at a card table in the chapel of the house and used giant pieces of paper for our “chalkboard.”  We learned a ton from our lessons, but I’ll give you all a mini Creole lessons in a later post.  The lessons were great and the knowledge we gained from the language acquisition and the stories told are essential for our success in the upcoming year.  But what was really fun about our time in the Bronx was that we were able to spend some time in the city and get to know each other before we were thrown into our adventure.  Instead of being thrown in as strangers, we could at least be thrown in as friends.

We spent three weekends in the Bronx and rearranged our schedule so we could have two Wednesday afternoons off as well.  We did a whole lot, but I’m going to just post a bunch pictures and briefly caption them.

This was my room in the house!

The first weekend, we took the subway downtown.  Our first stop was the 9/11 Memorial and then we took the subway up a little bit into Times Square. 

The memorial.

The Freedom Tower - it's still under construction.

Times Square was crazy!  There were so many people!

We walked around Times Square, and we ending up finding the American Girl Place.  Obviously, we went in.  We were the oldest people there (excluding parents) by at least 10 years.

The first Wednesday, we took the afternoon off and went to the zoo.  It was nice to get out for the afternoon and see something new.  It was a little bizarre to see exotic animals in the middle of a city.

I didn't take any photos during our lessons (no cell phones in class!), but here is one of us during break.

Frankie's in the blue and Beth is a little camera shy.

Homework

One of the summer camp volunteers this year has a grandfather that lives just around the block from the house.  She came and visited us a few times to talk about her experience and to show us around the city.  One afternoon, we took the subway downtown into southeastern Manhattan.  We walked through Chinatown, Little Italy, NYU and Soho.  We also walked along the Highline for a while.  This is an old elevated train that has been converted into a kind of nature walk.  It was so cool to be surrounded by trees, but still in the midst of a all the hustle and bustle.  I even got to take my shoes off and feel grass for first time since I had arrived in the city!

The final weekend, my parents were able to come visit on their way north after dropping my younger brother off at college.  Because I was in the city, I was hoping that I would be able to see a broadway show before I left.  My mom had somehow found some cheap tickets and we were able to see Cinderella!  The set was beautiful, the singing lovely and the costume changes were pure magic.  And, of course, I found my Prince Charming!

Times Square at 10:30 on a Friday = pure mayhem.

On Saturday, we walked around the city for a while and then headed back to the Bronx to meet up with one of my friends from high school who was coming from Boston for the night.

St. Patrick's Cathedral was under construction when we were there.  The scaffolding was almost as beautiful and awe-inspiring as the cathedral itself.

I also waited in line for cheap tickets for my friend and I to see A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder that evening.  The show won the Tony for best musical.  It was pretty funny and was very different than any of the other more classic broadway shows I've seen (like Wicked or Phantom of the Opera).

On Sunday, Sara and I went into the city again, found some bagels and did some serious people watching in Central Park.  After I dropped her off at the subway station so she could meet her family on Long Island, I made my way to the Natural History museum. 

This is actually a map.  The shells represent constellations and the oval in the lower right hand corner represents the boat.  Sailors would hold this chart above their heads to orient themselves and find their way home.

Central Park on my way back to the subway.

In the Beginning…

So, I failed a little bit when I was blogging about my study abroad experience in South Africa and I’m already a little bit behind now, but I promise I’ll try and be better this time around.  I have been in Haiti for just about 4 days now, and on my Haitian adventure for a little less than a month.  But, I think I will go back and start at the beginning.

In June, I graduated from college.  I began my senior year dreading the infamous question of "what are you going to do after you graduate?"  I had no idea what I wanted to do to or where I saw myself going.  I was continuing to work with the same refugees I had been working with for three years  doing everything from math homework to explaining social service forms and I loved it.  But, I was also coming back from an amazing experience in South Africa and from doing community development work in Malawi.  When I arrived home from Africa, I was thinking that working abroad in developing communities was something that I liked and could potentially do, but I still wasn't sure.  As my year progressed and I had not yet received my moment of epiphany that would tell me what I was destined to do, I decided that taking a year to do some service and community development work would be a perfect way for me to decide if it was actually something I could do.  It would also let me travel and see new parts of the world, learn a bunch of new things, and essentially postpone the necessity of making real life decisions.

Enter Haiti.  In February, my town in Maine hosted a benefit dinner for Haiti.  My mom was telling me about it and said that some bowls were being sold at this dinner to help fund the starting of a microfinance program in Haiti.  I had written my senior thesis on microfinance, and I liked the idea of potentially doing something that would let me see firsthand what I had written 80 pages about.  I was told about the sisters who were starting the program, given the name of someone to email and a website.  I googled the information, read briefly about the Quest Volunteers for Haiti, saw that not only did they work in the field of microfinance, but also in education, environmental protection, art production, and health care.  They also host a day camp every summer for kids who attend one of the local schools.  Although I had no intention of working for a religious organization when I pictured myself doing development work, the strength of the relationship after 17 years of working with Haitians appealed to me.  They knew the community they were in, and the community knew them.  So, I applied and was accepted to spend a year in Haiti working as a Quest Volunteer for the Religious of Jesus and Mary.

One adventure ending, but the beginning of another.