Truly An Adventure

It is 12:20pm on Tuesday February 23. We should have been in Haiti by now but we are still sitting in Fort Lauderdale. You ask why? Well, let us share with you our adventure up to this point :)

Yesterday, we drove from Charlotte to Fort Lauderdale, mostly through pouring rain, at times torrential down-pours with no visibility. It was a great time to reflect about what we might find in Haiti. Did they have a down-pour like this today as well? How did they possibly stay dry since they only have shelters created from cotton sheets? How awesome it is to bring tarps to them to give a few families a better protection against the weather influences. We realized there are many things we take for granted: just imagine the city of Charlotte not having a sewer system. That has been the reality in Haiti even before the earth quake - there is no sewer system in the whole country.

Anyway, back to our adventurous story..... Arriving in Fort Lauderdale we find an email in our inbox stating that our flight to Port-Au-Prince was cancelled. Trying to call the airline to get rescheduled turned out to be a battle against the phone system. Come to find out, there were no available seats with that particular airline until March 2. Almost comedic since that was our scheduled return date :)

Many hours and phone calls later, at 3am we finally found a flight with Air France (hip hip hooray!). Since it is a last minute booking, it was certainly more expensive than our original tickets, yet it is worth it to us to be able to deliver the goods and personally be on the grounds to help. We know that our time there will be life impacting and we will be able to hear and share many stories with you all on the blog and face to face!



Now we will tackle our next tasks, one is buying duffle bags for all of our goods as plastic tubs are no longer allowed by the airlines. Plus, we are trying to rearrange our airport pick up and lodging - did we mention that cell phone and internet service in Haiti is limited so getting a hold of anyone is going to be another adventure!

Overall we are in good spirits and have planned a brief vacation to the Keys before our trip to Haiti. Why not make use of the time we have, right? We will keep you posted - next blog might be from one of the beaches, listening to the ocean waves. Life is good!

A special thanks to Bill, our host in Fort Lauderdale. He did not only open his home to us but also helped us with finding new airline tickets. If you ever get a chance, check out Couchsurfing.com. You will be able to find amazing people to connect and stay with anywhere in the USA and the world.