Day 4 - Jenny

Today was my birthday! I got sixteen years under the belt today. I woke up and got ready and when I went to open the door and go to breakfast and I saw a green handmade birthday card that everyone made for me the previous 

After our breakfast of  mangoes, oranges, papaya, squash soup, and passion fruit juice, we went out to the tap taps and headed to Komye (aka Cormier). When we got there we met a man named Reginal who taught us how to balance stones

Once we finished the stone balancing we went back to the Bigonet School and helped some more kids with the "friends of trees" pictures. While we were doing that, I also played with my best little friend, Evenel. I would draw him a heart and he would color it in. He is the cutest thing I have every seen and I want to take him home (so if I come back with a little Haitian boy, his name is Evenel).

When we were done helping the kids our friend Andre told us we should get some popsicles that were amazing, mine was mango flavored, and I loved it! Then we walked to get some fresh coconuts. A Haitian man climbed up a tree with a machete to get them and it was pretty impressive. I don't like coconuts so I gave mine to Emmanuel, the man who translates for us and a big part of the Komye community, his pretty cool.

After lunch, which was after the coconuts, we learned how to carve stones. There were rock shards flying every where, and I personally took a few to the eye, but I was not the only one.  We each made different things. I carved a flower in a piece of stone and I am quite proud of it.

After we finished our stone carving, we went to help with the building of the mango drier. There were Haitian carpenters that were building the frame out of bamboo, so we were unable to help today, but will hopefully be able to tomorrow.

When we got back to the hotel, we ate dinner and then watched Jurassic Park with Andre, but we're interrupted for a "meeting". When I got out there I saw lil' Fritzy (son of Fritz, the hotel owner) lighting candles on a pineapple upside down cake. When I went to sit down Kaila, acting like a proper gentleman, pushed my chair in for me while people started to sing "Happy Birthday" in Creole. The Tech Valley students then sang it in Chinese, that's for you Hsia laoshi. Then Andre, who can speak, English, French, Creole, and Japanese said Happy Birthday in Japanese. I had a very culturally diverse birthday this year. A pretty good sweet sixteen if you ask me