Happy New Year!

Well I'm back in Haiti after a nice, restful time back in Texas with the family. The first semester ended well, and I enjoyed spending two weeks in colder weather. Well, I enjoyed a couple of days of it...then I decided I needed my tropical heat back!  School started up on Monday and it was great to see my students again. We swapped Christmas break stories and reviewed some from last semester. I also have a new roommate! Pam, a fellow teacher and friend that lived in the apartment next to mine, is now living with me. We are sharing a one-bedroom apartment and loving it! She and I get along great...well, at least for now! haha. We'll see how well we do after being together 24/7. 

Today we had a picnic out at a family's house in Croix de Bouquets. We had great food, fellowship, and plenty of Guitar Hero World Tour!  We also had the opportunity to visit Double Harvest, a ministry here in Haiti that is involved in conservation and reforestation projects. They grow all sorts of plants--from ornamental to vegetables and trees. Pam and I bought tomato plants and marigolds to plant in our little flower bed.

When we got back home, we decided we needed to go ahead and plant the tomatoes before they died. Without proper gardening tools, we had to improvise. Pam came out with a soup spoon and bread knife and started going to town in our less-than-fertile dirt pile.  Our guard just watched and laughed. He then gave me this big stick, as if I knew what to do with it. I just gave him that "I'll stick with my silverware, thank you" look and kept digging. He broke the stick and started digging his own holes--twice as fast as me of course. I realized the broken stick was a much better gardening tool than knife and spoon, so together we all finished planting the tomatoes. Our cat, fiendish as he is, thought it was his job to dig up the tomatoes after we planted them. Needless to say he got squirted with water.

Overall it was a great week. The weather is beautiful here this time of year and our garden is off to a great start. Oh, and my new year's resolution is to update my blog more regularly :) 

Happy New Year!