Day 8 with R, Day 11 of this trip

Today seemed liked a reset day a little bit.

Until now our routine has been... Wake up by 7am (which for me has been more like 5:30 or 6), get ready, eat breakfast which every single day consists of yogurt, eggs with ham and cheese, fresh squeezed guava juice and croissants (did I mention EVERY DAY!) and our driver picks us up at 9am. We have been driving to another guesthouse picking up another 2 families (there is also one at our hotel), driving one family to their creche (orphanage) and then driving on to ours.  We have spent about 1.5-2 hours every morning in the car. And by car I mean and old bus with seats that are not all bolted down, and no AC so all the windows open.  If you haven't been to Haiti the traffic and smells are insanely intense.  The exhaust from the cars has been giving me a migraine every day by the afternoon on the way home.  The smells of trash burning on the side of the road and all the sites and sounds, motos squeezing between buses and large trucks, tap taps (essentially a taxi truck) stopping and weaving in traffic, all of this can be stimulation overload to say the least.

A view out the window of the bus

Took this photo on our first day

This photo is stolen from ( https://theumlaut.com/2013/06/27/traffic-rules-in-haiti/) because we haven't been able to get a good photo without seeming or feeling rude but is an EXCELLENT representation of the traffic we sit through every day.

Today 2 families are now gone and tomorrow the last family will be gone and it will be just us here. Today we were surprised to see a new vehicle there in the morning.  Today we had a little SUV to ride in and it had AC!  I know that's totally an American thing to say but I do have to be 100% honest here.  This is a long exhausting emotional trip.  The extra time (between 3-5 hours every day total) in the bus breathing in the smells and exhaust really has been tiring.  

We also had to switch translators.  We had a brand new to AWAA (our agency) translator.  He was very nice and did a good job but with the other families leaving we switched to one of the translators that our agency always uses.  He has been great, we already knew him because he was working with one of the other families that has be coming to our creche everyday.  

R was pretty chill today.  Had tons of fun with us but just wanted to do calm things all day.  He was very expressive today and wanted to repeat everything we said. He would look at books with us and we would point to pictures, say words and he was trying to repeat after us.  He doesn't have many words, even in Creole, he is pretty quiet (at least from what we have noticed when he is with us). It has been fun watching him try to say Eva, Adri, cho cho (for train of course), cat dog, cow, etc... He also loves to point at the pictures himself and have us say what they are.  He seems to be enjoying learning a lot.