Tired, Hot, Sweaty and Dirty....

Day 1 at the orphanage....
WOW!!  What a day... we are tired, hot, sweaty and dirty... but our minds are spinning and our hearts are full.   Today we met and held our son for the first time.  He wont have our last name and we wont have an adoption decree for some time yet so until then we cannot share photos of his face or "publish" his name, so we will call him R.

Lets back up... it took us a day and a half to get here.  We had miserable layovers, including an overnight in Atlanta and a evacuation of the hotel we got for the night at 2am because somebody pulled the fire alarm trigger, so much for a good night sleep. 😠 But, we arrived in Haiti ready to take on this trip!

For anybody who has been here (or any undeveloped country) getting out of the airport was stressful, people everywhere, people trying to help you carry your bags (for a tip of course), long lines and pure chaos. We went to the desk that said hotel services (which we were told to do) and it was a bit unsettling when they pulled us into a separate room and locked the door behind us. When a man showed, took our bags and started walking quickly it was still a bit unsettling to follow him until we finally saw the van that had our name on it... finally we felt confident we were in the correct place and this was suppose to be happening.

The hotel staff was quiet but wonderfully nice. And we are very pleased with the hotel we are staying at (Servotel). We got to the hotel at about 4pm, we literally ate and went to bed!

This morning we woke up, ate breakfast and got to the lobby.  We were not told what time the driver was coming to pick us up so we got there early and anxious to leave to meet R.

The drive was interesting.  The drive took us almost 2 hours.  We had to pick up another 2 families at a guesthouse and had to drop off a family at another orphanage. The traffic here is CRAZY!! no lines on the roads, no traffic lights, no rhyme or reason, just thousands of cars wanting to go their own direction.  Tap Taps (Taxi trucks/bus in one kinda) and Mopeds EVERYWHERE... hundreds of people walking on the streets, street vendors everywhere, people shoveling garbage out of ditches, women and children pumping water at the water pump and using wheel barrows to push it back home... one day and 2 hours in the bus brought a flood of emotion about the condition of this country.

FINALLY we made it to Foyer.  We pulled up excited to hold our son!  Excited to meet him and play with him a good portion of today.  We followed the other 2 families in, who have been here about a week already for their bonding trips, emotional and excited... everybody starts asking where R is and then we heard the words... he is at school! 😕 WHAT?!?!  He is only 2.5 years old, how can he possibly be at school!?!? We have discovered there is no way to make sense of when these kiddos start school... we have heard 3, we have heard the fall after they turn 3, etc... but never once did we hear 2 or even have that in our minds as a possibility. One of the other families here now has a little girl 3 months older than R and she isn't in school.  That was hard to hear and hard to accept but it is what it is.  What does that mean for our day?  It meant we only got to spend 2 hours with R today. We chatted a lot with the other family whose daughter was in school too, we played with some of the kiddos and waited.

R is shy and very very quiet.  He went right to us when we put out our arms to hold him but he never once smiled or showed excitement.  We brought a back pack of snacks and toys.  He welcomed the snacks right away.  We slowly got out different toys we had brought and he seemed to enjoy each one, with definite favorites. He started warming up to us and we almost got a smile from him while playing with bubbles. I cannot really describe in words the way your heart feels meeting a little boy who is now your son.  It is different but also similar in ways to holding your newborn baby for the first time.  It is instant love, but with less dependency on you.

Tomorrow is apparently a holiday.  Nobody really knows what holiday, it seems to be one they made up to prepare for the upcoming election. For those that have followed Haiti's political situation (I wont get into it for those who haven't) the elections that were postponed due to hurricane matthew are rescheduled for this coming Sunday (the 20th).  But the holiday means, no school for the children. We are eager, anxious and excited all over again to get back to Foyer and spend more time with R!