Tough Writing Cheques in French!

It was a relatively quiet day here at HATS.  Today a few of the Haitian schools started back after the Christmas break but, like many
others, the HATS school doesn’t open till Monday. The kids spent the day playing around the compound and at one point this afternoon I heard singing as they practiced some songs for Sunday Church.

Singing

 

Drum section

These girls looked like they wanted to go tobogganing on the mattress. It doesn’t work on the snow, I know 2 girls in Montreal who tried that over Christmas.

Toboggan

Some of the kids played school and of course there were cars and trucks for others.

School

 

Trucks

Last Saturday I was freezing cold taking down my outside Christmas lights. Today was a piece of cake. No mitts, no tuque, no ice, no snow. I had a helper and it was balmy warm. Karen and the team had considerably more lights up than I did too; 33 sets, more than 3000 lights. What a display!

Jofky and the Christmas Lights

Before I could take the Christmas lights down I had to fix Dickie’s favorite step ladder. It had 2 broken legs! It got repaired with wooden splints and is now as good as new. Only problems are it weighs a ton and is susceptible to termites.

Ladder

There is a volunteer team coming tomorrow from Texas.  Germaine was busy getting fresh vegetables to feed the gang. We also ordered the paint as they will be painting the boys’ dormitory. Unfortunately I threw a wrinkle in the mix. Karen asked me to write out the check in French for $2749. Easy – NOT! I wrote TWO MILLE sept cent quarante neuf not DEUX MILLE sept cent quarante neuf deux cent. So the check was rejected. How many Newfies does it take to write a check? Obviously more than two/deux!! The business in PAP, where HATS buys all their paint, decided Karen and Luckner could be trusted to send in a properly filled out cheque tomorrow morning, and so it all worked out, we have the paint and we are ready for the team.

Vegetables

 

Paint

At 4 PM the generator miraculously started up and the kids headed inside to watch one of their favorite videos. Mr. Bean – a classic in any or no language.

Mr. Bean

The volunteer team will blog for the next week and I’ll start again when they leave.

• Keith