Same old song and dance. Never gets old.

I spent a solid two hours each day singing, dancing, and doing handclapping games with these little ladies.
Have you ever felt so full of joy, so at peace, that all you wanted to do was sing? All you wanted to do was dance?
The best thing about being young in our country is being naive. You have no sense of what it means to fear for your life. The boogie man is the only bad guy you know. The worst thing you can imagine happening is someone stealing your crayons, or pushing down your lincoln log house. It is a beautiful thing, the not knowing. You don't know what terrors are out there. What mankind is capable of. What you REALLY should be worrying about.
Your job is to play. Your job is to be happy. Your job is to love and be loved.
Our job is to keep you this way as long as we can. To preserve your imagination. To preserve your youthfulness. To keep you safe. To keep you happy.
Because for the rest of your life, with the peaks, comes the falls.

Young children here have experienced things adults haven't in America.
Some even from birth.
With beautiful life, comes devastating death.
To eat plentifully, you must live poorly in other aspects.
To be well clothed, you must eat less.
To get up and go to the bathroom in the night, you must tip-toe around the handfuls of people living in your same one room house.

The most beautiful thing I witnessed was the joy radiating from these children who experienced the above, and sometimes worse. Thankfully, some cases not nearly as bad.
Either way, they didn't lose their joy. They didn't lose their love. They got back on their horse. They share their love and joy with everyone they meet.

I don't know about anyone else. But I want to make it my job, to keep them this way as long as I can. To preserve their imagination. To preserve their youthfulness. To keep them safe. To keep them happy. To show them they are loved, and can love.

I'd say we have plenty of reasons to sing and dance.

Goodnight, Moon.

Ahh, the beautiful Haitian nights. I had the sweet spot-the roof of the American quad. I would lay back, look at the millions of stars covering the sky, each and every one beautifully shining, adding a little light to my life and everyone who saw them. The people of Haiti are like these stars. To the outsiders, there seems to be so much "darkness" in Haiti. The poverty, the disease, the death rate, until you go there and see for yourself. Despite all of the things that give Haitians every reason to be miserable human beings, that doesn't stop them from shining. Each and every person I came across was shining. Adding just a little more light to my life. A little more love. Filling my heart with joy, spreading the most genuine grin across my face. I still think about the people I met and realize minutes later that I had a silly grin on my face the entire time. Amusing to my classmates and the passerby I'm sure.
My favorite nights on the roof were when I had my close friends Annie, Riley and Katie by my side. Each with a towel and a little lantern. Riley with his guitar playing feel-good music, the rest of us singing along. The random goat or cow call.
The nights we gave the songs a rest, the most beautiful songs were heard. The songs of children playing and laughing into the night. The sun may have gone down, but the playfulness and spirits of the children sure didn't. The sound of these children laughing is infectious. You couldn't help but smile, or laugh along even being clueless as to why they were laughing.
Sunday nights (out of all nights) the club outside the orphanage would rage all night. The sound of foghorns into the wee hours of Monday morning were the least favorite sounds. But still beautiful, because it reminded you that everyone celebrates life. They are happy and energetic. They dance all night long. They are so emotionally fulfilled that they just want to dance. Every Sunday. All night long.On the same schedule as the stars.

Just a little video to brighten your day!
We call these preschoolers the watermelon babies :)

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Sooooooooooo here I am at school, instead of doing homework I'm in a computer lab with about 20 nice computers and writing on my blog. I'm too lazy and tired to do my homework even though this probably requires more brain power and written words than my homework does. I think this is something we call 'first world problems'?
In Espwa, the kids go to school in this large cement block building. Compared to schools in America, you would think they just started to build the school and are only 1/4 finished. The only thing the building has is a cement slab for a floor, and the cement blocks for the walls, and a roof. The windows and doorways are blocks removed. No glass, no doors. Just blocks. The desks are either picnic tables or about 4ft long wooden desks with a bench and a handful of kids squished together behind it. There are two thin blackboards up on the front wall. That is all. No teachers desk, no maps of the world, no smart boards or cabinets with supplies. Just those few simple things.
The part that's both sad but amazing is that with the lack in materials and nice classrooms the kids take so much pride in their schooling. You can ask every single one of them if they love school and with so much enthusiasm they answer "yes! i LOVE school!" and proceed to tell you why, and what their favorite subjects are, and what they want to be when they grow up. I'm glad they have that outlet and love their chance to learn. They see education as their way out or their ticket to success, so they are eager to learn as much as possible. The sad part is that in America where we have i-pads for everyone in the class, computer labs, air conditioning, individual desks, smartboards, textbooks, cabinets full of supplies etc.. we do nothing but complain about going to school. We complain about doing work because we are lazy and it is too hard.
This is because it is all handed to us. We're used to other people doing things for us. Instead of students learning, we just have teachers teaching. Instead of understanding, we inhale and exhale a handful of information in a 24 hour period to get the test score we want. For us it is about scores. For them it is about the education.
A common theme I've noticed between America and Haiti is their lacking in materials, and our lacking in heart. We have above and beyond the resources and materials "needed" in life, but we don't appreciate it and we're always striving for more. Instead of the Haitians where they make the most out of every last thing they have and take it above and beyond the imaginable. The cliche phrase "you get as much out as you put in" applies here 100%. Do we really need all of these things we have? Do teachers in my district need to be cut so they can afford more i-Pads?
Once again, I think we could learn a few things from Haiti.

Heavy load

Ever feel like you've picked up more than you can carry?
I can safely say I've felt that way.
One thing Haitian woman prove is nothing is impossible.
Nine months pregnant they walk down the road, a large bowl of fruit and potatoes on their heads. Holding hands with their children. Barefoot. Sweating.
If I were in their position, I would be cursing and complaining if not sitting on the ground refusing to move. They walk with such admirable grace and strength. Chin up, shoulders back, grins from ear to ear as they greet their friends.
They make my problems look stupid.
Not to say the amount of suffering we go through is different. Each man has his own suffering. Based on birthplace and upbringing, each man suffers in a different way. Too much homework or a sick relative or fight with my bestfriend may twist my stomach into a million little knots, or cause me to cry myself to sleep. A person in Haiti may see these as minute problems and only get to this point of suffering when a handful of friends die at once or some other tragedy happens. Only because they've been raised with thick skin and see my problems as a typical day in Haiti. My suffering is not less then theirs, it's just different.
But the strength I see in the Haitian woman I try to mirror in my everyday life. Now that I've seen their problems, I remember that mine could be much worse. I just need to go through the day chin up, shoulders back, grinning from ear to ear.