News from HFC and NLL

I spoke with Stephanie on the phone yesterday and Emmanuel and Duck on Thursday. Here’s the latest news from HFC:

The internet is working! Repairmen came on Saturday and things are up and running again. Please do not overwhelm Bryn with emails and please keep emails short when you do write. Bear in mind that she has to translate them all for 60 children and then translate the children’s responses. We love that you can communicate more easily with the children now, but have mercy on Bryn!

President Preval has ordered that schools not open in early September as they usually do so that the country could focus on flood relief and so that schools that were damaged from the storms would not fall behind schools that were not damaged. So our kids had an extra month of vacation and they just started school again this Monday, the 29^th. While most of them were pleased to have additional vacation, they were bummed to discover that they will have to go to school on Saturdays now to make up for the missed days. Our oldest kids, Evens, Kattia, Argentine, Stephanie, and Alex would have had school on Saturdays anyways because they are in reto (the second to last year of high school) so they have more specialized courses to take.

Because of school on Saturday, the kids are not attending Bataillon anymore, but they still go the youth group on Sundays. They are not required to go, but nearly all of them chose to go. This week, they played a game where one person went up front and then called other up to perform a song or tell a joke. Job called a bunch of people up, including Merline Jean and Jessica, but they were both so embarrassed that all they did was laugh. Jacques Obain got chosen by someone else to sing a song from the hymnal but he was so quiet that they had to call another kid up to sing with him. I do not understand why every party I’ve ever been to in Haiti involves forcing people up front to perform, but everyone seems to love it – at least, those who don’t have to perform love it!

Monsanto has headed to the US with his adoptive mom. It will be very odd to not see him when I visit. Sandy, Alex and Adler’s little sister, has been brought back from NLL to stay at HFC where she can go to school with kids her age. She and Wislandy play together and get along well. I think it’s wonderful for Wislandy to have another girl her age at the house because since NLL moved out, she’d become the baby again.

Some of the older girls visited NLL on Wednesday. Stephanie said that she was really impressed by how the kids looked. In their new home, they have more bedrooms and each room has a nanny assigned to it. Apparently, the nannies have a competition going on to see who can keep their kids the cleanest and best dressed. So the children look beautiful and spotless! Ismaelite, Chantal, and other nanny/teachers are doing school for the older NLL kids, as they did when they were living at HFC.