Team Journal 1

Friday morning Jason left early with AJ, Dick and Nicole to price out some different hardware for a project in Pignon before flying them to the village site. Laura and I spent the morning catching up and getting organized. Just after noon we drove to the domestic airport together so Laura and the kids could fly out to Pignon as well. 

Then, once I received confirmation that the team had landed and made it through customs and immigration, Jayden, Justin and I headed to the international airport to pick them up. 

There ended up being some confusion after the pick up and half the team ended up at the domestic terminal again, but it all worked out in the end!

Below Marrissa Moens shares about the trip to Port au Prince. 

Friday, June 28, 2013 
Our first full day of the Haiti trip consisted almost entirely of traveling. It began with Zach and Derek nearly missing the flight from Seattle to Miami. That was a little stressful! 

In the end our flight was delayed by two and a half hours so we didn't board the plane till 15 minutes before midnight. 

The flight to Miami was a typical flight with a bit of turbulence. We discovered Marijke is super scared of turbulence. At one point in time the turbulence scared Marijke right out of her sleep, and Derek and I watched with great amusement as she desperately scrambled for her seat belt. I don’t think the seat belt light had even come on yet! That was pretty funny. We still bug her about it. 

Zach fell asleep with his mouth open. Derek snored. 

When the flight attendant came by with drinks, Derek, Marijke, and I all ordered orange juice. The flight attendant put ice in Marijke’s drink. That made her mad. She ended up dumping it on the floor a few hours later in her sleep. Bad girl. 

The plane landed with a thud at Miami International Airport at around 8:20am. We were all tired but not too cranky as we made our way to our gate for the flight to Port au Prince. We discovered that that flight was also delayed by a few hours. This made some of us a little crankier. Not me, of course. 

After a bite to eat most of us wandered around a bit to pass the time. Derek was the first to collapse on the airport floor and take a nap. The rest of us soon followed suit. 

We were all quite happy to finally get on the plane to Port au Prince. That airplane was bigger and nicer than our previous one, so we liked it a lot better. And the flight was shorter. 

The airport in Port au Prince was busy, but we somehow got to the front of the line of immigration immediately. We rode on the back of Jason’s truck from the international airport to the smaller MAF airport in Port au Prince.
 Several young boys hopped on along with us asking for money.One of them kissed Marijke’s hand. She was quite charmed by that! 

After hanging around the MAF airport for about an hour, completely bewildered as to why we were there, we finally made it to Jason and Will’s lovely home and got settled in. There we were served a big, delicious dinner of Nasi Goering. Thanks Will!

After dinner the guys helped set up a bunk bed for Anoud and Denise's family.

Due to the lack of electricity we were unable to shower that night so we all went to bed a little sticky from our long traveling day.