Totino-Grace Day 2

Natalya, Tom, and Sarah started their morning at the mere hour of 7am to help the Haitian women in the kitchen prepare our breakfast. Sarah was awoken by the neighbors’ rooster, and the rest woke up between then and 7:45. After breakfast, we spent the morning decorating for the New Years/Independence Day party for 70 people which included the three teams and the Healing Haiti Haitian staff. We played a Haiti traditional, popular dancing game that was a mix of a dance circle and follow the leader, it was called “Ton-ton-boogie” (well, that’s what we think we were saying…?) where Eric showed everyone up with his unmatchable dance moves. For lunch we ate sloppy joes, jello, and chips. Next we made string bracelets; Jake purposefully messed his up to make it artfully abstract. We then went out and played with the Haitian neighborhood kids in the street, with kids of all ages. Nicole, Grace, Kate, Lauryn, Ellie, Sarah, and Alani played duck duck grey duck, hopscotch, and chalk with the little boys and girls. The Haitian girls loved playing jump rope with Noah. Natalya, Eric, Jake, Henry, and Tom played soccer all afternoon with the Haitians, and made for a competitive match up, but still cannot match the skills of the Haitian boys.

            We then made the short walk to the hotel down the road to go swimming. We tried plantain chips for the first time and they were devoured within seconds.

            We had tacos for dinner, then went up to the guest house balcony to learn some salsa dancing from Jean, the guest house owner. Jean was so impressed with Grace and Ellie’s dancing skills that they were used for the examples. Kate and Henry “killed it” and Henry’s porous tennis shoes came off in order to match the spectacular salsa dancing of Tom and Natalya who have determined that they are running away to start a dance studio while also taking their salsa show on a worldwide tour. Jean spent much of his time with Sarah and Lauryn, who needed quite a bit of correcting…Nicole and Eric were amazingly able to keep up with the rapid pace while mastering the dip. Noah and Alani mastered the rapid spinning, but struggled with the dip.

Superlatives of the day:

Most likely to break a bottle after being splashed by a cannon ball from Noah: Nicole

Most literal: Noah

Best salsa dancer: Natalya

Most likely to win guitar hero: Kate

Most likely to hide a tattoo from his mom: Jake

Most likely to be secretly reading a steamy romance novel: Henry

Most likely to wear keens after the trip: Alani

Most likely to dropped when being dipped: Sarah

Most likely to be sunburned tomorrow: Grace

Most likely to submerge himself and every food item in hot sauce: Eric

Most likely to have cried yesterday: Gabby

Most likely to “accidentally miss the plane” and stay in Haiti: Cortney

Most likely to adopt a kid after this trip: Joe Morcomb

Most likely to lead the cupid shuffle: Ellie

Most likely to get hair braided by Ellie: Lauryn

Most likely to crack 60 eggs perfectly for breakfast: Tom

Written by Alani