In a spirit of thanksgiving...with a little lamentation too

Many of you have heard me describe my seasons living outside of the US as living in the extremes - where the highs are higher and the lows are lower than I ever experience back in North America. While at times I do find life in my homeland a bit hectic, I definitely find my life here exhausting..... in the best just-danced-three-hours-at-a-Haitian-boy-band-concert sort of way and in the worst I-want-to-stay-in-bed-with-the-covers-over-my-head-and-never-speak-to-anyone-ever-ever-again sort of way. I used to think of myself as an emotionally stable person..... I used to think of myself as a lot of things before this whole PhD process started : )

I'm reaching the 6-week mark of being back in Haiti so in order to get folks up to date on the personal side I thought I'd just make a laundry list of my thanksgivings and lamentations. I will let you decide which are which. Feel free to overlook, skim or dig in.

...6:30 am mornings with Haitian coffee and Henry Nouwen...5;30 mornings with Haitian coffee and too many unwritten emails....6am mornings crying on the phone to my parents when i probably missed my Haitian coffee.....two weeks of a respiratory infection.....five days (and counting) with conjunctivitis....zero days of GI disfunction.... two weeks with a completely dead computer....one week (and counting) with a no-longer-dead but now virally infected computer .... one day (and counting) with a lost mobile phone and no other way to reach or be reached by people in P-au-P.... finding out that the one person I really really wanted to have join our project team but never thought would be available is actually looking for a new job...conducting an entire meeting in Kreyol and realizing that everyone understood almost everything....finally feeling like things might be coming together even if I still have a pit in my stomach just thinking about it... being granted a corner of space in the clinic.....being able to open the door to that space after three weeks of constant harassement to get the keys ...trying again and again to actually get a call through to my advisor but it just not happening....my advisor offerring to squeeze in a last minute 2-day trip to Haiti...four baby hats knitted with four more in the que..... friends who send birthday packages where the shipping vastly exceeds the material (but not the spiritual) value of the contents ....7 days of waiting for someone to get to the post office to actually pick up the package...birthday cakes make by neighbor who is a baker extraordinaire.... birthday emails sent by family and friends.... joint birthday celebrations pulled together in 48 hours that include the death of a goat and lots of rice and beans.... the Haitian friend who call at just the right time to remind me why borders are meant to be crossed.... five adults living in a two bedroom house... four weeks sleeping on a futon mattress on the floor.... five nights in my own bedroom while housemates travel to the US... two nights alone in a hotel on A-1-A beachfront avenue.... airtunes speakers in the living room....a renewed sense of music as food for the soul....girls night out to a Haitian boy-band concert with my friend L who is the younger sister of a Wheaton classmate and who welcomed me over to her place on 30 minutes notice last Tuesday night to cry, laugh and drink beer on the patio even though my eyes were pink and oozing puss...... impromptu weeknight pancake dinner and arrested development screening with housemates and mcc'ers.... discovering I have the same random $13 housewife dress as my Canadian friend M thus confirming the fact that I knew we were meant to be friends from the moment I met her and her husband.... vacationing friend K with a fabulous apartment who is letting me stay there for the two weeks he is away...housemates who plan and pull together an amazing Thanksgiving dinner and don't mind that I spent most of the day locked in a bedroom trying to work instead of helping them cook or clean....a visit to Haiti by one of my best friend's fiancees G which ended with dinner with another Baltimore acquaintance who happened to run into G at the Haitian hotel's bar....being reminded again and again that even unprayed prayers are answered...... and that there are a lot of prayers yet to be prayed before this is all through....