Well, as Britt alluded to in her post yesterday, I did encounter a tarantula...and on my first night there too! I was terrified! But luckily, we didn't encounter any more of those throughout the week. We DID however, encounter about 5 cockroaches during our stay...one of which was in our room! AH! But, I got pretty used to creepy crawlers, and by the end of the week, they barely phased me! ha.
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| Kinda like this little guy..baby lizard :) |
We worked on some pretty AWESOME projects while we were there. We had some engineering students put up solar panels on one of the schools that we worked with, along with installing the lights and light switches and such. We had a group of education majors who worked with 8 different schools throughout the week, and gave them books in the Haitian Creole language. They first taught the teachers some strategies on how to use them to help the kids learn how to read, and then they traveled to different schools to demonstrate it with the kids. We also had a project that dealt with the "One Laptop Per Child Foundation". We interviewed teachers to find out what kind of computer programs would be helpful in their classrooms. Based on their feedback, we're going to be programming some lessons and such on the small laptops.
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| The guys installing the solar panels |
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| Showing the teachers some strategies for using the KEEP books |
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| Students working with the "XO" Laptops |
So, it was a very productive AND super fun trip! I learned so much about all of the projects and also about the Haitian culture, made a lot of new friends (with both the people in the group that I went with, and also some of the Haitian people that I met!), and definitely had a life experience that I will never forget! (Oh yea, and I got a pretty bad sunburn too...)
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| Some of the kids at one of the schools- enthralled with my Blackberry Playbook :) |
On the last day that we were there, we had a reflection time as a group. One of the questions that we all answered was, "What now?" After such a huge and amazing experience, what happens now when you go back home to your normal lives? One of the guys said something like, "Well, back to the daily grind, I guess." I couldn't have said it better. It seemed like I had been in Haiti for months, and it felt so weird to be going back to the United States! But, just like he said, back to reality- back to the daily grind.
While I was on my trip, I definitely wasn't thinking about dieting or exercise. For one, I didn't have a choice in what I ate! Whatever they sat in front of me, I ate or stayed hungry! Also, we were so busy with our projects most of the day that I didn't really even have time to think about myself. With that being said, my diet still wasn't horrible while I was gone. Since we had controlled amounts of food, and we couldn't just snack whenever we wanted to, I was on a good eating schedule. The food that the guest house provided wasn't always the healthiest, but even the most unhealthy meal that they served was definitely healthier than eating American fast food! And for the dinners, we only actually got a "sweet" dessert a couple of times, and the rest or majority of the time, we were served fresh fruit as a dessert. (Which was absolutely delicious!) Being on a bed at 11 PM and rise at 6 AM schedule helped my metabolism also. (Much better than the bed at 2 AM and rise at 10 AM schedule I was on before I left!) We were also pretty active while we were there, as we did a lot of walking!
So, even though I didn't eat horribly and I was active for the most part, I still have the mindset of "back to the daily grind" in every area of my life now that I'm back! And one of those areas is my healthy lifestyle. Back to the daily grind with my diet and exercising. I'm actually pretty excited and motivated to get back at it right now! After the trip, I just feel a new sense of renewal! It just made me want to do better at everything that I do. So, here's to going back to the daily grind, and making a difference- not just in the lives of other people, but in my OWN life by living healthy. :)
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| The whole Haiti Empowerment Project 2012 Crew! |
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