Yes, folks I'm off again. This time to Haiti, but just for a week. I've been busy busy busy since graduation in December filling out graduate school applications and taking a GRE, so what better way to relax than go to Haiti, right? (Undoubtedly most of you are shaking your heads at me.)

 I'm traveling with members of the Presbyterian student ministries at Virginia Tech and Radford- about 14 of us in all. We are going under the auspices of a mission trip, but my expectation is that we will come back having learned far more and gained much more perspective than whatever impact we may have on Haitians. Our main goal is to go and see and build relationships, essentially. We have some money donated by Frank Beamer and his wife to contribute to constructing a house or two in Cite-de-Soleil, also known as the poorest slum in Haiti, and we will be aiding hired Haitian workers in the construction for a few days. Then we will be heading northward from Port-Au-Prince to Cange, the site of Dr. Paul Farmer's Partners in Heath Hospital. Partners in Health in a nonprofit organization started by Farmer during the 90s (I believe) that has made huge progress in bringing better healthcare to the area of Cange as well as Haiti by training Haitians to go out to the villages to administer to their neighbors, and providing the hospital when cases are more serious. If time and flexibility permits, we'll also visit some VT agricultural experiments going on in the area, which I think will be sweet, but then again I spent six weeks in Ecuador tromping up and down mountains to interrogate farmers and look at fields.

Blue marker is Port-au-Prince, red is Cange

 We are departing from Reagan National Airport tomorrow to overnight in Fort Lauderdale- yay sunny Florida- and then we'll have an early morning flight to Port-Au-Prince. High temperature on Friday in Fort Lauderdale: 74 F. High temperature in Port-Au-Prince on Saturday: 88 F. This definitely makes up for freezing in Ecuador in June.

I do not expect to post regularly here while I'm actually in Haiti, though I'm going to keep a journal as if I were publishing here and will post when I return, including lots of pictures. Keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we travel; while I do not expect much trouble, I do think there will be significant culture shock among our group. We will all have stashes of snacks, so even if the food gets dicey, I have a spork and a jar of peanut butter, and a one pound bar of chocolate from Trader Joe's. What more do you need in life anyway?