Church, Pudding, Culinary Exploits, Etc.

Yesterday was an interesting day in the life of Kathryn. There were several highlights, all of a very different nature, and they were as follows:

1. Church. The thirteen year-old's at Haitian church were all graduating from the children's ministry this morning. This was fun to watch – they helped out with leading the service, there was a skit and a dance, and it reminded me somewhat of Children's Sunday at Knox. It was also fun because I'm starting to get to know multiple members of the Haitian church, and even if we can't exactly communicate all the time, I'm still making friends anyways – something that causes great happiness.
2. Pudding. I found pudding in the cupboard, and I made a batch of cookies and cream pudding to feed to my children (at least the ones who are capable of consuming and enjoying such delicacies) tomorrow for a special treat. This excites me a great deal.
3. Culinary Exploits. One of the things I've had a hard time with here in Haiti is eating healthily. This is mostly because I feel a great lack of fresh fruits and vegetables – items which are nearly always found in abundance at my house. The food is phenomenal, but there just isn't a lot of fruits and veggies. We occasionally have opportunities to visit Haitian grocery stores where we can buy whatever we wish to, but so far only that has happened only once since I've been here, and I've been craving fresh fruits and veggies ever since I got here. Anyways...they do feed us well, and I love the food, but on Saturday afternoons and Sunday evenings, we have to fend for ourselves. Thus far, I have done pretty well in saving leftovers from Friday dinner/Sunday lunch, but this weekend it was not so. We were scheduled to go on an outing that would involve lunch this Saturday, and so I did not save anything for lunch. But then all the other volunteers decided to get sick. So there was no outing, and therefore no lunch. I ended up eating dry cereal and bread for lunch on Saturday. It was not particularly enjoyable. So last night, I determined to take some initiative and make myself something decent for my dinner. Making yourself dinner in an unfamiliar kitchen with many unfamiliar ingredients is no trivial undertaking, but I did so with great enthusiasm. I felt like I was five years-old again playing kitchen, but with real food! Thrilling. After much investigation, though, I hadn't come up with much in the way of possibilities. Many of the items useful for cooking in the refrigerator are reserved for the staff who purchased them, and I was limited pretty much to canned/boxed goods. Finally after about half an hour of poking about, I decided on tomato soup and macaroni and cheese for my dinner. For whatever reason, it did not occur to me that both these items are very salty and very hot temperature wise. I also forgot that microwaves in Petion-ville can sometimes take a lot longer than microwaves in Michigan. But twenty minutes later, I began to consume my smoking hot, super salty dinner. Even though it was a cooler night, the food caused great perspiration. The microwaves may take longer, but I found out that they still do the job (especially when your food is in there for ten minutes) and my mac n cheese tomato soup combo was really really hot. And due to the vast amount of salt, I found it necessary to down several eight ounce glasses of water. My mood of culinary happiness was somewhat deflated, but I have hopes that next week I will be more equipped to think through my dinner a bit more thoroughly, and maybe I'll even have some fresh fruits and veggies by then. But I must say it was still a good deal of fun to play kitchen.
4. Showers. I took my first not freezing cold shower here in Haiti. It was also my first shower in over a week. The beautiful feelings of semi-warm water leading to cleanliness cannot be underestimated. However these beautiful feelings likely would have been more welcome had I not been so hot from my dinner, and I intentionally spent a few minutes in frigid water to rectify the situation before bathing in the warmth.
5. Documentaries. While puttering about in the kitchen, I discovered a case containing dozens of documentaries. Not sure what they were doing hanging out in the kitchen, but this thrilled me to no end – it's been far too long since I watched a good documentary – and I settled down to watch a terribly intriguingly fascinating documentary about the secret service (Ben and Si you would love it) followed by a rather dull but still worthwhile documentary about Barack Obama. I do love documentaries, and the idea of further enlightening on uneventful Sunday nights is quite a welcome prospect, especially as I have finished reading most of the books I brought down and I've listened to the sermons that I brought at least three times each.
6. Fierce Compassion. Truth be told, I miss San Francisco and I miss researching about Chinese discrimination in America and I miss agonizingly and painstakingly writing and re-writing the harrowing stories of Donaldina Cameron. Since coming to Haiti, I've had less conversations about Donaldina Cameron and spent less of my time and mental energy on Donaldina Cameron than I ever have in the past two years of my life. And I miss it. I miss it so much, as a matter of fact, that I sat down to read my book last night for the first time since it was published. I'm having a hard time getting actually absorbed in it, and it's more torture than anything else as a plethora of flimsy sentences, lousy modifiers, and typesetting errors continually taunt me, but perusing it was comfortingly familiar nonetheless.
7. My wall of happiness. Yesterday I switched beds. The incentive for this was that the new bed had a wall next to it, and after a few bad bouts of homesickness this past week, I wanted a place where I could display the various cards, Bible verses, and pictures you all have so kindly sent to me. I did so, and my wall of happiness makes me very happy and encouraged indeed. As far as I'm concerned, I might as well be living in a veritable castle what with my documentaries, happy wall, warmish showers, and pudding.