Haiti: Day 29. That's more like it.

Today my mom asked me what the turning point was when the kids went from wanting me gone to giving me their science projects for my birthday. I can see how that would be confusing. I think it happened after the third week when they discovered that I wasn't going anywhere for a while. They are so used to people coming in and staying for a week and then leaving, so there isn't a rush to get attached, you know? Sometime during week three I settled in to being here, and they settled in to having me here. It was beautiful :-)

What was even more beautiful than that was the rain storm we had on Friday. I'll start from the beginning.

In Friday afternoon's photography class Isguerda, Katiana, Evans, and Willie E. and I were sitting in the classroom making picture frames for the pictures we had taken that week and it was the same scorching temperature that it's been all week. What's awesome about Haiti though, is that when it gets really hot is when it typically rains the hardest. God is merciful like that. As Willie E. was walking me home, the clouds started coming over the mountain. I spent the next hour helping Monise and Jeannette making dinner and learning Creole. I learned how to say, “I love Haiti... I love rain... I love bean sauce” (I do love bean sauce. It's what's up) in Creole and they put me in charge of making... the salad. I guess they've seen me mess up oatmeal in the mornings and that's what they decided would be safe to trust me with. I loved it anyway, they are amazing women. During the entire time in the kitchen we could hear the thunder even though it was not yet raining.

As the clouds got darker and darker I decided it was a good time to check out what the boys were up to. Don't worry, don't worry. I finished making the salad first. In the 35 seconds it takes for me to get to the boys' house the rain was coming down so hard that I was slipping out of my 'flops. In the backyard I found Clairmond, Daniel, Diene, Keso, Markendy, Davidson, Ti-Bo, Kenson, and Brice playing dodge ball. I watched for a bit and then jumped in on the action. I quickly became the main target, and I like to think that I can hold my own, but at school on Monday I know they will remind me of their domination.

After that I went to the Ben's- a large concrete playing field next to the boys' home- and played another game of dodge ball with the older boys. I was actually petrified of playing with them because these boys are strong. Also, they are my students, and I wasn't sure if they were going to get me back for pounding PEMDAS into their brains this past week. Oh, and Clairmond's nickname for me now is Mrs. PEMDAS. He so loving refers to himself as Mr. PEMDAS. Oh, Clairmond.

The boys were so sweet; they would catch the balls and throw them so hard at each other and then the boys on my team would give me the balls to throw at the other team. Eventually I figured it out that they just thought that it was funny to watch me throw the balls, but I loved that they didn't use me as a target like the younger boys did.

And then things got wild. See, as it would turn out when 30+ boys between the ages of 6 and 18 live together, rules just don't ever apply. So if Clairmond discovers that he can fill up a 5 gallon bucket from the broken gutter at the side of the house with rain water and take said bucket into the house and dump in on his math teacher, then that's just what's going to have to happen. Over. And over. And over again. Mrs. PEMDAS was drenched this afternoon. The downstairs of the boys' house is tiled and slippery when wet, so then the boys had races to see who could slide across the tile floor on their stomach the fastest.

For the record, PEMDAS is the order in which one solves math problems with multiple operations: parenthesis, exponents, multiply, divide, add, subtract. It is also my new last name.