Day 2: DR already?!

DR = disaster relief. We just found out that Hurricane Irene is going to hit Port Au Prince dead-on, so we’re going to be closing up the site tomorrow, sail out to sea where it’s safe, and possibly return in a few days depending on Haiti’s situation. Since their infrastructure is so bad, even just heavy rainfall can cause mudslides, which would mean we have no work sites :( Mann I can’t believe I just got here and haven’t even been able to assist. I really hope everything goes well.

Salsa-ed with the PDS peeps tonight! Kevin Lor, Mindy Li, Jonathan Kang, and Petrus Chan. Even though I’m not really into salsa, I figured I’d try to be a bit more open-minded and try it out. It was really fun, mostly the bonding with everyone too :D I really do wish I went on the ship earlier :/ Kinda a wasted summer since I spent most of it moping and being bored/useless.

Day 1: Dinner: For Prisoners or Military Only <-- yep, that's right, we eat prisoner food

Dude, the Comfort is FREAKING AWESOME! Everything is pretty much what I expected or better. The ship is SO HUGE, I literally get lost every time I leave the berthing (dorms). It’s also really hard to find your way around since every single hall looks exactly the same and there isn’t a single landmark to help you either. Also, there are separate staircases to lead to separate areas to the ship, so you’d have to climb up like 6 flights of stairs, go across the hall, then go down another 4 flights. We’re in the “overflow” berthing for civilians on Floor 4 (Top to bottom is: 02 01 Main 1 2 3 4) so we’re at the very bottom. So you have to take the stairs eveeeerywhere (and I thought Trieste was bad…).

I think the best part is that everyone’s super friendly here. Almost every single person smiles and says hi to me even though they don’t know me, and they recognize that I’m new to the ship right away. People always approach you and sincerely welcome you to the ship. I usually don’t feel very comfortable around people at first, but I felt like I belonged right away and could get along and talk to everyone really well. It’s just like one big family :) Also, since there’s barely any internet or TV, people mainly entertain themselves by hanging out or doing activities together, so it really forces you to hang out together; which is good, because otherwise we’re always so disconnected in our own little worlds. You really have no CHOICE but to bond :) One of the officers said that one of the best things about the ship is that nobody has an ego here, and I really think that’s true. AND people from like every single country are all on this one ship and it’s so cool to see the diversity.

Yeah, I’m just really excited to be here and really eager to try everything out. Living conditions aren’t that bad, except that it gets REALLY COLD at night and the blankets aren’t really sufficient enough. I usually wake up because it’s too cold and it makes it so much harder to get out of bed -__- another thing is that communicating is so hard on the ship since we can’t use phones or internet, so we just have to rely on running into each other. I really do wish I could’ve gone to Costa Rica and sailed through the Panama Canal with everyone; because when else are you going to have such an awesome opportunity right? Oh well, I guess, just gotta make the most out of what I’ve got. But this is such a good once in a lifetime opportunity and I’m super glad I’m doing it, yippee! :D

Other cool military vocab: Berthing (dorms); Head (bathrooms); Galley/Mess Deck (dining area); Muster (meetings)

Day 0: The Waiting Game

Ever since 9 pm on Thursday until 3 PM Friday, it’s been a waiting game to get onto the Comfort. I flew from SD to LA to Miami, then finally to Port Au Prince, Haiti. We met up with some people from the Navy at the airport and waited about an hour before we left to wait for the bus, which took about another 30 minutes. When I got to the airport, I asked when the next flight of people was coming in, to which a Navy person responded “fifteen hundred” …lol. We got to the port and waited for about another hour or so for the boat to take us to the Comfort. We ended up getting to the ship around 3 PM, which wasn’t that bad considering some people have been waiting in the heat since 8 AM.

My first impression of Haiti was that it was exactly how I expected it to be lol. It actually looks like a very pretty and cute place, always super sunny outside (except it’s like 125 degrees and extreme humidity -__-) with tons of trees and plants. There were people on the streets living in really broken down wooden shacks and tons of broken down tents grouped together. There were a few people running around barefoot and people really DO carry stuff on baskets on their head!