april 21st

I officially have a return date! I will be leaving Johnson City on Saturday, April 21st at 8:45am and arriving in Port Au Prince around 2pm the same day. I am very lucky to not have to spend the night in the airport again. I also planned to come home on Saturday, August 18th, around 9:30pm I think.

Ive been waiting to get back down there since I first went last summer and I am so excited its all coming together! I compiled a list of supplies I would like to take with me and an awesome family friend, Sarah Reed, pretty much did all of the work. She asked people to donate things from their craft cabinets at home that they wouldn't be using anymore and brought them all to me. I have gone through everything she collected and I don't really need much else. If you donated anything, I appreciate your help more than I can say. To come up with the variety and amount of supplies I have would have taken me so much time and cost a TON of money. I couldn't be doing this without your help. &Thank you so much Sarah! I owe ya!

In my down time I have to say I haven't been as productive as I could have. I am trying to learn French and Haitian Creole. I have the Rosetta Stone program for French so thats a little more structured. A friend of mine who is also in Haiti sent me a program similar to Rosetta Stone for Creole but its all verbal and I am definitely a visual learner. So, I get out my dictionary every morning after a read for a while and learn 5 words and try to use them, or at least think about them silently, throughout the day. I've made a bunch of note cards and I try to go through them at least twice a day. I know some words but putting them together in sentences will be a challenge.

Ive also tried really hard in my down time to learn new art related things. I already have lesson plans and things put together so Ive focused my time on learning to use wire, hemp, etc. to make jewelry, using oil pastels to make things, learning to use a sewing machine, knitting, melting crayons, all kinds of things. Hopefully this will help me come up with some creative and practical skills to teach.

For those of you who haven't heard from my parents, because I'm sure they tell everyone they talk to, I did get into graduate school in the fall. YES!!!! I found this perfect program last year, applied &interviewed, but only made the wait list. I reapplied for this fall and I guess they changed their minds. Its a Masters program at the University of Denver (Graduate School of Professional Psychology) for International Disaster Psychology. If you're interested, look it up. The professors are awesome &the topics I will study are exactly what I want to learn. So, Ill be moving to Denver, Colorado sometime in the first week of September. Orientation is on the 8th and classes start the 10th.

Im a little nervous to come home and move so quickly and start school. It will be a huge adjustment in so many ways. I will definitely need all the support and encouragement you have to offer because the next two and a half years are going to be very tough. But I am so ready to take on this challenge. It will make me a better person in more ways than one and Im excited to see who I will be by the end.

Again, thank you all so much for your encouragement and support!