The sights and sounds

I can't believe we've been here a week. In some ways, it's been much longer, in other ways, it has absolutely flown by. As I sit here, there is a very distinct stinch that hits my nose. Josh says it's burning trash, but it has the smell of diesel fuel and some other things I've never smelt before. There is a buildup of sweat on my forehead as there has been every day from the moment I leave for the office until I get into the bed at night. The air is humid and heavy and has a hazy whiteness from the dryness and dust that vehicles kick up. I pictured Haiti being very flat, but the Port au Prince area is actually very hilly, almost mountainous. We've been getting used to the flow of the Food for the Hungry office and what our life will be like here for the next 2-3 months. I think our day-to-day routine will most likely change fairly often. At some point, I (alli) will be volunteering as a physical therapist at a local hospital. I am still waiting for confirmation from the person in charge of aid coming to that specific hospital. Josh dove head-first into his work in the office. He seems to be having to somewhat start from scratch in the planning and mobilization of his team, the "shelter" team. After spending several months collecting information about families that need transitional shelters before we got here, Josh is having to go back and do training in the basics and revisit some of these same sites to gather more information. Being out in the community has been a surreal experience for me, and I am not quite sure what I do or should feel about it. There are cars and people everywhere, even worse than Costa Rica (and I didn't think that was possible). There are collapsed buildings everywhere. Even where the buildings are still standing, there are taller-than-me piles of rubble on the sidewalk where they're trying to remove rubble from some other building that's down. I just can't imagine what must be going through the minds of the people walking around. I've heard that there is a sense of hope, and I truly do hope this is true. Yesterday, we drove past what used to be a 5-story, huge market place, and it was almost completely flattenned. The earthquake occurred at 5 o'clock, and I'm sure there were hundreds and hundreds of people there, buying food from produce vendors. I just can't, or maybe don't want to, imagine what a child thinks on their walk to school everyday when they walk past this building and their mom had been shopping. They walk past every day and think to themselves, my mom's is in that rubble somewhere. It's such a sad thing to contemplate. The only thing I can pray is that the Lord continues to give hope to the Haitian people. Please continue to pray!