City Power, woo hoo!

Apparently, city power hasn't reached CWH in over two months as a result of hurricanes, so they've been running on a generator that whole time (which costs a lot of money in fuel). Tonight, Chris was telling Matt & I how we're low on power because of all the people that are here (CWH has 8 students this week for a filter technician training course). A few minutes later, we walked outside and saw the indicator light on that let's Chris know that city power is on. We checked the batteries that store power for this place, and sure enough, they were almost fully charged...sweet deal.

As I mentioned, there is a Filter Technician Training class this week, which is where all of my time has been going. It teaches people how to successfully launch and maintain a biosand filter project, which is what NJIT's chapter of Engineers Without Borders is about to do, so this is very helpful. It's taught in Creole, which makes it rather difficult, but Leslie and Chris have been helping me out with translation as we go, and I've picked up a handful of words along the way :).

I know I've had quite a bit of steel talk in my past posts, and you're probably not interested, but I just wanted to let you know that we got the steel yesterday from the steel puncher in Port-au-Prince, and it's awesome. No plasma cutting or grinding required...just grab some pieces and get welding.

Chris, pleased with his fresh cut batch of steel.

I realized that with all of the pictures I've posted, hardly any have been of Chris & Leslie's daughter Olivia, whom entertains us often...and as you can tell...she's adorable. So, here's a shot I snapped today of Olivia sitting on a common Haitian made chair.

Too cute, wouldn't you say?

Ok, last couple things before I sign off here. Matt & I met a guy from an organization called AMURT (www.amurthaiti.org), and we were invited to visit their operation in which they have quite a few neat projects going on. So, before we head up to Milot on Monday, we're leaving early Saturday morning to head to Gonaives, and will be staying there for the weekend. It will cut some time off our trip to Milot, so it works out nicely in that respect, too. Gonaives is where the hurricanes did some serious damage recently, killing hundreds of people. I know the area is in bad shape, so I guess I'll get to see what it's like first hand.

By the way, for those of you that leave comments, I try to comment back on your comments sometimes, so check back to the ones you leave...I may have responded :).

Thank you, come again soon.