January 3: Smooth Sailing (Flying) [from 3:30AM to 6PM!!]

**Sorry guys! We have had limited access up here in Cap Haitien. Everyone is doing well. We have been doing some pretty amazing work, so expect the blogs to start rolling in soon!***

So, as you can probably assume via the lovely blog title, today was a LONG day of traveling. Grace, Brian and myself all woke up in Northern VA at 3:30AM to be at the airport for our flight from Dulles to Newark at 6AM. After a few hours of layover in Newark where we met up with Hannah and Melody, we then flew to Port au Prince and THEN from Port au Prince to Cap Haitien in the North of Haiti. Finally, we met with our community partner Gabie (of Sonje Ayiti - also on Facebook) and drove back to her wonderful house (where we are staying) and were ultimately at our destination at 6pm – a full 12hrs after leaving Virginia, can you imagine?

I have to say that despite the length of the travel, this was one of the smoothest, easiest and most enjoyable experiences getting to our destination in Haiti ever– and the whole team (which includes people who have been to Haiti several times) agrees. We had zero problems with flights and transportation – an unheard of occurrence – and some of our flights were even early, which is truly some sort of Haitian miracle. We're taking this as a good omen for what will follow with the rest of our trip :)

It was so awesome to see Gabie again. She is honestly one of the most amazing, genuine, cool, classy, inspiring people I have ever met, and seeing her face outside the Cap Haitien airport was such a great relief after a long day. It feels so familiar, for all of us I think, to be back, and to have such a caring friend waiting for us was just what we needed. So naturally, I ran up to her and gave her huge hug and she hugged me back just as hard because she's like that and she's great.

For Hannah and myself, this has been a tough year planning the trip and for things to finally come together and to finally have our feet on the ground is just such a wonderful feeling of success. I am so proud of us and SO thankful for all the help we have received from Gabie and from Emily (who we will meet up with in Port au Prince on Monday) along the way and finally the guidance and support we received all year from the team and especially Melody. 

We are exhausted but so excited to get started and hit the ground running with Sonje Ayiti at our side! Tomorrow we head to Bailly to do our work with prenatal education and exercise – get pumped!