Well, Mirlene is going home this weekend to prepare for her wedding so I will have a different interpreter. His name is Stanley and he will be giving me and two other people creole lessons also. Todd & Donna Schmidt are the missionaries here in Oriani. They have been here since July and know some creole already but will be taking the class with me. Lessons start tomorrow. I have studied a bit from a book here but know very little...
    On Saturday it was Christina's birthday and we celebrated by going to the ocean. It is about a 2 1/2 hour drive from here. We left about 11:00 and stopped at a market and got lunch partway down. We went to a part of the beach that has a pier but very few people. After playing in the water a while and walking along the beach Keith found a man who had a boat and would take us for a ride if we wanted. It was not a large boat but the 10 of us easily fit. It had a motor and a very old fashioned looking oar was lying in the front of the boat. We never had to use the oar but the motor worked fine. We rode for a while then explored a small village where it seemed the main livelihood was fishing. There were several men making a net and others attaching fish hooks. One man was stirring something in a big pot over the fire. I don't know what it was, it looked like pretty good sized shellfish of some kind. Then we headed back in the boat. Partway back a couple people bailed over the side of the boat to do some swimming out in the deeper part of the ocean. We turned a big circle in the water then came back and picked them up. They let us off a little ways further down than we were originally at a part of the beach where there are natural springs. The spring water was cold but worked wonderful to wash some of the salt off before heading back home. We had stopped in a town partway down the mountain at a restaurant and told them how many of us there were and what time we would be back and they had a delicious hot meal waiting for us. Fried chicken, fried plantains, rice and beans and a sauce to go over them and macaroni salad.
    Yesterday we got a call about a lady coming in to the clinic with seizures. Turns out it wasn't true seizures but I'm not sure what it was. All of her vital signs were stable but this lady wouldn't talk to us. We sent the family members out of the room and then she did answer some yes and no questions but would never tell us what was really wrong. We gave her some IV fluids then sent her home with some vitamins etc...
    Today we had a baby come into clinic very dehydrated. We couldn't get an IV on him so finally put an NG tube in and gave him some oral hydration and eventually were able to get an IV. By the time the clinic closed he had had close to 2 liters of fluid altogether and was at least able to cry. At first there were two of us trying for an IV at the same time on different extremities and he hadn't made a peep.
   Ok... 'Til next time...