The Tinii

It's plural for Tinius, because we said so.

Monthly Archives: September 2013


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A Kitchen Conversation

“What’s that smell?” -April

“It’s the meat I just put on the stove. It smells bad, right?” -Allison

“Uh, yeah. That happens sometimes.” -April

“Should I throw it away?” -Allison

“I’m not sure” -April

“Hey, Josh come smell this meat.” – Allison

“That smells like seafood.” – Josh

“Should I throw it out?” – Allison

“No! Don’t waste that!” – Josh

“Maybe if I cook it long enough it won’t make us sick. I mean, it sort of smells like when you slaughter a deer in a stuffy garage.” – Allison

“It happens and sometimes we eat it. We take meds for worms every few months anyway.” – April

“Well, I’m cooking my pasta in the sink water instead of the filtered stuff so if we get sick we just won’t be sure what it was and I won’t kick myself for eating this meat.” – Allison

 

FYI….we ate the meat and didn’t get sick. I’m going with the “it’s so fresh it smells like a newly slaughtered deer” theory.


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We finally sold Willy!  We definitely have mixed emotions about it selling.  It is really disappointing that the guy who delivered our boat from TN was a month later than he said he would be.  It also sucks that our rudder broke and pushed us back another three weeks.  It also sucks that we cant afford to keep it stored over the winter while we are in Haiti and keep going next summer.  At the same time, I am really glad that we don’t have to worry anymore about trying to sell the boat from another country.  Its nice to have money in our account and to know that it is no longer going to be slowly disappearing in slip fees.   Thanks to Jaqui and Captain Crunch (see earlier blog post) and Allison’s parents it all went down without a hitch.

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We have been living in Haiti for about a month now.  We came here a few years ago right after the earth quake so we knew already that we really like it here.  We have been getting along great with the family that we are living with/ working for.  We really dodged a bullet with that one…

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View of Haiti from the roof.

Last week we took a trip down to the Irish Embassy for Scott’s birthday.  I was really confused at first, the way they talked about it, I thought that we were going to an Irish restaurant in the Irish Embassy in Haiti…  Turns out they just call the local Irish pub the embassy as a joke.

After enjoying our delicious fish and chips, and bangers and mash (we actually ate burgers) we were approached buy this German guy named Stefan.  “Hello” he said “I have a proposal.  If none of you have any moral, ethical, religious, or political objections I would like very much to buy you a drink.”  None of us had any objections, but we did have to go pick up Scott and Aprils kids from work (the kids work for some friends at their pizza restaurant) so we really didn’t have time.  However, before we could even respond the waitress brought out 6 beers and 6 gin and tonics…  My first inclination was that he had slipped something in the drinks and was was planning on taking advantage of us all monetarily (and lets be honest probably sexually too).

He said that he just wanted to have a conversation about economics.  When we asked him what he did for a living he slapped himself in the face repeatedly and then sniffed his armpits.  When we asked him how long he has been in Haiti, he slapped himself in the face and sniffed his armpits.  We decided pretty quickly that unless we wanted to wake up on the side of the road in Port Au Prince we should probably head out quickly.

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Quick Update

Moving off of a boat is hard work. Moving off of a boat and into your parents house is hard work too. Moving a boat full of stuff into a house, then into four 50 lb bags + 4 carry ons is just ridiculous.

That pretty much sums up the lack of blogging.

After moving off of Willy, we stayed with my parents in Alabama for just over week before we flew off to Haiti.

People kept asking if we were excited/nervous/etc and we were just too busy to process any real emotion. We had to pack and clean the boat, organize all our stuff, and then repack it into four 50lb bags. Talk about downsizing. Honestly, I was pretty curious to fly out of Dothan! I’d never flown from my hometown’s airport so that was a pretty strange experience. There were only two TSA employees and of course at 4am we were disoriented enough to hold everyone up. Josh had packed his guitar full of Clif bars and Fig Newtons so they had to check that out. “I don’t know much about guitars but that looks weird,” the TSA lady laughed as she opened his guitar case.  Besides checking out our awesome packing techniques, they had to check  Josh and my Target bag of red tag candles for explosives. Then I forgot to take my laptop out of my bag. Pretty sure everyone hated us.

The flight to Haiti was quick and uneventful…which is what every flight should be.

Once we arrived things were much less chaotic than the last time we were here (which was Easter of 2010). The airport has been redone and we got all our luggage quickly and easily.

April was there waiting for us and I’d stalked her enough via social media that I felt like I was meeting a friend – not someone I’d never met with whom I was going to be living for the next 9 months. In retrospect that should have been more nerve wracking. What if she’d been a weirdo and we were stuck with her?

Luckily, we’ve fit right into life in the Salvant house. The kids are pretty much amazing. Each of them have such fun, unique personalities and so far we see promise in a few as amazing Nertz players.

April and Scott have a home that’s really easy to feel … well … at home in. Here’s hoping we haven’t made ourselves TOO at home.

We’ve also met the kids at New Hope a few times. I’m really looking forward to getting to know them all better. I think once the school year gets started we’ll be spending more time over there hanging out!

Speaking of the school year, we’re going to be starting this week so say a prayer…the Salvants have entrusted their children to The Tinii….