You know you're on vacation in Haiti when...

...you drive 5-15mph through the mountains, weaving back and forth from one side of the road clear to the other, to avoid the worst of the holes. Still, you drive over a fair amount of large pot-holes.

...you are climbing up through the mountains and you see lots of buses and large trucks at the top of a distant hill. You come to the top of this hill and lo and behold there is a bus traffic jam. The colorful green and blue buses are blocking the way because some of them are broken down. In order to pass and continue on you have to squeeze through the mass of buses.

There is a space just wide enough for your vehicle to pass through- except, oh wait, it's actually not! As the Haitian guy directing you forward beckons you to continue you hear a loud scraping noise. Your vehicle is most defiantly scratched now- bad news. Good news- you made it through the road block (if not for the little opening you could have waited hours or even until the next morning for the bus to be fixed and out of your way). Thank you LORD!

...while in the car you look out the window and see people washing their clothes in the streams of water flowing down the side of the mountain. Every so often you turn your gaze away because some of them are not wearing any clothes. You see colorful shirts, pants, and bedding lying on the side of the road to dry. Some of the clean clothes are drying in the open dirt areas.

...later on you see a soccer goal made out of bamboo poles and a fishing net. How creative!

...when you are almost to the guest house where you will be staying, you stop at a gas station for a bathroom break. On your way out of the gas station you stop and talk to a U.N. officer- a lady U.N. officer with pigtails! Anyways, she offers to lead your caravan of cars to the guest house, via the short cut! Thank you nice lady!

...you pull up to the side of the road, it's dark outside. You get out of the car and smell the ocean. You look over the edge of the sidewalk and sure enough, there is the ocean, waves splashing up. You walk across the street to an outdoor restaurant and while you are eating you hear a loud thud. Whad'ya know- coconuts are falling from the trees.

When you leave the restaurant you hop into the back of the pick-up truck with a few friends. On the drive back to the guest house you watch the stars and talk about life in a foreign country. A little motorcycle pulls up next to you with not one, not two, not three, but four people on it! The Haitians smile huge smiles when they see blans (white people) in the back of a truck. You smile back and say "Bonswa!" They get even bigger smiles on their faces when they realize you speak their language :)

...you climb to the top of a mountain, then get a guided tour of a giant military fortress. You think the tour is awesome because you see old cannons and tons of cannonballs from thousands of years earlier. And you can touch everything! But then the tour gets even better as you climb higher and higher to the top of the fortress. The building seems to go on and on. You climb stairs higher still until you get to the top of the big stone fortress. Now you feel like you're on the top of the world- so what do you do? Naturally you get as close to the edge as possible to look over.

You look down, down, down (130ft down to be exact) and then back up and out over the beautiful green mountains. You sit in awe and wonder, taking it all in. And you don't want to miss this opportunity to sing praises to the Creator of it all. So you sing "Awesome God" and "Mighty to Save" as you gaze out over the mountains!