Haiti Trip - 8Nov09

Our first trip to Haiti started on Sunday, Nov 8.

This initial trip is a fairly new step in Haitian adoptions. The purpose is to meet the kids, file paperwork for immigration at the US Consulate and sign paperwork with a Haitian judge.

Derk's Dad drove out to pick up Eildert and Owen around noon, then the two of us took off for Chicago's O'hare airport. We planned for a little extra time to make sure we were there on time and that was a good idea. We ran into slow moving traffic on our way through Chicago. However, our plane ended up being delayed by about a half hour because the flight crew for our flight was on another flight that was late coming in. After a late lunch on the road, we weren't ready to eat when we boarded the flight, but by the time we landed at 11:20pm in Miami, all the restaurants were closed and we couldn't find any vending machines, so we had a meal of cheese crackers with peanut butter.

We tried a few spots in the airport to settle in for the night since we had already decided that it wasn't worth leaving the airport, paying for a cab and a hotel, then returning and going through security again. Between the time updates every 15 minutes over the loudspeakers, A/C running on high and lack of benches without armrests, it was a long unconfortable night.