Egg to the face

As I sit in my bottom bunk reflecting on the passed few days, I think about horses, balls, and microwaves. I have never had good luck with microwaves: I conduct sparks by putting metal in one, I gave myself 2nd degree burns on my hands Freshmen year, and set diapers on fire, at work. Well, this microwave is tricky, here in Haiti. The watts depend on the source of the electricity: city's electricity or the Wing's generator. We hardly ever have it in the morning to conserve as much energy as possible. This microwave situation doesn't start on Wednesday morning... it dates back to Sunday, October 23rd. We ate brunch which turned into luneer. We went to a nice restaurant after church. We were kindly seated and chatted with our friends: Stephan, KC, Jess, Kerin, and Geoffry. The topic of conversation usually is food, when  it comes to Ashleigh and I. So we were trading quick fix breakfast items. Ashleigh enlightened me on the art of a zip lock omelet and we talked about my breakfast of  choice, egg in a frame. I explained how to poach an egg in a microwave and KC chimed in saying that we have eggs back at home and we are welcome to eat them. I had something delicious to look forward to, besides the hamburger that I ordered. Well, after an hour and a half of waiting on our meal, we finally dug in because we had only communion bread for breakfast so we were on the famished side. Ashleigh ordered a fettuccine pasta with vodka sauce that was to die for. Everyone else ordered egg type entrees and a soup was served. I ordered a burger with fries. This burger was special though. It was the best hamburger I have ever had in Haiti, on October 23rd, 2011. It filled me up and satisfied my cravings for beef. A couple of days had passed and the thought of a poached egg lingered in my brain. I went downstairs on Wednesday to see to my delight, the power was on! I grabbed my materials, cracked the egg in a mug, placed a "Happy Birthday" plate over the mug so it wouldn't make a mess. I nuked it for 30 seconds, just like at home, took it out to see it was hardly different. I put it in for another minute or two and waited patiently. I heard the glorious beep and rushed to put the egg on my toast. Ashleigh was happily eating her PB and N toast, well as happy as one can be after missing the Alcindor special. I ripped apart the hard poached egg and to see it was still boiling around the yoke. I brought it close to show Ashleigh the neat scientific discovering. As we both we marveling over the boiling point of a yolk, it burst into shards. Ashleigh let out a screech and frisbeed her toast across the kitchen. I, for some reason, had little to no reaction and stood there, with the "Happy Birthday" plate still at chin level with egg particles decorating my face. I slowly placed the festive plate on the table and tried to collect myself as Ashleigh said, "I have heard of this happening before, but I have never experienced it." We started to clean up the egg pieces and found some that managed to make it into the fridge. That was the start of a great day. We went through the day asking kids about their emotions and then eating some lunch. After lunch, Ashleigh went to the hoop and shot around with some kids. I went up to ZINGO. ZINGO is a Haitian way of playing BINGO. But it involved a lot more yelling/screaming and grabbing/stealing yellow pieces of plastic to put it on your ZINGO card. Once I discovered my throat was sore from all of the screaming, I went to shoot some hoops with Pierre, Peterson, Ashleigh, David, and Tigga. We played two on two with a couple of extra permanent defense men. Monda, Titoto, and Jonas decided to get in on the action. The teams were set: Ashleigh, Katie and Titoto (Team America) vs. Jonas, David, and Monda (Team Haiti). We went to 30 and Ashleigh and I took those boys to school! We kicked butt and took names. Okay, we WON! It was a blast and we were sweating like hooligans after. After a little basketball, we served the kiddos and then got crazy insane with Shaun T! Today we had the privilege of going to horses with the some kids. It is such a neat experience watching these hyperactive kids calm down and really get into a trance while riding a horse. Most of them at least, Steve decided to gallop the horse around and took it out of the ring so his time was cut short. I really bonded with one horse, Rex. I have never felt comfortable around animals that could easily harm me or have taken a bite out of my Grandma Shirley's arm. That story always sticks in my mind when around horses. I was very surprised to feel so at ease walking Rex around the circle while he was so close to my tricep. Ashleigh's horse was not as mild tempered as Rex. Her horse kept pushing her around with his long neck. She, on the other hand, is very comfortable with horses and would push him right back, making me nervous. Even more nerve racking was Vivianne fell off her horse. But as the saying goes, if you fall off the horse, you have to get right back on it. She did just that, with a grin on her mug. I consumed our hoagie, jambone (ham), and butter sandwiches and went on our way back home in our chariot, the taptap. The taptap was having a rough day today and took many pit stops. One at the mechanic shop, a few going up the hill (unintentionally), and the last one to get gas. Mr taptap was thirsty. We are about to walk to the market to check on some souvenirs and then eat din din.