friday in Jacmel

Eric, Francois and I (megan) left downtown PAP this morning on a van heading for Jacmel. Traffic was horrible, it took us over a good hour just to get out of PAP traffic. Once we did though, it was a smooth easy drive. When our van came to it's final stop, we hopped on three motto taxis in search of the Isaiah 61 guesthouse. It's a very nice (and fairly new) guesthouse run by Community Coalition for Haiti. After settling in and eating lunch... we were ready to house hunt!! We had three houses on our list, all of them in Cayes Jacmel, just a little east of here. The first two are houses that Francois found when he came here in December. Then when the director of Isaiah 61 heard that we were house hunting, she hooked us up with another connection for a house available to rent.  However, after much waiting and many phone calls back and forth... we were told that there was a demonstration going on in the streets, blocking the route to Cayes Jacmel. Apparently, the news of Aristide coming back to Haiti in March was announced today, so his supporters were celebrating/demonstrating in the streets. Though we were disappointed we didn't make it to Cayes Jacmel, we got to look at a house for rent here in Jacmel. It was in the process of being remodeled, and though it looks like a nice house... the asking price was way too high. We didn't bother trying to negotiate yet, although it was nice, there was nothing super impressive about it. It just didn't strike us. I think we're holding out and hoping that the house Francois has told us about will work out!! Our plan is to go check out the houses in Cayes Jacmel tomorrow, si dye vle (God willing).