just so you know, im a bit sensitive to haiti jokes. a woman i know, her daughter was in a town just outside port au prince when the quake hit. the daughters traveling companion hestitated to grab his laptop he was working on in their hotel room. that was literally a fatal mistake. by being those few steps ahead of him, the daughter got out as the building was coming down. her companion's body was recovered from the rubble today. a military transport will bring them both back to the states, hopefully in a few days. i cannot imagine what it was like for the person i know to not hear from her daughter for four days, not knowing whether she was dead or alive. and the trauma the daughter must be going through.
Its kind of strange how the human mind works. Its easy to feel saddened by a tragic event happening to a single person or a single family, even if its a stranger. A couple of days ago the newspapers said "50,000 Dead in Haiti." Today it said "200,000 Dead." To me those are just numbers and make me feel nothing. but seeing individual victims stories makes me feel sympathy. I saw on the news tonight where 53 Haitian orphans who were left homeless by the earthquake were flown to Pittsburgh today and most of them already have adoptive parents waiting to give them a new life in America. If there had been no earthquake those kids would still be in a Haitian orphanage and the outlook for their futures would be a lot more bleak than it is now. Seeing that story made me feel good for those children.
true. to me it was just numbers. until i talked to the ex-coworker and heard about her daughter. then it kinda hit home. true about the orphans. and the red tape for adopting in this country is unfreakinreal. amazing how that tape can be cut through under special circumstances tho. too bad it can be easier to adopt every day.
