COMM0014 Blog Post 1- What I did on my “vacation”

Back when my husband and I were young and had disposable income, we took some pretty awesome vacations.

A safari on the Serengeti and Ngorongoro crater and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.

Scaling the Sydney Harbour Bridge as eight lanes of traffic and two rail lines raced along almost 60 metres below us.

We had a thirst for adventure, and we were lucky enough to be able to quench it by packing up and going almost whenever we wanted to.

For the past four years, as we tried to grow our family, vacations took a back seat. We were still prepared to pack up and go at a moment’s notice, but this time, doing so would to be on someone else’s schedule, not ours. Our final destination on our journey to parenthood would take us to Haiti to adopt our son.

We travelled to Port-Au-Prince on December 3, 2013, after waiting almost 18 months for our adoption to be finalized. We had made one previous trip, in May of the same year. We had known of our son for over a year, but we had only gotten to know him over the course of 6 days and the monthly email updates we received from his caregivers.

Arriving in Port-au-Prince and driving up into the mountains where the crèche was located, I had the delicious butterfly feeling you get when you’re venturing into the unknown. This time, however, there were no safety harnesses to help us if we stumbled, and no guides to show us where to step. Travelling to Haiti was not a “vacation” in the classic sense of the word. Sure, we got to do some vacation-type things while we were there, like playing on the beach and souvenir shopping in Pétionville, but the overall tone of the trip was not restful or relaxing — it was more like a first date. We were all getting to know one another and figuring out our new roles: mother, father, son — family.