Sunday, December 20, 2015

La Fouchet restaurant Port au Prince Haiti

Magda with shrimp and fried plantains.
American friends of mine in Haiti occasionally talk about the ‘Embassy restaurant that has sushi.’  I finally got to go there, and was surprised at how close it is to the house I stay in when I fly in and out of Haiti.  Apparently the residents go there often, but had never mentioned it to me!  La Fouchet is located on Blvd. 15 Octobre, Tabarre 43, near the US Embassy and the large MSC construction store.  It is on the property of a hotel/apartment complex called Executive Villas.  Park and follow the sign back to the restaurant.  Seating is open air under a roof and by the pool.  The vegetarian Caterpillar Rolls were excellent (California roll with avocado, cream cheese, and tempura onion).  I also had passion fruit juice and flan for dessert.  My friend had a shrimp dish with fried plantain and ice cream.  They also have breakfast, steak, burgers, pizza, pasta, and some Mediterranean dishes (for the Jordanian UN?).  Prices were reasonable for a nice meal.  Service was fast for Haiti!  I would definitely go back, especially after almost 2 months of rice and beans.  
Look for the entrance on the corner.

Walk past the little apartments or hotel rooms.

Caterpillar roll and passion fruit juice with pool-side seating.
Flan

Sushi and dessert menu
The restaurant
Pool rules - what is the one above the wine glass?

Monday, December 7, 2015

Birding with the cave children

Antillean Mango posing for the kids.
Last year I taught in a small village that sits away from any roads and is a 20 minute walk from my house.  I don’t know if any foreigners pass through except to go to a nearby cave.  I forget how we fell into teaching in the yard of Goyo, the man who owns the cave (JeanJean always mentions that he owns some of the cave too!), but last year Louiders and I went to his house weekly to give one hour-long ecology lessons to the kids.  We recently began lessons again, and I decided to do something that seemed likely to be chaotic – take the random assortment of 30 kids, aged 2 to 18(?) years old, birding!  We had been taking the orderly elementary school classes at UCC out birding, so had some practice (see this post).  Birding at three in the afternoon also seemed risky, but we tried it anyway with great success.  The children shared the seven binoculars (thanks to everyone who donated them!).  We didn’t see many birds, but a hummingbird hung out with us long enough for us to see its curved beak indicating it was an Antillean mango, and black stripe indicating it was an immature male.  These pictures show the kids having fun!
Showing the little one how to use binoculars. The 2-holer in the background is what you think it is!


Stripe showing that this is a young male Antillean Mango.