He has tailored his syllabus to meet the demands of Project Health—from the first day, his students repeated phrases such as, “Eske ou gen manje pou tout mwa?” or, roughly, “Are you running out of food at the end of the month?”

Carré also makes frequent reference to the social context in which the basic Creole phrases are used in Haiti.

“Over there, it’s a poor country, so people are not always fine,” he says, explaining the ambivalence of the standard responce to “How are you?”—in Creole, it translates as “I’m hanging in there.”

Taking a Break

Those who enter into the world of breakdancing this summer will most likely have less precise goals of what they intend to get out of it.

Like many who start out, Taeho D. Lim ’02 said he was initially “overcome by apprehension” about getting into the breakdancing scene.

“I came from a background that was all white,” he said. “I had no idea about urban culture at all.”

Nevertheless, he swiftly became skilled enough to co-head the Harvard breakdancing club during his time at college.

Staying in Cambridge this summer, Lim has made it a point to encourage Harvard students to join bi-weekly practice and performance sessions, in which dancers from MIT, Boston College and Tufts are also involved.

“At the back of my mind, I think breaking is someting that should go on at Harvard,” he said.

This has not been the case of late. Lim said that he and his co-heads allowed the club to dwindle for the last two years because of busy schedules.

But Lin said he hopes that over the summer, undergraduates with more time on their hands may get into the scene.

By announcing the breakdancing sessions over Harvard’s summer email list, he says he has gotten a small number of students interested.

They will be joining a group of serious dancers good enough to participate in big breakdancing battles, the next one taking place this weekend in Rhode Island.

But newcomers are encouraged, not intimadated, according to MIT senior Jerome D. McFarland, who co-heads the MIT breakdancing club, and is instrumental in keeping the inter-collegiate coalition going.