Yesterday we were on a bus and these rules to live by were painted on the inside. We loved them and wrote them down and want to share them with you!
The Most Destructive Habit – Worrying
The Greatest Joy – Giving
The Greatest Loss – Loss of Self-Respect
The Most Satisfying Work – Helping Others
The Worst Personality Trait – Selfishness
The Most Beautiful Attire – A Smile
The Most Effective Sleeping Pills – Peace of Mind
The Biggest Problem to Overcome – Fear
The Greatest Shot in the Arm – Encouragement
The Greatest Natural Resource – Our Youth
The Most Endangered Species – Dedicated Leaders
The Deadliest Weapon – The Tongue
The Most Powerful Source in Life – Love
The Worst Thing to be Without – Hope
WELCOME ABOARD!
XOXO!
Jen-e & Tal-e-ah
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Half-way Point!! 3 week update!
May 24, 2010
Oh HEYYYYYY
Jenny and Talia here. We thought we would give you a little taste of how things have been going thus far… Kathryn has been a superstar with the blog but we thought we would give you another perspective!
We have just passed our projects half way mark which is pretty nuts! From our last post you know that we were heading to San Ignacio, Cayo District this week. We were wondering if it would be as amazing as our Project Director Kasey made it out to be – and it WAS! Even in our delirious state from the 3:30am to 8:00am bus ride from Corozal, we knew that Cayo’s reputation as the most picturesque district in Belize was true! The bus winds through mountains and hills of Belizean jungle that looks like it comes right out of a National Geographic spread!
Peer Ed this week was awesome! Jenny was in Sacred Heart College with Emre (‘Jemre’ as they are called) and Talia tagged along in the afternoons to start getting a feel for the Peer Ed Project which she will be starting next week! The students were very enthusiastic about the program and loved to participate, which made it so much fun to teach! The counselor at the High School was also very helpful and excited about keeping contact with us throughout the year to have a bigger and better week organized upon our return next year. Our work at the BFLA (Belize Family Life Association) also went really well. We are helping the nurse there organize an Open House on June 4th. Peer Ed will be leaving the Stan Creek District one day early to return to San Ignacio for the Open House. Our prep this week included making posters, inviting schools, and organizing the activities. Our goal for the day is to reach out to the schools in the community to help get the word about the BFLA as a resource out there and to make learning about sexual health fun!
In terms of the Teaching Project this week, it was one of the best districts we’ve experienced so far! The 5 schools that we visited were so welcoming and both the students and teachers were very eager to learn our material. Since Jenny and I are switching it up next week (I’m going to Peer Ed and she’s Teaching) she tagged along as well to watch the lesson plans in action! As always, Becca played lots of football (soccer) with the kids, even in the 40 degree weather. I was really happy that there was some softball going on during recess because there is not as much running involved (I thought I was adapting to this heat but maybe not). On the Friday we taught in a school in Benque, which is a village outside of San Ignacio. We bused there and although Jose (the District coordinator for Cayo) had advised us to cab to the school, we proceeded to walk to save some mula. BAD DECISION. It was SO hot, there was steam rising off the pavement. Eventually, we got there and it wasn’t as much as a hike as we thought although we had to seek out H2O!
During the week, the Hi-Et guesthouse became our ‘home away from home’. The guesthouse is owned by a local family who are some of the nicest people we have met so far. The girls especially connected with the mother of the house and are incredibly sad to leave her today. She saved Jenny’s life when the night before heading to Guatemala for the day to renew our traveling Visas, Jenny’s passport was nowhere to be found. You can imagine the panic that spread through the group, even Jenny who is always ‘even keel’ was starting to get a little nervous (an understatement of course). In a panic I even searched the fridge thinking that it may have gotten mixed up with the food. Our Hi-Et mama didn’t blink an eye. She calmed Jenny down and helped us move all of our things from the room to search. After about 20 min, Becca and Kathryn arrived on the scene and immediately exclaimed, “oh it’s in our room!”. GREAT! Well, we were happy that Jenny would be able to leave the country.
A few more stories from the week just have to be shared:
1) ANTS. Ok, I like sharing a room with Jenny. But, this is starting to freak me out. ANTS follow her everywhere. I think it started with all the candy she brought for her kit for Peer Ed. Once that first Starburst melted, she didn’t stand a chance. They were on her like wild fire. And some of these little guys are even FIRE ANTS. We were just walking along one time and Jenny started complaining about a stinging on her right chest. We just ignored her and moved on. It wasn’t until a few minutes later that she showed us the bites that we realized how bad these ants were. I had had an experience with them last week when they attacked my ankle and knew how painful they can be, so having them attack your chest would be a bit much to handle. They were HUGE and blood rushed to the top of the bites to give the illusion of bleeding. I was considering bringing her to the doc. She was brave and today the swelling has down…a bit. So the ants are in Jenny’s clothes, bags, etc. They are known as an extension of her. We are hoping that in Belize City this week there aren’t as many. Luckily our Hi-Et mama had ant spray which we used a lot.
2) Ok this is Jenny and I would like to share a story about Talia. We had this awesome idea to wake up at 4:30 AM and hike to Cahal Pach, a Mayan Ruin site just outside of town, to watch the sunrise. How Romantic! Little did I know that Talia doesn’t know how to set an alarm. We woke up to her ‘cricket’ alarm and started getting ready to go. Then she exclaimed, “GO BACK TO BED”. You could understand my concern when I could still hear music playing from the downtown area and we realized that we were on Toronto time. AKA it was 2:30 AM Belizean time. Back to bed we went. Cue ‘cricket’ noises at 6:30 Am Toronto time and 4:30 Am Belizean time. We got ready to go again and headed downstairs. We couldn’t get out of the guesthouse. The locks were too complicated. We went back to bed to hear a commotion coming from downstairs. Princessa and Duke (their dogs) had heard us trying to get out and had started barking like crazy. Then we heard people wandering around worried someone had broken into their house! We just sat there and listened. Go to 7 AM Belizean time. We decide to actually hike to Cahal Pech. There were many hills and a few wrong turns. We’re actually lucky we didn’t go earlier because we would have gotten lost for sure and would have just wandered around. It’s also rainy season here now so the sunrise would have been blocked by clouds. When we got to Cahal we realized that we had to pay ten dollars to get in to the site so we didn’t even see it. Good one.
3) The Outdoors. So we would both like to think that we are “outdoorsy” people, but I am seriously starting to question that statement. Talia screams. And by scream I mean a gut wrenching noise that sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard before. Example: hiking in the Jungle, she came very close to stepping on a snake. WAHHHHEJEJEJKSBJDKFJKLEKLEJKJKD SK! I had a heart attack and thought she had been bitten. But no, but it did “come really close to her” as she will tell you. Example 2: Swimming in the River. This is a great way to cool down after a long day of teaching and our extremely sweaty shirts. Besides screaming when ANYTHING touches her, including twigs, she managed to get taken down by the rapids and screamed and flailed the whole way down. I was killing myself laughing as her long limbs floundered and I just saw her head bobbing and heard the killer scream. I felt bad laughing and was relieved when I saw her grab onto a rock on the side of the river to stop herself from getting pulled further down. She was also convinced that there were crocodiles in the area we were swimming and kept sketching out.
4) Jenny and Animals Part 2. BIRDS. There are a lot of them in Belize. Jenny hates BIRDS. They are one of the things that she most fears in this world. On our Belize Zoo visit, we had the extreme privilege of meeting Sharon. The founder of the zoo and the subject of a book about saving the Scarlet Macaws of Belize, an endangered bird here. Becca is reading this book so Sharon invited us into the Macaw cage to help feed them. Everyone was really excited except Jenny. We had to coax her to step in and shaking the whole time she managed to stay while we fed them. The whole time she just stared with this look of terror at their clawed feet. She also let out a few screams during the ordeal. She’s really proud of herself though and we think she’s starting to make progress! Good for you Jenny!! She was also ecstatic when going through the zoo, literally 90% of the animals are birds (I’m being sarcastic if you didn’t notice). She especially loved the eagle that was the size of a large human. It looked like those hypogrifths from Harry potter. Its feet could definitely pick up one of us no problem. But, she made it through and did one thing that scared her, getting close to the Macaws! One man in the cage had to be like, “ARE YOU OK?” because the look on her face was hilarious and not normal. We took a video so stay tuned for that!
Ok if you managed to get through our entire ‘essay’ congratulations, GOLD STAR! As you can tell, project is going amazing and we are so happy to be here in Belize! This afternoon we’re heading to Belize City, we will write more after next week!
XOXO
Jen-e & Tal-e-ah
Oh HEYYYYYY
Jenny and Talia here. We thought we would give you a little taste of how things have been going thus far… Kathryn has been a superstar with the blog but we thought we would give you another perspective!
We have just passed our projects half way mark which is pretty nuts! From our last post you know that we were heading to San Ignacio, Cayo District this week. We were wondering if it would be as amazing as our Project Director Kasey made it out to be – and it WAS! Even in our delirious state from the 3:30am to 8:00am bus ride from Corozal, we knew that Cayo’s reputation as the most picturesque district in Belize was true! The bus winds through mountains and hills of Belizean jungle that looks like it comes right out of a National Geographic spread!
Peer Ed this week was awesome! Jenny was in Sacred Heart College with Emre (‘Jemre’ as they are called) and Talia tagged along in the afternoons to start getting a feel for the Peer Ed Project which she will be starting next week! The students were very enthusiastic about the program and loved to participate, which made it so much fun to teach! The counselor at the High School was also very helpful and excited about keeping contact with us throughout the year to have a bigger and better week organized upon our return next year. Our work at the BFLA (Belize Family Life Association) also went really well. We are helping the nurse there organize an Open House on June 4th. Peer Ed will be leaving the Stan Creek District one day early to return to San Ignacio for the Open House. Our prep this week included making posters, inviting schools, and organizing the activities. Our goal for the day is to reach out to the schools in the community to help get the word about the BFLA as a resource out there and to make learning about sexual health fun!
In terms of the Teaching Project this week, it was one of the best districts we’ve experienced so far! The 5 schools that we visited were so welcoming and both the students and teachers were very eager to learn our material. Since Jenny and I are switching it up next week (I’m going to Peer Ed and she’s Teaching) she tagged along as well to watch the lesson plans in action! As always, Becca played lots of football (soccer) with the kids, even in the 40 degree weather. I was really happy that there was some softball going on during recess because there is not as much running involved (I thought I was adapting to this heat but maybe not). On the Friday we taught in a school in Benque, which is a village outside of San Ignacio. We bused there and although Jose (the District coordinator for Cayo) had advised us to cab to the school, we proceeded to walk to save some mula. BAD DECISION. It was SO hot, there was steam rising off the pavement. Eventually, we got there and it wasn’t as much as a hike as we thought although we had to seek out H2O!
During the week, the Hi-Et guesthouse became our ‘home away from home’. The guesthouse is owned by a local family who are some of the nicest people we have met so far. The girls especially connected with the mother of the house and are incredibly sad to leave her today. She saved Jenny’s life when the night before heading to Guatemala for the day to renew our traveling Visas, Jenny’s passport was nowhere to be found. You can imagine the panic that spread through the group, even Jenny who is always ‘even keel’ was starting to get a little nervous (an understatement of course). In a panic I even searched the fridge thinking that it may have gotten mixed up with the food. Our Hi-Et mama didn’t blink an eye. She calmed Jenny down and helped us move all of our things from the room to search. After about 20 min, Becca and Kathryn arrived on the scene and immediately exclaimed, “oh it’s in our room!”. GREAT! Well, we were happy that Jenny would be able to leave the country.
A few more stories from the week just have to be shared:
1) ANTS. Ok, I like sharing a room with Jenny. But, this is starting to freak me out. ANTS follow her everywhere. I think it started with all the candy she brought for her kit for Peer Ed. Once that first Starburst melted, she didn’t stand a chance. They were on her like wild fire. And some of these little guys are even FIRE ANTS. We were just walking along one time and Jenny started complaining about a stinging on her right chest. We just ignored her and moved on. It wasn’t until a few minutes later that she showed us the bites that we realized how bad these ants were. I had had an experience with them last week when they attacked my ankle and knew how painful they can be, so having them attack your chest would be a bit much to handle. They were HUGE and blood rushed to the top of the bites to give the illusion of bleeding. I was considering bringing her to the doc. She was brave and today the swelling has down…a bit. So the ants are in Jenny’s clothes, bags, etc. They are known as an extension of her. We are hoping that in Belize City this week there aren’t as many. Luckily our Hi-Et mama had ant spray which we used a lot.
2) Ok this is Jenny and I would like to share a story about Talia. We had this awesome idea to wake up at 4:30 AM and hike to Cahal Pach, a Mayan Ruin site just outside of town, to watch the sunrise. How Romantic! Little did I know that Talia doesn’t know how to set an alarm. We woke up to her ‘cricket’ alarm and started getting ready to go. Then she exclaimed, “GO BACK TO BED”. You could understand my concern when I could still hear music playing from the downtown area and we realized that we were on Toronto time. AKA it was 2:30 AM Belizean time. Back to bed we went. Cue ‘cricket’ noises at 6:30 Am Toronto time and 4:30 Am Belizean time. We got ready to go again and headed downstairs. We couldn’t get out of the guesthouse. The locks were too complicated. We went back to bed to hear a commotion coming from downstairs. Princessa and Duke (their dogs) had heard us trying to get out and had started barking like crazy. Then we heard people wandering around worried someone had broken into their house! We just sat there and listened. Go to 7 AM Belizean time. We decide to actually hike to Cahal Pech. There were many hills and a few wrong turns. We’re actually lucky we didn’t go earlier because we would have gotten lost for sure and would have just wandered around. It’s also rainy season here now so the sunrise would have been blocked by clouds. When we got to Cahal we realized that we had to pay ten dollars to get in to the site so we didn’t even see it. Good one.
3) The Outdoors. So we would both like to think that we are “outdoorsy” people, but I am seriously starting to question that statement. Talia screams. And by scream I mean a gut wrenching noise that sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard before. Example: hiking in the Jungle, she came very close to stepping on a snake. WAHHHHEJEJEJKSBJDKFJKLEKLEJKJKD SK! I had a heart attack and thought she had been bitten. But no, but it did “come really close to her” as she will tell you. Example 2: Swimming in the River. This is a great way to cool down after a long day of teaching and our extremely sweaty shirts. Besides screaming when ANYTHING touches her, including twigs, she managed to get taken down by the rapids and screamed and flailed the whole way down. I was killing myself laughing as her long limbs floundered and I just saw her head bobbing and heard the killer scream. I felt bad laughing and was relieved when I saw her grab onto a rock on the side of the river to stop herself from getting pulled further down. She was also convinced that there were crocodiles in the area we were swimming and kept sketching out.
4) Jenny and Animals Part 2. BIRDS. There are a lot of them in Belize. Jenny hates BIRDS. They are one of the things that she most fears in this world. On our Belize Zoo visit, we had the extreme privilege of meeting Sharon. The founder of the zoo and the subject of a book about saving the Scarlet Macaws of Belize, an endangered bird here. Becca is reading this book so Sharon invited us into the Macaw cage to help feed them. Everyone was really excited except Jenny. We had to coax her to step in and shaking the whole time she managed to stay while we fed them. The whole time she just stared with this look of terror at their clawed feet. She also let out a few screams during the ordeal. She’s really proud of herself though and we think she’s starting to make progress! Good for you Jenny!! She was also ecstatic when going through the zoo, literally 90% of the animals are birds (I’m being sarcastic if you didn’t notice). She especially loved the eagle that was the size of a large human. It looked like those hypogrifths from Harry potter. Its feet could definitely pick up one of us no problem. But, she made it through and did one thing that scared her, getting close to the Macaws! One man in the cage had to be like, “ARE YOU OK?” because the look on her face was hilarious and not normal. We took a video so stay tuned for that!
Ok if you managed to get through our entire ‘essay’ congratulations, GOLD STAR! As you can tell, project is going amazing and we are so happy to be here in Belize! This afternoon we’re heading to Belize City, we will write more after next week!
XOXO
Jen-e & Tal-e-ah
Thursday, May 13, 2010
More News from Teaching!
The group of Peer Educators and Teachers drove all the way from Punta Gorda to Corozal Town, if you look at a map that's a looooong bus ride in a school bus! But it wasn't too bad, we're getting used the the bus seats and we're learning creative ways to fall asleep and pass the time.
When we arrived in Corozal we were so happy! Our guest house is right by the ocean so we went there right away for a quick dip. The water was so warm and it was great to be able to rinse off in the warm water. It's really rocky getting into the ocean so we looked so awkward trying to get in, I definitely got a couple injuries trying to get in and out!
Our guest house is great! There are 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms with a common room in the middle. The best parts are the wrap-around porch and the hammock. We spend our evenings reading (yes, I'm actually doing a lot of reading, I'm almost finished a whole book!) and writing on the picnic tables outside. The family that owns the guest house is great and they let us use their kitchen and they help us with directions all the time. We discovered a market around the corner from our hotel so we go there in the morning before school to buy fresh fruit and vegetables. It's all so cheap! Today I bought 2 mangos and 4 bananas for $1Bze which is about 50 cents American! We also take turns making dinner for each other. We've made stir fries and burritos and we cook in the kitchen and then eat dinner on the porch. It saves a lot of money and it's more relaxing than going out for dinner every night!
Teaching has also been going well. The schools aren't nearly as far as the schools in Toledo so we are able to walk or take taxis to all of them. They love playing with us and asking them questions. Today Talia and I taught a school how to play King's Court and they loved it! I had just taught them about how exercise makes your heart beat faster and one kid came up to me during the game and made me feel her heart so she could show me that she'd been running around! It was adorable!
Today was such a good day of teaching. The teachers in the school were sitting in the back of the classroom while we were teaching and liked our material so much that they wanted us to go over our lessons with them after school. They let the kids go home at 12 and they gave us lunch, it was a tortilla thing with cheese, beans and onion. They also gave us huge, cold cokes in glass bottles which taste amazing in belize for some reason....Anyways....we all sat around a table with all of the teachers from the school and explained to them how we taught our lessons and they were so interested. They liked our games and activities so we're going to email them all of our materials for them to use in the future. This is really exciting for us because it means that our lessons will be more sustainable which is a huge goal of QHO.
Tomorrow is Teacher's Day in Belize and I definitely appreciate teachers so much more now that I've been teaching for 2 weeks! It's so much work and it's exhausting standing and talking all day long, especially with the heat!
We are off to our next district this weekend, it's called Cayo and it's apparently the most beautiful district in Belize so we're all pumped about that.
I'll try and post another note at the end of teaching in Cayo, keep me updated on your lives so I don't feel too left out when I get home in 38 days!
Much love,
Kathryn
When we arrived in Corozal we were so happy! Our guest house is right by the ocean so we went there right away for a quick dip. The water was so warm and it was great to be able to rinse off in the warm water. It's really rocky getting into the ocean so we looked so awkward trying to get in, I definitely got a couple injuries trying to get in and out!
Our guest house is great! There are 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms with a common room in the middle. The best parts are the wrap-around porch and the hammock. We spend our evenings reading (yes, I'm actually doing a lot of reading, I'm almost finished a whole book!) and writing on the picnic tables outside. The family that owns the guest house is great and they let us use their kitchen and they help us with directions all the time. We discovered a market around the corner from our hotel so we go there in the morning before school to buy fresh fruit and vegetables. It's all so cheap! Today I bought 2 mangos and 4 bananas for $1Bze which is about 50 cents American! We also take turns making dinner for each other. We've made stir fries and burritos and we cook in the kitchen and then eat dinner on the porch. It saves a lot of money and it's more relaxing than going out for dinner every night!
Teaching has also been going well. The schools aren't nearly as far as the schools in Toledo so we are able to walk or take taxis to all of them. They love playing with us and asking them questions. Today Talia and I taught a school how to play King's Court and they loved it! I had just taught them about how exercise makes your heart beat faster and one kid came up to me during the game and made me feel her heart so she could show me that she'd been running around! It was adorable!
Today was such a good day of teaching. The teachers in the school were sitting in the back of the classroom while we were teaching and liked our material so much that they wanted us to go over our lessons with them after school. They let the kids go home at 12 and they gave us lunch, it was a tortilla thing with cheese, beans and onion. They also gave us huge, cold cokes in glass bottles which taste amazing in belize for some reason....Anyways....we all sat around a table with all of the teachers from the school and explained to them how we taught our lessons and they were so interested. They liked our games and activities so we're going to email them all of our materials for them to use in the future. This is really exciting for us because it means that our lessons will be more sustainable which is a huge goal of QHO.
Tomorrow is Teacher's Day in Belize and I definitely appreciate teachers so much more now that I've been teaching for 2 weeks! It's so much work and it's exhausting standing and talking all day long, especially with the heat!
We are off to our next district this weekend, it's called Cayo and it's apparently the most beautiful district in Belize so we're all pumped about that.
I'll try and post another note at the end of teaching in Cayo, keep me updated on your lives so I don't feel too left out when I get home in 38 days!
Much love,
Kathryn
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
News from the Teaching Project!
Hey everybody!
This is what the teaching project (Kathryn, Talia, Jess, and Becca) has been up to these days!
Thanks to Kathryn for writing these notes, take a look!
I'm in Belize as you might know and I've been here for 4 days now. The first couple of days we stayed on an island outside of Belize City to get adjusted to the heat and the Belizean life. The coolest part of that was we got to spend time on the beach and one night we found a rooftop yoga class during sunset; it was incredible! On Sunday we took a 7 hour bus ride to a town in the south of Belize called Punta Gorda. The buses in Belize are old school buses from Texas so the long bus rides are a little rough. We got into town late at night and we're staying in a hotel which is fairly nice, it has air conditioning which is a bonus! During the day we go to rural schools outside of Punta Gorda to teach. The first day we taught in a 3 room school all afternoon. I was a little nervous at first but I got into it by the end. We taught healthy living, drug abuse and puberty. The kids knew nothing about puberty so we had so much to teach them and they really wanted to learn about sex and condoms which is always fun to teach! The kids were pretty shy but they were so grateful that we came because they don't get very many visitors. We taught the same subjects at this school but I was more comfortable teaching this time. When we left the village they all followed us to the bus stop to wave goodbye which was so cute! I'm taking lots of pictures of the kids, they love our cameras and always ask us to take pictures of them so we can show them. We sometimes tell them you can't see the picture right away because they all crowd around to look! I have so much to tell you, but I'm having a great time. It's really eye opening to see the way people live around here and how people go to school, it's way more different than I could ever imagine! I'll keep you updated, hopefully every few days! Much love from Belize!
hey guys! so i've taught in 2 more schools since the last time i got on the internet. the first one was in a village called pueblo veijo (translation= old village). the school was small but we were able to each teach in one classroom all day. i taught in a standard 6 class which is the equivalent of grade 8 in Canada. it was sad because there were only 5 of them, kids only have to go to school until they're 14 and after that most parents don't let their kids go to school anymore because they need them to work on the farms. but i was able to teach them a lot, before i started teaching they thought HIV was a curable virus and by the end they understood that it wasn't. today we taught in a villaged called santa cruz. we got to the school really early so we sat around and Talia chased pigs around. there are pigs and chickens running around everywhere! the school was really small, there were only 3 classrooms so we were able to teach in all of them for about an hour and a half each. tomorrow is our last day in the toledo district. on saturday we're going to sleep in (we wake up at 5:15 every morning!!!!) and we want to see a couple waterfalls and explore the town a little bit more. i also want to eat breakfast at a restaurant. since we have to catch the bus so early we pack a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast and lunch everday (the bread we bought was super stale and gross) and we buy fresh fruit from the market. i really like the plantaines and the mangos, everything tastes super fresh! dinners are good here though. we go out to restaurants every night together and we haven't had a bad meal yet! on sunday we're taking a very very long bus ride to the most northern district of belize called corozal. it's going to be brutal but literally nothing is open on sundays anyways so it's a good day to travel. it should take about 14 hours and it's on a school bus. i'm going to take some gravol to try and sleep i think.... anyways all is well, update me on your life if you can, i don't want to miss out on too much fun stuff while i'm gone! much love!
This is what the teaching project (Kathryn, Talia, Jess, and Becca) has been up to these days!
Thanks to Kathryn for writing these notes, take a look!
I'm in Belize as you might know and I've been here for 4 days now. The first couple of days we stayed on an island outside of Belize City to get adjusted to the heat and the Belizean life. The coolest part of that was we got to spend time on the beach and one night we found a rooftop yoga class during sunset; it was incredible! On Sunday we took a 7 hour bus ride to a town in the south of Belize called Punta Gorda. The buses in Belize are old school buses from Texas so the long bus rides are a little rough. We got into town late at night and we're staying in a hotel which is fairly nice, it has air conditioning which is a bonus! During the day we go to rural schools outside of Punta Gorda to teach. The first day we taught in a 3 room school all afternoon. I was a little nervous at first but I got into it by the end. We taught healthy living, drug abuse and puberty. The kids knew nothing about puberty so we had so much to teach them and they really wanted to learn about sex and condoms which is always fun to teach! The kids were pretty shy but they were so grateful that we came because they don't get very many visitors. We taught the same subjects at this school but I was more comfortable teaching this time. When we left the village they all followed us to the bus stop to wave goodbye which was so cute! I'm taking lots of pictures of the kids, they love our cameras and always ask us to take pictures of them so we can show them. We sometimes tell them you can't see the picture right away because they all crowd around to look! I have so much to tell you, but I'm having a great time. It's really eye opening to see the way people live around here and how people go to school, it's way more different than I could ever imagine! I'll keep you updated, hopefully every few days! Much love from Belize!
hey guys! so i've taught in 2 more schools since the last time i got on the internet. the first one was in a village called pueblo veijo (translation= old village). the school was small but we were able to each teach in one classroom all day. i taught in a standard 6 class which is the equivalent of grade 8 in Canada. it was sad because there were only 5 of them, kids only have to go to school until they're 14 and after that most parents don't let their kids go to school anymore because they need them to work on the farms. but i was able to teach them a lot, before i started teaching they thought HIV was a curable virus and by the end they understood that it wasn't. today we taught in a villaged called santa cruz. we got to the school really early so we sat around and Talia chased pigs around. there are pigs and chickens running around everywhere! the school was really small, there were only 3 classrooms so we were able to teach in all of them for about an hour and a half each. tomorrow is our last day in the toledo district. on saturday we're going to sleep in (we wake up at 5:15 every morning!!!!) and we want to see a couple waterfalls and explore the town a little bit more. i also want to eat breakfast at a restaurant. since we have to catch the bus so early we pack a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast and lunch everday (the bread we bought was super stale and gross) and we buy fresh fruit from the market. i really like the plantaines and the mangos, everything tastes super fresh! dinners are good here though. we go out to restaurants every night together and we haven't had a bad meal yet! on sunday we're taking a very very long bus ride to the most northern district of belize called corozal. it's going to be brutal but literally nothing is open on sundays anyways so it's a good day to travel. it should take about 14 hours and it's on a school bus. i'm going to take some gravol to try and sleep i think.... anyways all is well, update me on your life if you can, i don't want to miss out on too much fun stuff while i'm gone! much love!
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