Great News!

I have had some personal accomplishments!! Are you ready for this?? I ate a quesadilla that had both green peppers and onions on! Actually there was a tiny bit of cheese and a small piece of chicken on each section of quesadilla- so mostly those gross green peppers and onions…except that it wasn’t horrible! Not GOOD, but not horrible. I’ve also been trying to eat the coleslaw, cucumbers, lettuce, peas, and a few other veggies that I do NOT like at all! I’m getting better…I might be able to eat a few more veggies once I get home!  haha…anyways This past weekend I hung out with Raymon, Whitney, and Kory. It was a lot of fun! Everyone else went to Dangregia. We started out Friday night with some intense games of Killer Uno (can’t wait to teach you how to play) then we watched “The Rescuers” that movie is really funny! I haven’t watched in forever! After the movie-Raymon started poking me so Whitney and I attacked him. We ended up tickling him and running all over the house! It was so much fun-he was jumping over banisters to try to get away from us- oh my gosh! SO much fun!! On Saturday, we went to Xunantunich. It is a Mayan site, that I have already been too, but the other hadn’t- so I went again. They asked me to lead them-so I pretended to be a tour guide. It was hilarious; some of the things I told them really were true, but I made most of it up. We were laughing so hard. Then we went to this resort and went swimming for a few hours; we played extreme volleyball, haha! After swimming, we went to dinner at Sister Kay’s. Since there were only a few of us, she made yummy tortilla’s, beef, and delicious potatoes! Then she had rice pudding-it was the best I have ever tasted, I need to get the recipe from her. All of us were pretty tired but we wanted to do something fun. The boys were just hanging out and I decided that I wanted ice cream. I asked Whitney if we could go to Cayo Twist. She came up witht the most brilliant plan. We blindfolded the boys and led them to Cayo Twist and bought ice cream for them. Trying to get them to come with us and trust us was crazy- and I was leading Kory- he is about 6’ 7” so VERY tall…and I was trying to control him- hilarious!!! After ice cream we played some more killer uno and then I really wanted to do Karaoke! Raymon came out and he asked me to sing “Hakuna Matata” with him. Then Whitney and I sang “I won’t say(I’m in love)” from Hercules and “I’ll make a man out of you” from Mulan. Raymon ended up filming us-it was so funny, we stood on a banaster-Raymon and Kory were laughing so hard! After these, Raymon and I sang “A Whole New World” together- haha..good times!
Yesterday, we had our first Leadership Seminar. We talked about healthy perceptions and important leadership characteristics. It went so well. It was exciting to see them actively participate in each discussion and feed off other’s input. We had sixteen students! Twelve ended up traveling from Belize City to come. We brought one from San Ignacio and the rest are from there in Belmopan. It is exhilarating that everything is working out and the students are so engaged! The class that we are teaching here in San Ignacio is full of significantly younger students (ages 14-16) and I don’t think that they have the same interest level or motivation. They are more here to have fun and don’t want to be learning or in deep conversation. We will see how the classes this week go. If they aren’t interested then we may try to do a different program that meets their needs and will keep them out of the street at night- just not focusing on our Leadership stuff.
Well that’s me the past few days!! Love you all….I would love to hear from more of you! Thanks to those of you who have written me letters or emails.

Look Two Posts!!! :)

The beginning of this week has been really great! On Monday, I was able to go to Succotz and help with Square foot Gardening. We are building them at a school and they will use the food grown to improve their feeding program. The guy who was suppose to bring shovels and tools wasn’t on time and we couldn’t get a hold of him on the phone, so Whitney and I went around to different houses asking for shovels to borrow. We didn’t think we would find one because people just kept saying no. Then we stopped at one house that I didn’t really think would have one, but I was hopeful; and they ended up having two- so we started to turn the dirt. The man in charge, at the school, made the frames. We dug some holes to mix the dirt with germinating soil and then poured that mixture into the frames. It was kind of sprinkling the entire time so it felt really nice. We couldn’t really do a lot more because we didn’t have chicken wire to wrap around the gardens to protect the plants..we started to clean up and we tried to hurry because we saw that a storm was coming in really fast. We didn’t make it though. Luckily, the school had a covered area. The Dixon’s (a member of the HELP Board of Directors and his wife) were here visiting, they were afraid to get wet so they wanted to sit and wait the storm out. We told them that is wasn’t going to stop any time soon- but they insisted; so all of us volunteers went out to play in the rain. It was a lot of fun. It was raining so hard. Within about five minutes, the streets were rivers, the grass field was a swamp, and an unfinished house had a floor of water. We jumped in puddles in the house, raced sticks down the street rivers, and then ran to the swamp field. We were doing softball slides, and sliding on our stomachs when a few locals came out to play some soccer. We joined them. It was full contact soccer- anytime you would try to switch directions you would slip, really fun!! It was also really hard because when you try to kick the ball it doesn’t really move because the water stops it. Definitely the most challenging game of soccer, but the most fun also!!! On Tuesday, I stayed home and worked on Leadership camp stuff. Everyone on the team, who got food poisoning, also came down with some sort of cold. Since being sick I have had a very sore throat, on Tuesday it turned into more of a cold. I had really bad headaches for most of the day. By night time I was feeling better or so I thought...it came back really bad on Wednesday. This was the last night that the second wave of people would be here. Sister Kay made dinner and brought it to our house because we couldn’t fit 27 people in her small home. We had a small talent show and took pictures with everybody. It was a really good night!! On Wednesday, we got up early to see off all of our friends.  It was sad!! But our house is so much quieter and less cluttered. Whitney, Calvin, Kory, and I went to Belmopan to give our first Orientation Meeting to the participants of the Leadership camp. It went so well! I was in charge of talking the students about expectations. I told them our expectations for them and then I asked them to tell me their strengths. I then asked them about what they want to get out of the seminars. Their expectations met exactly with what we were planning on teaching! I am so excited that there is actually a need here and I am helping to work on it! After leaving that meeting, I felt so keyed up for the actual seminars to start. I officially took over the finances on Wednesday because Melissa left that morning. I went through with Raymon and combined everything and found out exactly how much we were spending on each project. I am very excited to do the finances. I really enjoyed doing it. Today I stayed home because I was really sick still from yesterday-I couldn’t breathe and my head was killing. My entire body was just aching. Anyways, I had a great night’s sleep and was feeling a bit better. I worked on a bunch of logistics for the team, team secretary stuff, and finished up all the finances that I could! I love it!!!

Dear Blog Readers,
This past week was crazy! We were all ready for our Business classes and we traveled to Belmopan to teach but none of our students showed up :) We’ve been thinking about different ways to advertise and keep in touch with our participants more frequently up until the classes. So we are trying again and will hold the classes the second week of August. On Wednesday, I went to Belize City to pick up our last four volunteers. It was a long day the airport because the first girl came in around 10:00 am and the other three didn’t come until almost three o’clock! But we (Calvin, Krysta, and I) just talked, read, and slept, while we waited. When we got home everyone in our house was really sick with stomach cramps and diarrhea. Thursday morning when I woke up, I was feeling great one second and then all of a sudden, I was really really sick! I had to cancel my plans for the day- I went and told Raymon that I was sick and he decided that it was food poisoning since everyone got sick within a two day period. We figured it was from the potato salad that Sis. Kay made for us on Tuesday night. So I was sick from that for a few days- along with the rest of our group. I just worked on stuff around the house and slept. For the weekend a lot of people went to Mountain Pine Ridge. I haven’t been feeling very adventurous lately- I just want to chill and relax from a long hard week. So Raymon, Whitney, and I stayed in San Ignacio. We went to the market, I bought a bunch of movies and some more shorts. Then the rest of the day we worked on stuff for the team, watched a movie, and took naps. 

Expressive Arts Camp

This past week I traveled to Belmopan everyday and worked at an Expressive Arts Camp. There were five groups: Singing, Drumming, Dance, Drama, and Recorder. I was in charge of singing. I had one of the other volunteers (Whitney) assist me in teaching. She helped me A LOT..couldn't have done it without her! Anyways...so we taught five groups of about ten students so between 40-50 kids between the ages of 5-10. We worked really hard all day! I don't think I could ever be a teacher- at least not elementary school. The kids are super cute but totally crazy :) I didn't really have a voice at the end of the week. On the last day we had a performance where all the parents came and watched what the kids had learned. I taught the kids Popcorn Popping and we also learned I just can't wait to be king, from the Lion King. They did SOOOO good! I was a proud teacher-I felt like the kids were my own. I was kind of sad to see them leave. But it was fun!!!

Vacation update

My vacations for the past few weeks have been awesome! Three weekends ago we were able to have our three day weekend for working six weeks. Our team chose to go to Caye Caulker. We rode the bus to Belize City and stayed with the Dunfords for a night and then rode a water taxi out to the Island. It was amazing!! I can’t even explain how beautiful and peaceful it was. We stayed in a resort called Tropical Paradise and it was right on the beach. We had a private dock (for the resort) and our room was loaded with AC! We had it blasting and we slept with blankets! I loved it  So much fun. For the first day we kinda just hung out on the beach looked at some shops, laid out got burned and tan. We enjoyed every minute of it. The next day we went snorkeling all day. This was my favorite. I almost got run over by a sea turtle. I was about an inch away from it. I was surrounded by and I touched a sting ray and an eagle ray. The ocean is amazing. After that stop- we went to a new location and saw so many different types of fish and coral. I practiced diving down under while still trying to breath- it was hard at first and my tube would fill with water and I couldn’t breathe but I soon got the hang of it again. Then we rode over to another Island called San Pedro. It is very similar to Caye Caulker but much more touristy and busy. We went there for lunch. We were looking at the menu and noticed that there was a pool. So we went swimming-they waiter came over and took our order from the pool- it was so cool! We kept playing until our food was ready. We hopped out and ate; so relaxing. I had this tropical bbq or teriyaki type burger. There was pineapple and marinated chicken-yummy! After lunch we went back out to the reef. We went to Shark and Ray Alley. We swam with tons of sharks. Our tour guide tossed food to the sharks to have them all come right by the boat, then we all jumped in, I was about a foot away from a bunch of sharks- I dove down under the water and it was one of the most remarkable experiences underwater for me! After swimming with sharks he took us to some coral gardens. We went a little out of our way and found two manatees. This was one of Raymon’s life goals: to swim with Manatees…so he was super excited. We got to just snorkel around and look at all the coral and fish while our tour guide cut up fresh fruit for us. We ate it on the boat and then we headed back to Caye Caulker. We were exhausted! We went to dinner later that night and I had some amazing sea food. The rest of the time we pretty much just hung out- it was Jake’s birthday that Thursday: Melissa and I planned him a birthday party. We did party hats, those blower things, and we had Sis. Kay make a cake that we snuck to the island without Jake knowing. It was a lot of fun also.
The weekend after a few of us worked at a health fair. Chris, Jacob, Melissa, Dominique, and I went to Punta Gorda. It is in the southern part of Belize. We were able to do some house visits in different villages and take vitals; after we had their results we would tell them how they could improve their health whether it be by eating more fruits and veggies or exercising more. So that was pretty cool. I always love helping Collet at his health fairs.
Since we worked at the health fair that Saturday, we got to take a three day weekend. On the next Friday night, Jake, Melissa, Chris, and I went to some Mayan sites. The first one we went to was about a seven minute drive from San Ignacio towards the Guatemalan border; it is called Xunantinich. There were amazing temples that we climbed all the way to the top and took some awesome pictures. I loved exploring them and trying to picture people there so many years ago. Xunantinich seemed more of the “downtown” area. It was where the temples were and the markets or plaza’s. I couldn’t really see how anybody would actually live in these places. I’m sure that they would have just lived around them in areas that had not yet been excavated. We then went to another Mayan site called Cahal Pech. This is just up the street from our house- about a five minute walk up the hill and we are there. It was incredible. There was a lot more to explore and I could actually picture people living there. I could imagine them living in one section and then walking over to the market. The four of us were discussing what would have happened to have them all just leave their home. It is very interesting!
The next day most of our team went to Tikal. This is an astounding area. It is located in Guatemala and we had to get special permission from the HELP Office to travel outside of Belize. The temples were huge. We hiked through the jungle to get to many different sites. We were able to see the temple that is shown in Star Wars. There have actually been a lot of movies with parts filmed in Tikal. You should look on the internet to find pictures of Tikal- soooo mind blowing!
This past weekend we were suppose to go to Mt. Pine Ridge. This place is full of pools, waterfalls, and rocks to jump off. Part of my team has already been but we were all going to go again except we go hit by a tropical depression. It rained for two days straight and everything shut down for the storm. So we played a bit in the rain, watched the world cup, played games, and watched movies. It was a super chill day and nice not be traveling or working- we got to just hang out with everyone. I enjoyed it a lot.

Well, I wrote that last week and so this past weekend we got our three day weekend again..yay! We went to Caye Caulker again and we just chilled- I didn't spend very much money and it was just very nice!