a little lull in the craziness

Hello my dear followers!

Sorry it has taken me more than two weeks to write ... unfortunately, I think it only gets busier from here. The last two weeks have been pretty relaxing, the weekends have been fun and restful. But now we're getting into a lot of work. And it just keeps getting hotter. It started raining a week or two ago and we did not see the sun for DAYS, so it was nice and it cooled down. But, we started hearing these sirens in the distance. They sounded like tornado or hurricane warnings, but it was not raining that hard, so we were not sure what it could be. Then my host mom informed me that the dam that keeps the river low and generates our electricity is cracking. If it busts, we lose power and the river rises, flooding downtown [do not fear, I live no where near downtown]. But a few days later, the sun reappeared and has not left us since. So I may be out of power for a while if it does break, but these sunny skies ensure we are in the clear for now.

This coming weekend, we have a few fund raisers in the works - a car wash, a jewelry sale and a "dollar day." Then Saturday one of Martha's friends offered to drive us to some waterfalls south of town. Cross your fingers because this is Belize and plans never work out, but hopefully I'll be getting some good pictures this weekend!

The weekend after this coming one, I'll be going to Tobacco Caye. I think I mentioned it before, but it's about the size of a football field and right on the reef. So that's awesome. The weekend after that will probably be my last weekend of travel. I was hoping to catch up with Kristin and Jenna in Honduras in late July, but it is way too expensive to get there from Belize. But June 9-13, I'll be going to Tikal and then to Antigua in Guatemala. I'm so excited!!

On to my work: we added another kid to tutoring this week. He is 6 years old and was found sleeping on the street. He ran away from home because his aunt is really abusive. His mom works on the Cayes during the week, so she is only home on the weekends and does not know what her sister is doing to him. So he is short term until they talk to his mother, but a crazy situation and hope that he can get out of it.

I'm also a part of the Feeding Program at Cornerstone. There is a room downstairs that has four large picnic tables and bookcases full of books and art supplies. Every lunch during the school year, kids who can't afford to buy lunch come to Cornerstone to eat at our feeding program. The room, however, looks quite gross. there's random patches of paint everywhere, one of the bookcases is falling in on itself, so we decided to fix it up. There's a group of 23 volunteers coming in a week and a half and they offered to buy paint and do anything Cornerstone needs them to do. So, we'll be cleaning it up and repainting and making it look awesome for kids in the future. I think our summer camp that is starting up in July is also going to be using that room, so it will be nice to have it all fixed up for the kids.

Well, that is all for now! I will try to get more pictures up soon, maybe of my children or of Cornerstone or my house ... or all of the above! Pictures take a long time to download, however, so maybe just one of the above.

Love love love!

Note to my future roommates: we'll be eating GOOD when I come back from Belize. My host mom taught me how to make BOMB flour tortillas! So yummy. :)