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. :)

Month One.

Whew. I'm in the middle of week 5 here in San Ignacio. A lot has gone down the past couple weeks. Deep breath. Here it goes:

So, the last weekend of May, I went on this incredible hike through a cave called Actun Tunichil Makal [ATM]. We left at 8 in the morning and got back at 5 in the evening. It's an hour drive to the cave and another hour drive back along with a 2 hour hike through the jungle to this cave. From there, you swim into the cave opening and the entire 3 mile hike through the cave you are at least ankle deep in water. Sick, right? It was incredible. Once we have gotten a few miles in, we start to climb and end up in this gigantic room filled with hundreds of pots. Seriously, like nothing I could ever explain. So beautiful. And so nice and cool down there, out of the hot Belizean sun.

This past week was a whirlwind ... and not in a good way. On either Wednesday, the three boys that we started tutoring just a few weeks ago were really acting up. They have never behaved so badly in our knowing them. We had planned a fun day, no math, just a little bit of reading and then games and a felt art project. But the boys refused to read, saying they just wanted to color. I had to kick them out because they were disrupting the other four kids who were actually doing their work.

The next morning, we came to tutor and the boys were no where to be found. The ladies at Mary's Open Doors finally came and told us that they had packed up that night and moved back to Belmopan, back to their abusive father. Their father had just gotten out of jail on Tuesday or Wednesday and the mom packed up as soon as she heard. The boys were really upset and that's why they were acting up, but they didn't tell us they were moving. I felt so sick in my stomach because we didn't get to say good bye, we didn't get to hug them, we were mad at them the last time we saw them. And now they have to go back to their terrible father and probably get it worse than they did before. It just makes me so sick and sad and scared and angry all at the same time.

Good news? I have a host family. I officially moved in last night. I'm living with a woman named Martha and if you've heard any of my stories of Alice, Martha is a hundred times as crazy. She works at Cornerstone, has six grown kids in Orange Walk [northern Belize], eight grandkids and a boyfriend in Placencia [coastal, southern Belize] that visits every two-four weeks. She's awesome, really. Her house is about 10-15 minutes away from Cornerstone, so we walk there together in the mornings. Seriously crazy, but wonderful heart. And for the first time in my college career, I have my own room!! Haha ... honestly though, it's going to take some getting used to. It's going to be weird not having people everywhere I turn ... but it will be good.

And finally, I went to Caye Caulker this weekend. It was gorgeous! But I got bedbugs. I got bedbugs in Placencia too ... those are the only bugs that have bit me here. And only on my legs. But seriously, I look diseased. They're everywhere. So nasty. But besides that, the water was beautiful, we could see the reef from the shore, and we just swam and slept and read all weekend. We were planning on snorkeling on Sunday before coming home, but the other two girls got too burned, so they didn't want to. I mean, honestly, I'm really bummed, but I would never regret a trip to the beach. :)

Hennyways, life just keeps getting crazier. Tomorrow, we're taking our original four kids to the zoo [I think I may be more excited about it than the kids ... and the kids are EXCITED about it!]. It will definitely be bittersweet because we have been planning the zoo trip for the other boys ... but there's not much we can do now. I also get my visa extended tomorrow! Woo hoo! And this weekend we're having a party for Martha's birthday, a going away party for one of the volunteers, Heidi, who has been here since February, and a car wash/jewlery sale to raise money for fun things like zoo trips and such. We also have good connections with the theater in town and are planning to take our kids to watch a Planet Earth on animals one day [another thing I may enjoy more than the kids].

As for travelling, there's an overnight jungle camping trip coming up, a couple days at Lago de Peten Itza and Tikal in Guatemala, a long weekend in Antigua in the works and I'll be meeting up with some friends in Honduras in late July. I mean, seriously. Come visit me. We will travel together.

Sorry so long, it's been a crazy last couple of weeks. I hope this is interesting to you all. Love! Hope your summers are treating you well!

And I'm almost done with 3 weeks here.

I'm just a few days from living in Belize for a month already. Is that crazy or what? Which means three months to go. Weirrrrrrrd. I'll be home before you know it. Which is cool, but I have so much I want to do still!!

This past weekend I went to Placencia with six of the girls living here. We left on Friday night and planned on staying til Sunday afternoon. But me and Talia ended up loving laying by the beach and reading so much, we stayed until Monday afternoon. It was INCREDIBLE!!! The water was so warm, it was like swimming in a big bowl of pee. [Sorry mom, that's the best way to describe it.] And there was no waves until about 2 or 3 in the afternoon so it was just crystal clear, warm water. AWESOME.

The tutuoring is getting a little out of hand. We took on three more kids who just moved to San Ignacio a week ago from Belmopan escaping a really bad domestic violence situation. There are three boys: Franklin, 13, William, 8, and Miguel, 3. We met their mother and hse is so traumatized she doesn't even speak. They all speak Spanish and it looks like the littlest boy doesn't know any amount of English and William can sort of get by -- however, he can't read or do math and all the numbers he writes are backwards. Add that to the chaos of the original four children and it is absolute craziness. They're all so beautiful [Miguel has this head of shocking blonde curly hair] and the biggest personalities, but they all are having immense problems learning.

This weekend we are planning a trip to "ATM" which is supposedly the best thing to do in Belize. It's a 10 hour hike/swim through a cave. Crazy, right? I'm really stoked.

Mmk I think that about brings it up to date. I love you all!! Hope your lives are going great.

To my brothers: CONGRATULATIONS ON GRADUATION!!!!! WOO HOO you did it! Now come visit me in Belize. :)

So I've been here a week ...

... And it's great. The weather: hot, wet, sticky, pretty miserable. On the hottest days all your energy is just sucked out of you. You can just sit all day reading a book and be dripping sweat. On those days, we go down to the river to cool off. This past weekend, I went to see the Xunatunich Mayan ruins on the border of Guate and Belize. They were pretty amazing -- if I can figure out how to load them on a computer with internet, I will as soon as I can. This coming weekend, a couple of the girls are planning on going to Placencia, which is on the coast, and just hanging out for the weekend. I'm so excited, it will be SO nice.

Oh my gosh, I haven't even explained where I'm living and what I'm doing!! My internship, Cornerstone Foundation, is located in San Ignacio, Belize, one of the largest cities in Belize -- even though its only 20 or 30 thousand people. It's eleven miles from the Guatemala border. I'm living in Cornerstone's volunteer house with nine other people. We all share one bathroom, one kitchen, four fans ... and it is so great. I'll be moving out within the month to live with a host family.

Right now, I'm tutoring four kids every morning: Michael, Monique, Shane and Alexis. Monique just turned 13 today and she is trying to manipulate me into buying sunglasses for her. "They're only 20 belize!" Oh heck no. They just moved here from Belize City to escape a domestic violence situation. Their mother has had to pick up night shifts to try and support her five kids (they have a baby sister, Tanisha, as well), so we take the kids for a couple hours to tutor since they can't start school until September. Monique is really smart and picks up on things very quickly. Alexis is just learning her alphabet, numbers and colors, so she is a lot of fun to work with because everything is new. Michael and Shane, at 8 and 11, still can't read. Shane is really quiet about it and Michael picks on him a lot, so that is hard to deal with. Michael refuses to do anything but simple math problems -- he's good at them, he doesn't want to try anything else. So they are great, but there are already a lot of struggles.

I think that is all the important things. I'll be starting work with the women's program in the next week, so that will be exciting and new. Updates on that in the future!

Oh, and yes, I have my bag. :)

Bienveindo a Belize.

Estoy aqui. FINALLYYYY!

I'm alive. I am warm. I am a little bit tired. Mostly, I am excited. I'm working out of an internet cafe right now, so I can't use my computer for skype. Just wanted to let you all know I'm alive. And GLT starts ... four hours ago.

Welcome to Miami.

Don't you hate when you write out a long story, hit "publish" and then it disappears? That just happened.

Basically, I'm in a gigantic hotel room for free (two beds - anyone wanna stay the night with me in miami tonight?!) and just ate a huge dinner for free. On to the bad news: Dallas airport was shut down this morning for an hour. My flight from Albuquer to DFW was subsequently delayed an hour, but my connecting flight to Belize (that was already cutting it close for me to connect to) was only delayed half an hour. By the time I got off the plane in DFW, I had 10 minutes to make it to my plane. I ran as fast as my little legs could carry me, but I could not make it. So I was re-routed to Miami so I could get an earlier flight to Belize City tomorrow morning.

Biggest problem here: where is my bag?

Did it get left in Dallas? Did it make it onto the Belize flight this afternoon? Was it able to catch up with me and go to Miami? The baggage claim person I talked to told me that it was probably in Miami and would be on my flight to Belize in the morning. Just to be on the safe side, I'll probably go early tomorrow and see if I can locate it. Otherwise all I've got is a computer, two pairs of shorts, a dress and a shirt. All of my clothes, important documents, and books for school are in there. All I'm sayin -- it BEST be in Belize City tomorrow morning.

Two days seems a little quick ...

So ... I'm home. And on Monday at like ... 5 in the morning, I'm leaving again. It's so weird, I don't really want to think about it. I went and watched a movie with my little brother tonight and I thought about all the people I won't get to watch movies with this summer ... sad. I know. Get over it, I'm going to Belize. But really, I'm going to miss home. A lot.

Roommates:
Beautiful women. I miss the craziness already. Well ... not quite. But I know I will as soon as I get on that plane. This semester was nuts, but it was made bareable knowing I would see you all at the end of the day and we could complain and/or laugh together. Micaela and Julia: enjoy your GLTs!! Megan and Rosy: enjoy being away from APU for quite a while ... I wish I could! and Ev: I will see you sooner than you know! Can't wait to live with you again!

APU friends:
You are all great! I know this last semester has been crazy busy so I didn't get to see a lot of you very much, if at all. But most of you are returning in the fall/spring, so we will be together again. Even if you're not coming back, we will NOT forget about each other and we WILL see each other in the future.

Gallup friends ... really more like family:
I miss ya, I miss ya, I really wanna kiss ya but I can't ... I love you all so much! I'm glad I got to see a few of your over spring break and hopefully I can catch some of you at the end of summer, but mostly I think I'll be saying see you at Christmas!! We will have a lot to catch up on ... :)

The real family:
Mom. Dad. Ben. Brian. I love you all. I will write and call as much as I can. As soon as I know my address for sure, I will let you know. I expect at least one letter this summer. Really, I will miss you all dearly -- but hey, with technology like it is, it will be like I'm right next to ya!

xoxo
gossip girl ... psssshhh I wish!!

Nettie