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. :)