Since I had returned from my Christmas vacation in the States, I had been tutoring some of the local school children typing on my old laptop that I had brought down especially for this project.  Most of the children were excited to get the opportunity to use a computer, but I could tell that their enthusiasm diminished with the non-exciting task of typing asdfjkl; over and over again (to be fair I download Internet typing games to supplement the lessons!)  The day before my scheduled interview, I received word from the local primary school teacher – via a third party – that the appreciated my time with the students, but they no longer wanted me to work with them, citing allegations against me that were untrue or taken completely out of context.  Anyone who knows me, knows how sensitive I can be, and this hit me harder than anything else.  Here I am, giving up two years of my life to work in Belize, and at that moment I felt unwanted and like a complete failure.  I began to seriously question whether I had it in me to finish out my service, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I had quit.  Loneliness was immediately added to the mix of feelings, as I realized that I had no true confidant around to express my feelings.  And although I normally call my parents when things go wrong, I felt it may be best not to worry them and wait until I became a little less… hysterical.

All the day before I had to go on Belizean national television and proclaim how wonderful Belize it, and how welcoming the people have been.

And it’s true.  Belize is wonderful, and the people in my village have been very gracious and kind towards me, but I just wasn’t feeling it that day.  But I put on my big girl panties and tried to get over any hurt feeling and resentment I felt.  I got through the interview like a champ, and I hope I represented Peace Corps Belize to their satisfaction.  The following day I decided to go spend the weekend with some of my friends up north.  This helped with my mental clarity more than any other possible conversation I could have had.  Two of my friends had gone through difficult periods, where their primary projects did not work out, and had to find different organizations or schools to work with.  It made me realize that I am not alone in this, and that it’s best to seek support from those that truly understand how difficult it can be here.  That’s not to say I don’t appreciate all the support from family and friends back home.  On the contrary, I’ve received some of the best advice and pep-talks, but until you live this life, no one can truly know what it’s like.

Thankfully, my life has readjusted and I’ve decided to just take it day by day.  Everyone is allowed to have a bad day every once in a while.  If I’ve managed to have only one really bad day since I’ve arrived in Belize, I’d have to say I’m living a pretty good life.

Without further adieu, my 15 minutes of fame (I come in at about the 45 minute mark, but if you watch the whole thing you get to see some pretty amazing Belizean commercials!)  http://vimeo.com/channels/78545#20533529

I decided to splurge and remodel my bathroom to include a shower, complete with hot water.  Partly because I wanted guests to feel comfortable staying at my place, but mostly because I want to shower without having to trek 25 yards across my backyard.  After consulting with my local “Jack of All Trades”, we compiled a list of everything I would need to move my sink and toilet and put in a shower, with hot water.  After two separate trips to Benny’s Hardware in Belize City, and transporting over 60 feet of pvc pipe on the bus, I can finally enjoy a hot shower in my own home.

It was quite a process.  I have to say, not having a necessary plumbing part, not having a vehicle readily available and not having a store selling said part within an hours drive makes home improvement projects really trying.  I will never again take for granted having a car and a Home Depot right around the corner. But three weeks and multiple leaks later I have a functional bathroom. Now, obviously I didn’t purchase a hot water heater.  That would just be crazy talk!  I use an electrical showerhead that heats the water in a little compartment.  Normal people would question: electricity and water? Those don’t go together! And normally I would say you are right, but if you use enough electrical tape to cover the exposed wire ends everything is fine.  Many Peace Corps Volunteers have the beloved shower shocker, and they claim that the electrocution that occasionally comes from this wonderful object only feels like tingles.  I can handle tingles.  Just as long as I have hot water for showers on those chilly 68 degree nights!

As I arrived at my friend’s beautiful little apartment the three of us girls immediately began hurrying to get ready.  It wasn’t until this moment that I forgot how much I cherish close friendships, and how isolated I sometimes feel in my village.  One of the best parts of the entire evening was fixing our hair, selecting our outfits, and putting on makeup.  It really reminded me of my friends back in the states.  We decided to head to the “fancy” (i.e. the most expensive) restaurant in Belize City for happy hour, and managed to make it with just minutes to spare.  We quickly drank our massive pina coladas and margaritas (and some tasty tasty french fries) before heading off to the BMAs.  Arriving in style in our beat up taxi, we entered the Bliss Center – probably the nicest building I’ve been to in Belize – and walked the “red carpet”. The show was scheduled to start at 8:00 p.m., so we decided to arrive at 7:45 p.m. so we could grab some good seats.  Well, as it turns out, like everything else in Belize, they didn’t start until 8:30 p.m.  They pulled the “tell them it starts a half hour earlier so they’ll actually be on time for the real start of the show.”  However, we’re Americans and therefore this memo never registered with us.  Needless to say we were one of the first people to arrive.

Now, my expectations going into this show, was that of something like a high school talent show.  Not that Belize doesn’t have any talented musicians.  On the contrary.  But I was still a little doubtful….  I was actually pleasantly surprised!  The acts were pretty amazing!  I think my favorite part about the musical performances were the positive messages in almost all of the songs about rising up against poverty and adversity and ending the violence in Belize City that makes headlines in the news on a daily basis.  So much better than American rap music about drugs, drinking, and whores.  The only downside to the whole show was the lack of participation from the music community.  Many of the artists receiving honorary awards or winning their category never showed up.  There was a lot of “I’d like to accept this on the behalf…” speeches.

After the show we headed over to Thirsty Thursdays to join up with the rest of the Belize City PCVs, for my first official night out in Belize City! I know, shocking, since I’ve lived here from almost a year! We danced, drank Belikins, ate street meat, and stayed out past 2:00 a.m.  It was a wild a crazy night – at least in comparison to my normal Saturday nights of my running, make dinner, and watching an episode or two of the West Wing before falling asleep at 10:00 p.m.  All in all it was a fun-filled night and the perfect way to say farewell to one of my closest Peace Corps friends.

Walking the red carpet at the BMA's with the host, Miss Belize

I'll miss you gyal!

Flash forward to my current situation.  I purchased my very own spinner.  What’s a spinner you ask?  It has a tub similar to a washing machine, but no center column, and kind of swishes your laundry around “cleaning” it.  It also has a little compartment that spins (hence the name) your clothes “dry”.

Now, not everyone in Peace Corps Belize uses a spinner.  There are those that have to do their laundry by hand in the river, beating it against a rock to get it clean (I kid you not!), while those living in Belize City have theirs washed by a laundry service at $20 per week.  There are the lucky few (or one?) that have a washer and dryer in their house, but then again they also have air conditioning in their bedroom.  What I wouldn’t give for a dryer to help my clothes regain their shape.  I swear my clothes haven’t fit exactly right since the first few weeks I’ve been in Belize. Maybe I’ll just bring ALL my clothes with me when I go home for Christmas…

Step 1: Separate laundry into piles: sheets, towels, whites, colors, darks.

Step 2: Gather buckets.

Step 3: Fill the buckets with water, from the faucet 50 feet away that is S.L.O.W. (It takes about 7-8 minutes to fill one 5 gallon bucket.) It takes about 3 buckets of water fill the tub, and the water needs to be changed at least 3 times, for a total of about 9 buckets of water.  Additionally, a large basin (whose purpose will be explained later) must also be filled.

Step 4: Pour water into tub.

Step 5: Add soap powder.  I’m too cheap to spend $40 on Tide.  I find Purex powder detergent sufficiently cleans my clothes.

Step 5: Add laundry and turn on machine.  Run for 15 minutes.

Step 6: While clothes are swishing around, I add fabric softener to my largest basin filled with water.

Step 7: When my laundry is finished “washing”, I must pull them from the soapy abyss, wring them out and throw them in the black basin.

Step 7: Rinse clothes in basin.

Step 8: Place clothes in spinner basket, put on plastic cover (to prevent excess rattling??), and spin clothes “dry” for 5 minutes.  This leaves clothes “dry” in the Belizean sense, but they are basically as damp as when you pull clothes from a washing machine before throwing them in the dryer.

Step 9: When the machine is finished spinning, remove clothes and hang on line.  In the hot Belizean sun, sheets literally dry in a matter of minutes.  But you always have to be careful during the rainy season when it can spontaneously burst into a torrential downpour!  And thanks to Conway for hanging a clothes line for me, which means I no longer hang my laundry to dry on the barbed wire fence.

Oh, and for those of you who wonder “Where does the water go?”  Well, the huge gap in my front door (that is never to be opened) that I incessantly complained about is the perfect size to fit my little hose!

The Belize District held its celebration on Thanksgiving Day in Belize City, at the home of Pat and Keri.  I began my journey Thursday morning by heading over to Heather’s house to bake one of my fabulous dutch apple pies.  I soon realized that I didn’t have a rolling pin to roll out the crust, so I thought back to how my host mom would roll out tortillas with a beer bottle, and I headed over to the nearby gas station.  Clearly you cannot roll out a pie crust with a full bottle of beer, so I cracked it open at 9:45 a.m. and enjoyed a tasty Belikin while I finished preparing the pie.

Around noon we headed over to Pat and Keri’s and joined the rest of the group in stuffing ourselves until it physically hurt.  There were about 14 of us in attendance, including our beloved taxi driver, Mr. Gomez – however, rumor has it the Hoff made it to Punta Gorda’s Thanksgiving, so our celebrity status was outdone. Every imaginable traditional Thanksgiving food was there: the stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese. Although the 15 lb turkey was the main event, the highlight of the meal was the chocolate dipped chocolate made by Allison, was the highlight of the entire day!  After dinner, the men sprawled out on every available comfortable space, while the rest of us chatted and caught up on PC shush.  Heather and I headed back to her place around 7:00 p.m. where she productively edited on some reports for work, while I fell asleep.  Thankfully, I set my alarm for my 9:00 p.m. phone call home, and promptly fell asleep afterwards until morning.

The next morning I made my way to Yo Creek, a small village outside of Orange Walk Town, and the location of the northern districts’ Thanksgiving.  I was the last one to arrive at George Lebard’s house.  George was a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Yo Creek 30 years ago who started the Agriculture High School and ended up marrying a local women.  He and his family live in the States, but they have a beautiful home in Yo Creek that he let us graciously use.  It was wonderful spending time with so many people that I rarely get to spend quality time with.  And if I’m being honest, I think the north has some of the best chefs in Peace Corps.  Plus, we were graced with the presence of some of our favorite Peace Corps staff: Matt, Daniel, and Stanley.

I ended up staying the night at George’s house (in one of the 8 beds) with about 7 other people.  (There may or may not have been some late night binge eating of pie…) We all woke before the crack of dawn to catch the 5:50 bus – with blaring Reggaeton music – to Orange Walk, were most of us were helping some fellow volunteers work a chess tournament.  I (foolishly) volunteered to man the face painting booth.  Earlier that morning I was practicing my rainbow, flower, and cat face painting skills, but I knew I was in trouble the minute the first kid asked for a king chess piece to be painted on his face.  I spent 4 continuous hours painting multiple chess pieces on every inch of space on every participants’ face.  But, I managed to keep a smile on my face, and really enjoyed seeing so many kids (there were about 80) excited about chess.  I finally made my way home, collapsed on my bed, and remained there for the duration of the nigh

Sunday was spent sitting around watching tv in our rooms on the third floor of the lovely Garden City Hotel with other volunteers from the Cayo, Belize, and Stann Creek districts, as our curfew was 2 p.m.  After our last consolidation for Tropical Storm Matthew, which amounted to about 20 minutes of showers and sunny skies, most of us weren’t taking this consolidation very seriously.   This time, the category 2 hurricane was heading straight for our evacuation point.  Around 7:30 p.m. is when things started getting a little crazy and the power went out.  When the storm picked up, all of the volunteers came out of our rooms to check out the storm that had finally arrived.  We ventured down to the open-air veranda on the second floor to have a more “hands on” experience of the storm.  When we finally went back up stairs, we noticed the ceiling of the “ballroom” violently moving up and down.  In aw, we stood (in the adjoining hallways) there wondering if/when the roof was going to collapse.  We went back to our rooms, and when the eye of the storm was approaching, and the winds picked up even more, hotel security moved us to the second floor.  With not much else to do, I went to sleep.

In the morning, while everyone was assessing the damage to their homes (the roof of the restaurant next door was completely blown off), I spent the day in the Peace Corps office with air conditioning and wireless internet and feeling quite guilty for my luxuries while so many people were suffering.  After some communications with people back in my village, I found out that Landing was safe from the hurricane with little more than down trees.  Tomorrow I get to return home and be thankful for what I have.

It was entirely in Spanish.

A couple of things I got out of this experience: 1) Spanish when spoken really fast by Israeli facilitators is really hard to understand 2) my reading comprehension of Spanish is exceptional and 3) if you at least look like you’re paying attention, you’ll fool people into thinking you understand way more than you actually do.

A major component of this workshop was working on a team project in which we create an innovative tourism package, complete with a presentation at the end.  With Diana and I put in separate groups, I became a little anxious, and on the first day I definitely held back on participating with my group.  By the second day I began to try communicating with my group members, but would become flustered and frustrated when I couldn’t eloquently translate my ideas into Spanish without sounding like a 3^rd grader.  I became friends with some of the Belizeans in my group – who speak English – and had them translate my ideas to the rest of the groups.  I later figured out that while all the Belizeans spoke English, almost all of the Guatemalans did not.  My group’s tourism idea was a four day tour between Guatemala and Belize that included stopping and at Mayan tombs, canoeing on the Mopan River, and staying each night at a different resort.

We also got to take a field trip to Xunantunich – a Mayan ruin in Succutz near the western border.  We went, not as tourists, but rather as observers of how the site and facilities are run and make notes of any recommendations on how they could improve their services to guests.  Plus almost everyone had visited Xunantunich multiple times in their lives. (I secretly went as a tourist, as I had never been and had been wanting to go!)

Surprisingly, I felt that information I obtained from the workshop will be quite useful for implementing certain projects with the Community Baboon Sanctuary and the other community groups that I work with.  Surprising because I had a hard time following the facilitators, but thank goodness for extremely detailed PowerPoint presentations!!!  I’m sure I missed a ton of useful information that wasn’t on any slides, so hopefully Diana got that information!

Oh, I almost forgot about the food!  We ate lunch every day at a resort within the adjacency zone, and it was amazing!  I even had steak – granted it was about ¼ inch thick and definitely not medium rare, but it was the first steak I’ve had in 5 months and it was quite tastey. Turns out all the meals were Guatemalan, and Diana found the food to be slightly less than okay – she was really hoping for some stew chicken with rice and beans! All in all it was a really enjoyable week where I made new friends and learned to communicate outside my comfort zone.

Activities for the kids included nature walks where they got to see monkeys and learn about the medicinal purposes of plants, arts and crafts projects using recycled materials, and presentations on local animals and ecosystems.  They also listened to a presentation from APAMO (Association of Protected Areas Management Organizations) on the dangers of offshore oil drilling in the barrier reef and other protected areas in Belize – a very hot political topic right now.  But the highlight of the first week was the final day where the youth attended different leadership workshops.  The purpose of the day was to learn about the qualities of effective leaders and how they can be conservation leaders in their communities.  The day culminated with painting of “no littering” signs to be posted in public areas within the different villages.  However, the first mistake Diana and I made was thinking they could complete this activity in their village groups – there were just too many people for all of them to effectively contribute to the activity.  Our second mistake was thinking they could get it done in 1 hour and 45 minutes – this was just plain ridiculous!  Some of the teenagers came back the following week to finish the signs, and it took them the entire week.  They were very meticulous with their painting.  Our third mistake was using oil paint – NEVER AGAIN.  Never ever, EVER use oil paints with large groups of children where the only effective means of cleaning up messes is with gasoline. And with gas at $11/gallon in Belize, we had to be very stingy with our limited supply.

Some of the high school-aged youth came back the following week to volunteer as “junior facilitators”, allowing them to put into practice the leadership skills they learned the week prior.  As previously stated, some of the junior facilitators also finished painting their signs.  Since we were very limited on space, I offered up my house for the painting.  By the end of the week, I felt like I had 8 adopted teenagers living with me.  On the plus side, they swept and mopped my house every afternoon.

The younger children were much easier to entertain, but just as loud and rambunctious as the older group, particularly in the evenings after camp had ended.  A handful of the attendees had to wait around for an hour of so for the bus to come back around to take them to their villages.  With the older crowd, we could mostly leave them to their own devices, but the younger kids had to be entertained, and that was exhausting.  Thankfully we had some junior facilitators stick around at the end of camp to help play games.  We found music to be an easy distraction for the kids.  Unfortunately, leaving teenage girls in charge of music selection meant that Shakira’s “Waka Waka” song was played on repeat for almost an hour.

Summer camp culminated with two field trips, the first to Shipstern Nature Reserve, Sarteneja, and Wildtracks (a manatee rehabilitation center) with the older group, and then to the Mayan Archeological site, Altun Ha, with the younger kids.  I learned that while taking a group of mostly teenagers on a trip, they will always find something to bitch and complain about no matter how much fun their having.  And yes, it was a 3 hour drive to our destination, but the constant stopping for snacks, bathroom, stretching, etc. was almost more than I could tolerate – and I’ve gone on multiple road trips with my parents who feel the need to stop ALL THE TIME.

The younger children were much easier.  I think they had fun climbing the different temples.  However our guide was just plain awful!  With more then 50 children ages 5 to 10 on the trip, we made sure we brought plenty of chaperones – the last thing I needed was missing child or one that falls off the top of the Sun Temple.  Our guide would not let any of the chaperones assist the children in climbing the very steep stone steps (sans railing).  When the junior facilitators stepped in to help against his order) because many of the children were to scared to go by themselves) he began making a series of inappropriate comments and using some vulgar language.  Needless to say, the National Institute of Culture and History got a pretty nasty letter from Diana and I.

So, I would have to say the two weeks of summer camp was a success.  There were no fights, minimal tears, and I think they might have had some fun while learning.  The biggest success, however, is that I now “know” over 150 new people in my community!

I had to leave my house Saturday at 4:00 p.m. to make the 6:00 p.m. meeting on Sunday, and will be returning home on the 12:00 p.m. bus on Monday.  Welcome to my life.

Friday afternoon we got the message to be on alert for possible consolidation because of the possible tropical depression heading our way.  After watching the news and saw that it was heading north of Belize I figured I’d be staying home this weekend.  I got the call Saturday morning at 8:30 that we were to consolidate in Belmopan.  Crap!  The next bus wasn’t until 3:45 p.m., so I was all ready to call the Peace Corps to see if I could get a ride, when my host mom mentioned getting a ride with my host cousins to Belize City. 

So at 11:00 a.m. I hop in the car with my two host cousins, uncle, and mom.  My host cousin was driving, and for as long as I’ve been in Bermudian Landing I assumed that he was maybe 14 years old – guess he’s older than I thought.  As we approach the junction with the Northern Highway (where there is a police checkpoint), my cousin pulls the car over to the side of the road and switches with his father.  Guess he’s not in fact old enough to drive!  So I made it on the bus and to Belmopan without any problems and arrived around 1:30 p.m. – and I was not the last one to arrive!

At 3:30 p.m. we got word that the storm had shifted and was heading straight for Belize City and that as of 4:30 p.m. we would not be allowed to leave our hotel.  The rain had started coming down, and because there’s no drainage system in Belize, the roads began to flood.  My night was spent watching NCIS and House marathons.

The next morning I awoke to sunshine and dry roads.  I am thoroughly amazed as how quickly the lakes that formed on the roads just disappeared.  After all was said and done, I would say that Tropical Storm Alex was a bit dramatized.  It didn’t seem much more to me than some heavy rain.