A Family of Visitors

     The start of the new year brought with it several visitors for us.  In fact, at one point we had two different visitors staying at our house at the same time!  Nevertheless it was a great time and a great experience.  We got the opportunity to visit with friends and share a little bit of our experiences with them while they got an opportunity to see a completely different culture and do some service work, sharing Christ's light in a very unique setting.
     Our first group of visitors was a family who brought down their 2 children, ages 10 & 12.  While it certainly was an adjustment going from 32 degrees to 82 degrees, I think they managed just fine--especially when it came time to visit the beach!

With Conejo students after craft time

      My friend is a certified teacher in the U.S. and so she was very happy to help in any capacity in a few village schools.  The first day we drove her and her 10 year old daughter to St. John the Baptist R.C. school in Conejo village where we spent the morning tutoring students.  After lunch we were able to share a craft project with the students.  The children in the upper and middle divisions made a necklace with wooden crosses and colored beads depicting various aspects of our faith.  One of the teachers enjoyed the project so much that he wanted to make a necklace for himself so I would consider that to be a success.

At the HOPE shelter work site

     While we were working with the students, my friend's husband and their son spent time working at a site to help construct the town's first senior center.  I think they quickly learned how labor intensive building projects can be here without the use of modern technology.  
     On the second day their children got the opportunity to visit our daughters' school for the morning.  Since they are similar ages to our oldest daughters, our friends were able to shadow the girls for the morning.  This was a unique experience for them, especially since they are used to dry erase boards, computers in the classroom, photocopied handouts for assignments and no uniforms.  They both enjoyed the experience and did very well with their visit.
     That evening even included time by a small campfire as we listened, played and danced to drumming by Emmeth Young, arguably the best Creole drummer in the country.

Doing the Harp Dance for us at Otaxha

     The last "work day" here we were able to tag along with another service group from St. Louis as we visited Otaxha, a more remote village near the Guatemalan border.  Several of us enjoyed helping with the craft and science projects that the group had planned while the boys certainly enjoyed playing soccer during break.  My friend's husband was also able to look at the school's computer lab which runs on a generator as they had several computers that seemed to not be running properly.  We were also privileged to have lunch in the principal's home where we got some more time to visit with the group and the teachers.  After lunch the students put on a large presentation to thank the group for their dedication over the past week.  The presentation included some great songs, ethnic dances, and even included a Thank You gift for each person.  We were very touched by this, especially myself and my friends who had only visited for just one day.
    One of the things that Andy and I notice about our privilege of living and serving here with our family is the unique opportunity that our children get.  Children experience the world differently than adults do and it never ceases to amaze me some of the experiences that our children get--experiences that we as adults could not have.  I was so excited that our friends decided to come and bring their children.  Of course school is important but I think that what their children were able to learn and experience in the last week was invaluable compared to what they could've learned in the classroom.  I know that these are experiences that they will soon not forget.  

Cleaning up the office

Wrote this in my journal about a month ago. I've been meaning to share it for a while so here it goes...

Dec 12, 2011
Over the past few days, I've been cleaning out the education office.  There are piles of things that have been there for years...literally.  This has been a community work space for some time now and many people have left their piles.  Books, papers, knickknacks, paper weights, notebooks, a planner from 2009 (mostly blank).  I found a large box of school supplies (crayons, markers, plastic pencil boxes) which I am sure I can find a use for.  St. Peter gets waves of missionary groups who bring with them donation items.  Mostly books, personal hygiene items, and craft supplies.  I'm sure that that are distributed accordingly but somethings are bound to get forgotten about.  Today, I found some diamonds in the rough though.  One plastic grocery bag yielded six digital cameras of varying models, years and quality.  After changing batteries, charging others, we have 3 "new" working cameras.
My adventure did not stop there.  Mr. Caye, my "mentor" now became the student as I trained him how to use "yesterday's" technology.  You have to understand that he is not the most up to date on these things. As the flash popped and the image previewed, Joe's face lit up and he literally squealed with excitement!  To see this tall commanding presence of a man reduced to sheer innocence of childlike joy was at the very least entertaining.

Home Sweet Home

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all! We've had a wonderful holiday break so far. Before Christmas we asked our kids where they wanted to travel to in Belize over break and we received a unanimous answer, the Belize Zoo. Since the zoo is only about 45 minutes from Belize City we decided to make a getaway of it and traveled there from Thursday to Saturday. Belize City is one of only two cities in Belize and by far the largest with over 25% of the nation's population residing there. Of course that goes without saying that it also has the highest murder and violence rates as well. Needless to say, we'd never really been there and so were eager to make the trek for a mini-getaway. There were definitely many things we liked about our visit to Belize City, but there were also many things we did not like. So, we've decided to list them for your reading pleasure.

Things We Liked About Belize City:

1. Feeling like a regular American Tourist around other American tourists (it's nice to look like we fit in for once, even if we don't really).
2. Getting the Belizean resident discount at nearly every place we visited (usually 50% but as much as 75%).
3. A real stop light. (picture to right is one of only a few in town).
4. The Museum of Belize--had a cool insect exhibit which helped us ID some of the creatures we've found on our porch.
5. Restaurants that don't serve Belizean food (we enjoyed both Indian and Lebanese during our stay).
6. Soap in every bathroom and many with paper towel dispensers.
7. A real grocery store with real checkout lanes, a real meat department, and everything--there are only two of it's kind in Belize. (pic to the right is Brodies Supermarket--ain't she grand).
8. Bowling and arcade--we solemnly promise not to ever take our bowling alleys in the U.S. for granted ever again.
9. Old Belize--a lovely tourist spot with a man made beach, rope swing and best of all, a water slide. (We also liked that, except for our son Adam, we were the tannest Caucasians there.)

Things We Did Not Like About Belize City:

1. Feeling like an American tourist when in fact, we are not really tourists. Sorry vendors we don't want $30 braids, or $10 jewelry.
2. Narrow potholed streets laid out indiscriminately in what seemed to be one sketchy neighborhood after another. Never before in our lives have we had such a difficult time navigating with a map.
3. Stop lights--good concept but really traffic is more of an "every man for himself" mentality.
4. More cars than bikes but just enough cyclists to make driving in the city very difficult.
5. Paying U.S. prices at many restaurants--we've grown nicely accustomed to paying $3-$6 for a good dinner.
6. Great non-Belizean restaurants that serve great non-Belizean food yet are out of about 75% of the items on their menu.
7. Pollution--you don't notice until you pretty much live without it for 6 months.

And last but certainly not least of things which we dislike about Belize City,

8. Driving by what appeared to be an ongoing crime scene/dead body recovery.

Overall, we had a good time on our getaway. However, we all quickly realized how much we did not care for Belize's "big city" and we were so happy to get back to our home sweet home in Punta Gorda. We really enjoy PG's quietness, safety, and simplicity. We were glad to check Belize City off our list but we also do not plan to go back there anytime soon.

And by the way, the Belize Zoo was wonderful and yes, we would recommend it to anyone.