Pictures :)

This is the wonderful village of Armenia, where I have been living for a few weeks, and will be for a bit longer.
This the my host-family's house. The house is the thatch building on the right, and we have a covered area to hang laundry, hammocks and hang out outside on the left. My friend, and fellow trainee, Misty lives next door with my host-mother's mom.
This is the area Misty and I's host-families made for us to take bucket showers. It is made from cohune leaves. It is amazing, but sadly we have discovered a lot of tarantulas like this area after dark :(.

These are my five host siblings. Carlos is 10, Estella is 7, Adelinda is 5, Manuel is 3, and the youngest is 1 and I can't spell her name. They are some awesome kids, the oldest 2 speak English, and Adelinda is learning since she just started school. The village is mixed Spanish speaking and Q'eqchi speaking, but schools in Belize are taught in English.Manuel just cracks me up. The first day he ran away from me screaming and crying, but now he is like my best friend. His older siblings have taught him a couple words in English and he has no idea what he is saying. So he will run in and out of my room saying things like "Take Picture!" or "Stickers!". He is hilarious. They have yet to teach him what "I'm the big sister" means, though.

So pictures are super hard to upload here, but I am working on figuring it out. I hope you enjoy the few I got uploaded this morning :)

Rescued by a 7-year old

So people like to tell me there are these nasty things called tarantulas here in Belize, but for a long time I didn't believe them. I liked to follow the "seeing is believing" rule. That worked really well until I found one in my bucket shower area. I got out quickly and found the only English speaking kid in my family that would listen to me. My amazing (sometimes) 7-year old host sister walked out there with me, looked at it and calmly said "you get it down and kill it". I laughed so hard. Misty (who also uses this shower area) got her host siblings and between the five of our host-siblings the tarantula was defeated. I don't think they will ever stop laughing at us freaking out. They don't understand why they are so creepy, but seriously those black, fuzzy things are not my friend.

quick update :)

I have been living in my training village with my host family for a week now. We come into Belmopan from Armenia every Friday so I thought I would update really quickly. I wish I could upload pictures, but it is wayyy too slow right now.

I am living in a thatch house with a great family. There is a tiny corner of the house blocked off for me (about the size of my 'bed') and the rest of the house is one room that is for my host parents and their 5 kids! The kids are 10, 7, 5, 3 and 1. It is really normal for a family to sleep in one room and not have any privacy, but they are getting used to me liking a bit of privacy here and there :)

I have a latrine that is unfortunately only about 4 feet tall, and a door that is even shorter. One of the other trainees lives next door and our families built a little circle area out of cohune leaves to give us some privacy if we want to take bucket baths instead of bathing in the river (which I really appreciate!).

Q'eqchi is a crazy language to learn, but it is getting better. It helps that my family doesn't speak English at all, and they love to study with Misty and I! It makes daily communication harder, but we seem to be learning a bit faster.

This weekend we are building a school garden and starting to build the school latrine. Our trainer gave us each a machete! (I know it sounds like a really dangerous gift for me, right?) So tomorrow will be an new adventure in learning to use the machete :)

I miss you guys!

Tawil Awib (take care)