Kids and the Camera

I take pictures in my village, but I am finding that most of them end up being pictures of kids jumping up and down right in front of the camera. I can't take pictures of them doing what they are actually doing. The thing is everytime I get my camera out, no matter what the reason, they always show up :) Even Anaya, the three year old that is learning English, knows how to ask. She just says "I want to see picture of Anaya".

Exibit 1:

The other morning my three host-nieces were coloring pictures on the floor of my house and I decided to take a picture. Instead I ended up with this video showing why I couldn't get a picture of them doing what they are actually doing.

Exibit 2 (Nicellia):

Exibit 3 (Anaya):

"You are the clumsiest person I know"

I got an email from Amy today and she let me know that I am the clumsiest person she knows (and that I need to write more blogs). I want to say she is worse, but unfortunately probably not. I think it may be one of the contributors to why we have been such good friends for so many years, though. That and she is awesome.

So I am pretty much the clumsiest person alive. About two weeks ago I re-hernieted two disks in my back. I feel like that injury shouldn't be attributed to clumsiness since we can't pinpoint anything I did to cause it to happen. It has been six years since I first injured it, and I just slowly over the course of a couple days started having more and more pain. Eventually I decided it wasn't going away and was pretty unbearable. Unfortunately there is no way to call from my village so I rode the bus into town and called the doctor. She had me flown to belize city and I had my very first hospital stay. I stayed in town for a few days trying to recover a bit and amusing my friends with my overly drugged state. They drove me back to my village after 6 days away and told me I could have physical therapy in about a week after I was feeling a bit better and was in town for our volunteer conference.

This past week was the all volunteer conference. It started Monday and I found out my PT would be on Friday. Well Wednesday I managed to fall down the stairs. This hotel should not be allowed to mop the floor. It is super slick tile and there are clumsy people like me staying there. I was so scared all week that I would fall somewhere and hurt my back that when I slipped on the stairs I held on super tight with my arm so I wouldn't land on my back. Now I have an injured shoulder too :) My Peace Corps nurse informed me that I do not have her permission to have any more incidents.

Thankfully the muscles/tendons in my shoulder are starting to feel a little less stressed out, and my back is feeling quite a bit better. I had physical therapy yesterday and it hurt quite a bit, but hopefully it will help in the long run. I am glad to be seeing recovery coming in the near future so I can get back to my village and back to normal life.

January (added pictures)

I was a bit of a failure when it comes to updating in January. Which is sad because for the most part it was a pretty good month :). So I will do some highlights for you and hopefully add some pictures here soon!

New Years at Caye Caulker
So I went on my first little vacation at New Years. I spent 2 nights on Caye Caulker. It is about an hour in a boat from Belize City. It was like being in a different world from where I am living. It was a beautiful island, nice view of the ocean, nice beach. It was a lot of fun to just relax and hang out with some of the other volunteers. The best part was definitely snorkeling. We spent a whole day on a boat in the Caribbean getting to snorkel. The first stop was just to get used to snorkeling (those fins were trickier than I expected hehe) and see some of the reef/fish for about an hour. Then we sailed a bit further to shark alley and got to snorkel with a lot of nurse sharks, some huge sting rays and some cool fish. It was amazing! The last stop was through a really pretty part of the reef. We saw some sea turtles and in some parts the water was only a few feet deep then suddenly there would be a huge drop off. It was beautiful. Definitely a fun and much needed break. (soon I will put up some pictures from the underwater camera we had I hope!)


House Visits
My village Alcalde went with me to visit all 30 houses in the village. It happened over about 8-9 hours on a few different Sundays. It was a lot of fun. A lot of the families don't speak any English, especially the women. The ladies got a huge kick out of me speaking K'ekchi. There was one lady that was so much fun! Our visit went a little like this:
Me: Anih ak'aba? (what is your name?)
Her: hahahahahahahahaha...
Me: ummm.... anih ak'aba?
Her: hehehehehe.... something in K'ekchi to the alcalde
Alcalde: She is just thinks it is funny to see a white person speaking K'ekchi
Me: ohhh... Anih ak'aba?
Finally she answered me and the rest of my questions I could get out in K'ekchi. When I ran out of conversation I was good at she started teaching me random words...
she points to her ear... xik (I repeat, she giggles)
she points to her hair... ismal (I repeat, she giggles)
she mimicks washing clothes... putch'uk (I repeat, she giggles)
It continued that way for a good half an hour. Lots of good laughter :)

I feel like I need to follow up that story with a note on the fact that I did finish out the month with K'ekchi in-service language training, so I am doing much better :) I can now count to 100 in k'ekchi... too bad most of them use English numbers. I can completely understand why, I mean thirty-eight or waqxaqlaju xkak'aal. Which sounds easier to you?