3 month update

Yes I have three posts in one setting, but I feel like I need to catch up a bit on some things (and I figure while I have some relatively reliable and pretty quick internet uploading pictures and writing is probably a good idea).

So life in my village hasn't changed a whole lot. I go to school twice a week and work on math with some of the children for an hour or so, and help cook lunch one day a week when we feed the kids at school. Other than that I am really trying to just get to know the people in my village. The alcalde has agreed to go house to house with me to help bridge the language barrier when it comes up and to let people know why I am around.



My host sister had her baby a few weeks ago, so our family is still growing a bit. He is a very healthy boy, but has not yet been named. I think they are considering Abner, but they have the whole first month before they have to name and register babies here. It is good to have her back home and doing well, though :)

(If you leave the door to your house open to cool it off you could find lots of interesting things in your house, including multiple ducks and cats :)

I have decided that I am not going to move out of my host-families house. I was required to stay with them for one month (which is over), but it looks like I will be there for my entire service. There is not an empty house in my village, there was talk of building a thatch for me, but it just doesn't seem very feasible right now. So, my host parents suggested I just stay in the little house in the compound and when I am ready to have my own space, my host brothers will move back into the other house. I can put a gas stove in this house and live in it on my own. I am really excited about it, because I wasn't too excited about living in my family, but really wanted my own space. So this turns out to be the perfect compromise. :)


My host brothers love to sit in the doorway of my house and play cards. They definitely love Uno.

These are two of my host-nieces Anaya and Naomi. They love having their pictures taken and then jumping up and down and looking at them. Anaya is my little buddy. She is three and doesn't quite understand that I don't really speak K'ekchi very well. It has proven to be an amazing way to learn K'ekchi.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

So we had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner here in Belize yesterday. We had an inservice training for a day and a half and then were able to cook and have a dinner with most of the volunteers and staff. The food was amazing, and it was really nice to be able to celebrate the holiday together.


It would have been nice to see family and friends from home for Thanksgiving and be able to celebrate with them, but since that isn't possible, I am glad that I was able to have wonderful people to spend the holidays with. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!


It has been a little more than a month since swearing-in, so it was good to get back together and catch up for a bit. I really enjoyed seeing friends and hearing how things are going in all the different villages and towns. This country is so diverse and the experiences we are having are and will continue to be so different. I live in a Maya village with 30 households, Misty (below) lives in a similar situation but much farther from the highway, some of the people lives in towns with washing machines and internet in their houses, and we have 5 or 6 languages people are learning and working in. It is just really interesting to get together and hear all the different stories.

Children's Day

We had a field day here at school last week. The kids spent the day having relay races, contests and we had a nice lunch for them for the feeding program that day. I have a few pictures of the kids and my school. My principal judging the relays. The two buildings in the background are our school.

They had a relay race where they had to run holding hands in a circle, collect oranges from one end of the field and take them back to the other.
This is one of my host-brothers and my host-niece.

Pictures: My host family's house, the view of the mountains (not the best picture, but the only one I have with me) and the school's library that I organized :)



So my host family keeps growing. There are now 15 of us (a distant relative moved in with us a week or so ago), and my host sister will soon have her baby to make us 16. I am really enjoying staying with them. They have taught me to make tortillas, tamales, and a few other things. They tell me they want me to stay forever and not leave, but at some point in time I will probably move into the house next door on my own. They can't imagine why a girl who is 24 is not married, with children, would live so far from home and then to live alone on top of all of that. My host-mom told me "You could live alone, Megan, I don't know. You will get bored alone." (The house I will move to can't be more than 50 feet from her house) I might miss out next door though. I might not get to watch in amazement everyday as my 8 year old host brother peels an orange with a machete.
Right now I am working at the school in my village. There are 77 students in three classes. One teacher has grades 1-2, one has 3-4, and the principal teaches grades 5-8. I am doing an after school math program with 5th graders and helping them get their feeding program started. I spent my first two weeks helping to organize the books in the school so that the kids could check out books. The first day they were allowed to check out books every student checked out a book and were super excited to have something to read!
As for my learning to speak K'ekchi... I can understand basic questions and basic conversation if they slow down a bit. The three year old in my family thinks I understand everything she says, though.
This weekend was a big party at my host family's home for the three year old's birthday. Unfortunately they killed the pig so that was a bit traumatizing to hear and watch... However, funny story about this weekend. The little girl doesn't speak English yet, but has "learned" an English song. She messed up the words a bit and this is what came out:

"I'm so glad Jesus is a boy, I'm so glad Jesus is a boy... Alleluia, Alleluia Jesus is a boy!"

I'm not quite sure that was what the song actually said :)

Swearing in Tomorrow!

I have now been in the country for two months, and will soon be an official volunteer! Our swearing in ceremony is this Thursday.

I have been living in my village for a couple weeks now and am really enjoying my host-family! Things were quite overwhelming at first, but after a bit of adjustment I am doing really well. My host family is quite large. My host parents have 9 children. Their oldest daughter is married and lives across the village, she has 4 children. Their next daughter lives next door, is married and has a daughter, but her family eats with my family. Their 3^rd daughter lives in the family compound with her husband and will have her 1^st child around Christmas. So when everything gets added up there are 11 of us that live in the family compound, and 14 of us at every meal (sometimes 20). They can't even imagine how I grew up with only one brother and are convinced it must have been boring and lonely.

My host family has taught me to make tortillas, re-taught me to do laundry in the river and now my brown socks actually come out white again :), and have been helping me to meet some of the community members. They make really great food with a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables which is really uncommon in the diet here. Every time they give me something new to eat they say, “I am not sure if you can eat this, but you can try it.” It has almost always been good, but has sometimes been a bit amusing. My 19 year old host-sister (the one that will soon have a baby) was cooking one day and brought me a plate and said: “Would you like to try these? We call them donuts.”

We have a really nice river in our village called the Deep River. We go down to the river every afternoon/evening to do our laundry and bathe. By the end of the day, the freezing cold water is definitely something to look forward to.

Random Updates :)

So quite a bit has happened since I wrote last. I had my very first “tropical illness”. It actually is not even remotely a tropical illness, but it freaked me out enough. I had a fever for a couple days, felt really sick, dizzy, and kept getting more and more open sores coming from who knows where. They brought me to the capital and I stayed here in a hotel for a few days to rest up. I saw our PC nurse and found out I had impetigo. I guess it is a bacterial infection and apparently really common for small children in the US. Glad that is pretty much over :) I am sure I will end up with something stranger in the future.

We went on a four day road trip to Toledo to see all of the sites for the healthy communities trainees future sites. I guess our placement officer wanted us to be able to see where we all could be going and get a feel for the southern part of the country. It was a nice trip, but a lot of time in a car on some bumpy gravel “roads”. The sites were all gorgeous and really cool. The most remote site was a little Maya village with thatch houses and each house had a solar panel. I guess they got funding for a solar power project and Internet cafe. It was just weird to be so far out and see thatch houses with solar panels. This is a beautiful country, and it was nice to get out and see some of it. :) We made a little side trip to see Rio Blanco National Park and the waterfalls. It was beautiful, the water felt amazing, but cliff jumping was required for swimming.

Last day with my host family

I never realized how hard taking group pictures would be until my family asked me to take a picture with all of us. My family wasn't ready so I went up to take Misty's first. Her host sisters refused to have their picture taken, so it took about 10 minutes to get the 7 family members together. When we went back to my house my family took quite a while to get themselves together for the picture. My 10 year old host brother insisted upon being on the horse during the picture. So I asked him to get close enough that it could be in the picture. Our family portrait is now a picture of half the family with my host brother on a horse in front of the rest of us...


Site Assignment Day!!!

The exciting part of the day was site assignments!!! For the next two years I will live in Medina Bank. :) It is a Maya village of about 200 people, so pretty small. I am really excited to be there, though :) Who knows what I will end up doing in reality, but they want a lot of help with health education and water. They only have 2 teachers and a teaching principal in their school. The classroom we visited there last week was standard 3-6 (grades 5-8) all in one room.

I am leaving for the village tomorrow and will be there for a couple weeks before I swear in as a volunteer. The village made a “schedule” for me of things to do for the first two weeks. Pretty much the whole schedule says “meet with ____” :) It will be nice to have a much more relaxed and less crazy schedule for a while.

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 :)