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?

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! I intended to wish everyone a Merry Christmas before Christmas, but my body had some other plans. I am feeling better now, though, and had a really nice Christmas here in Belize.

I stayed in my village with my host-family and spent a few days cooking, playing games and just enjoying having some time together. It is pretty much just a big family day here. My host-father is a baptist minister so we went to church on Christmas Eve about 9pm and it was supposed to end at Midnight, but we were there until 1:30am. The pentecostal church joined us and it made a total of maybe 40 people. After church we went back to my host families house for a Christmas meal (yes at 1:30am) of chicken caldo, corn tortillas, and I don't really remember what else right now. It was a really late night, but somehow we managed to be up early again cooking for Christmas day. The whole day was just a lot of cooking and games. Our Christmas meal here was BBQ gibnut, black beans, cole slaw and cake. A bit different than any other Christmas meal I have ever had, but it was good. Gibnut is a little bush animal, it tastes a lot like pork, but they hunt for it in the middle of the night in our village.

I attempted to get a family picture before Christmas, but it is hard to get 16 people together at once, so here are a few attempts with different parts of the family and just some random fun pictures:

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.