The rest :)

So normally one would expect a blog entitled "November" to follow the one entitled "October" since we are now in December. However, I am having a hard time grasping the idea that November is already over. Where did it go?

The weather here really throws me off. IT has been 16 months of relatively similar weather. Yeah May was crazy hot, the summer was rainier, and December is much "cooler" but really there isn't a huge difference in seasons. I wear the same clothes during the day all year round. I am worried, though, that I am getting a bit too used to it and something may be wrong with me. Last year Christmas time did not feel a whole lot like Christmas seeing as I was walking around in a skirt and tank top or tshirt the whole time. Yes nighttime was cold and that helped, but the days? This year, though, I have had goosebumps and actually have said the words "I'm freezing" in the middle of the day. Since when should I want a long sleeve shirt when it is the mid-upper 70s? Overnight low of 60 and I wear flannel pants, a sweatshirt, wrap up in a blanket and still feel cold :(



This all leads me to two thoughts...

1. I have adapted way too much.
2. While I am very excited for my trip home for Christmas in 10 days, it may be a miserably cold experience. :)

Crazy October

Yeah... that says October and it is now December. I may or may not have been slacking a lot on updates. I'm sorry.

October is a bit of a blur. It was a crazy month full of hurricane consolidations, and festivities. Each time there was a tropical storm/hurricane coming I would climb the hill up by the school and wander around with my phone attempting to catch a strong enough signal to receive a text or call PC to try and find out what was up. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not so well. Then I would go back to my house to pack up everything in case it flooded (why do I live in the lowest spot in the village?) and then pack my emergency bucket. At first I kind of laughed about the idea of carrying around a five gallon bucket with my belongings in it, now though I am realizing it is just about the best way to travel. First off, you always have a seat. Hitchhiking a ride on an empty bus, sit on your bucket next to the driver for some good conversation? Stranded on the side of the road waiting for that non-existent bus? Sit on your bucket while everyone else sits in the mud and nothing will ever get wet. :)

Anyway, Tropical Storm Matthew I don't remember so much. I know there was really really hard rain for a day or so, and then nothing. When the storm was actually supposed to hit ground it just disappeared. My house a bit flooded I guess as when I returned home things were damp and drying out. Thankfully, though, nothing else was really wrong.


Anaya's Dedication

So I am now the Godmother of a 4 year old Mayan girl. Her mom asked me a few months ago if I would be willing to do it and I agreed. They were going to dedicate her on her 4th birthday at the end of October. Anaya is my little buddy, so I was happy to agree. She spends a decent portion of her day at my house or following me around and when I come home on the bus she runs out to greet me. Besides I have learned a good amount of my Q'eqchi from her and she learned a lot of English from me.

So these are apparently big celebrations. They brought in musicians from a few villages away and we were cooking for 2 days prior. We baked 20lbs of flour into bread; took 220lbs of corn to the river to wash and then to the corn mill, then we made that all into poch; the men butchered 2 pigs and we made it into caldo. There were a lot of people that were supposed to come in on Sunday for the celebration. Unfortunately this is the same day that Hurricane Richard hit Belize. We had a rushed ceremony at the church that morning and then I ran off with my bucket to PG for consolidation, while everyone else went to enjoy the caldo before making their way to the school for shelter.


A note on Hurricane Richard:
Thankfully the south didn't experience much. We did not even have rain in PG. My villagers said there was a lot of strong wind, but only a little rain. They spent 1 night in the school for shelter. However, the middle of the country did experience the brunt of the storm. There was around 100mph winds supposedly and a lot of flooding. This came shortly before harvest time for oranges, so the citrus industry was hardest hit (around $30million). Mostly down here it was power outages (which leads to no water) and no buses running due to debris on the road. Since my village doesn't have electricity, once the bus started running again and I made it home, it was back to life as normal for us.

These Moments

There are some moments from my time here that have definitely touched my heart. They are the moments where I feel at home, feel loved, or just feel like there was some kind of breakthrough in my relationships with the people here. I am not sure if I have shared many of them, but I wanted to share a few of my favorites, moments I hope to never forget.

Little Magdalena

This is probably my favorite story to tell when people talk about trying to integrate into their village. There is a little, six year old girl here named Magdalena. For my first six months or so in the village I would see Magdalena as I was walking to the school, or shop, or wherever and she would freeze. She would stare at me with her huge brown eyes and this frozen look and say to the kids with her “tyibiru li saq” which roughly means “the scary/evil white lady”. I would kind of smile, say good morning and feel really awkward as I walked away. Then one day I was walking to school and I hear a little kid come running up and they grab my hand to hold it. I look down and it was little Magdalena. I look at her so confused as she holds my hand and walks to school. I said, “Magdalena, I thought you were afraid of me.” She just looked at me and smiled. Now when I see her she always yells “Ms. Megan” and run up and hold my hand if we are walking the same direction.

Niselia

This is one of my dear friends. She is 2 years old, and definitely a fair-weather friend. Thankfully “bad-weather” easily and quickly blows over, never lasting more than a few minutes. At first meeting she was scared and would not come anywhere near me (in fact she has this response to pretty much everyone, particularly white people). In the last few months, though, she requires her mom to come visit me in the mornings, and if I am at their house, usually refuses to let me leave. I am not even really sure when the breakthrough occurred, but on a nearly daily basis she will wrap her arms around my neck and say “la'at infriend!” (you are my friend!”) and it is sometimes followed by her squeezing my face and kissing my cheek. This is the girl that I could not look at without her running to her mom and hiding from me. Unfortunately there are the moments, like when I steal the jar of sugar she is eating by the handful, she will yell “moko infriend xMegan!” (Megan is never my friend!). Like I said, thankfully these moments do not last too long. :)

Xan Katerina

Xan Kat is a lady who I have started visiting more recently. At first I was hesitant to go visit her because she speaks only K'ekchi, was really shy and didn't say much the one time I went, and just always seemed standoffish to me. I don't know why I thought this, but I did. Anyway I went to her house and it was amazing. She is adorable, she smiled and laughed and talked. She tried to work through my confusing K'ekchi with me and I loved it! I have gone back another couple of times, but what happened the other day really made me feel good. I was leaving my house to go wait for the bus to town for the market. I saw her at the road and she was about to moved to wait in the shade. When she saw me coming she stopped, got a huge smile, waved and waited for me in the sun. It may seem like no big deal, but expressions of emotion like that are few and far between and it made me feel so at welcome.

A Very Special Day

So today is a very special day. It is the birthday of my wonderful grandmother, who is also probably my most faithful blog reader. I know that each of my blogs is printed and taken to her (thanks Jenny!) so that she can enjoy them. So I am writing this one especially for her.

My grandma has always been a great supporter of me in my life and everything I have tried to do and I love her dearly for it. I always look forward to going home over holidays and breaks to get to spend a bit of time with her. This year I am a bit far away and visiting family is not exactly easy, but I am excited for the next time I get to see her and give her a hug.





Since I was small she has been collecting Family Circus and Lockhorns cartoons out of the newspapers and giving them to my brother and I. Very few letters have I received in my life without several of the cartoons inside with her letter. So the first letter I got in Belize I whined about not getting one, and now I have several taped up inside of my house for my enjoyment :).





I know that usually when she gets an update from me she carries it around and shares it with everyone. My hope is that everyone will do me a favor and give her a great big hug for her birthday from me since I am not there to give her one myself.





I love you Grandma. Thank you for all of your love, encouragement and support. I hope you have a wonderful birthday, and I will see you soon.

(I am pretty sure your cake would look something like this, but the number of candles may be off by one or two, don't forget your firetruck)

Black Orchids Football

So I played in my first Black Orchids football game this past weekend, and it was a blast. The Black Orchids is our Peace Corps Belize girls football (soccer) team. We went to Trio Village to play their girls, and the Gibnuts (the PCV guys team) played their mens teams.

We all met at the junction and waited for our ride into the village. The football field was nestled in the middle of the banana plantations by the village. They just had a big area they did not plant in and turned it into a nice football field. The girls played first, so as we ran out onto the field we realized a couple things. 1. It the rainy season, the field was a swamp. 2. The other team doesn't have shoes, so we should probably play barefoot too.

The game was a muddy, but fun time. I think it was probably best, because of the swampyness to be playing barefoot, but it was a new experience. You run and try to stop and turn around and end up just laying on the field, or continuing to slide forward sometimes on your feet. It was great when you would steal the ball and kick it only for it to land in a puddle of water and float there instead of rolling :) I am pretty sure we were a good comedy show. Due to no subs, and the amount of games being played we only played 15 minute halves. The game turned out 3-2 with the Trio girls winning.

Afterwards we all went down to the river to jump (or crawl) into the cold, but brown water to "clean" off a bit. Somehow I managed to come out muddier than I went in, I'm not sure. It was a fun Sunday :)

Tobacco Caye!

Alright so we of course had to celebrate our 1 year here in Belize! A few of us had an adventure out to the beautiful Tobacco Caye for a weekend. It is about the size of a football field, surrounded by beautiful water, and definitely a good place to relax and catch up. We had a good time snorkeling off the beach, swimming off and under the dock (shade is nice), and just hanging out in the hammocks for a couple days.

One Year In Belize

I am not really sure what to say about this. I have been here a year. Some days it feels like forever, and some days I don't even realize how fast time is flying. I remember the last week before I left to come to Belize, I started getting really scared. I knew that this is what I had wanted to do for quite some time, but the reality of it hit me and it was really scary. No one else ever seemed to have this thought, though, so I kept it to myself and really didn't want to talk myself out of doing it. I was always excited, especially after staging when we were making our way here, but I was really a bit worried too. Two years suddenly felt like a long time. I can say, though, as soon as we got here and I walked off the plane I felt the biggest feeling of peace I think I have ever felt. It really hasn't left the entire time I have been here. There are days that are no fun, bad days, days I wonder what I should be doing, but I never doubt that this is where I want to be, and where I need to be.

Since I have been here, as most of you probably know, projects are pretty slow. I have had a really good time working with the feeding program at the school, and tutoring some of the kids for their national achievement exams. Basically I was teaching story writing and helping with math after school. Other than that, though, up until this summer I was really just wandering around talking to the ladies, and enjoying building relationships with them. I think sometimes I discount the importance of this. I know it is important to build relationships, but I think sometimes I forget how much we get to teach each other in these conversations. They open up to me about things I never would have imagined now. We talk about their relationships with their family, they ask about family planning, they ask me to teach them to cook new things, they teach me to cook new things (armadillo, what?), they ask me about the states, and what life is like there, or things like if we too have trees. I don't think you can discount how important each of these little conversations can be. Like my last blog mentioned, we have now started a women's group and I am loving it. Thankfully things are starting to pick up a bit. Development is slow, it takes patience, and it is not always tangible, but that doesn't mean nothing is happening.

I am definitely looking forward to what my next year will hold here in Belize, am very thankful for the opportunity to live here, to be blessed by the friendships my villagers have offered me, and to offer whatever I can in return.