It's Official - We're PCV's

Hurricane Dean di kohn!

We’ve survived Hurricane Dean! The category 5 storm narrowly missed a direct hit on Belize and only left damage in its wake up in the northern district of Corozol. Unfortunately some villages suffered some destruction and many of the sugarcane plantations also sustained some heavy damage. There were mangos and papaya for all as many of the trees begrudgingly surrendered their fruits to the 100-plus mph winds of the storm. After spending four days cooped up in the dismal and quite odiferous Garden City hotel, we were granted our freedom to once again freely roam the streets of the great capital city of Belmopan. On Thursday, albeit a day late, we were all officially sworn in as the omnibus class of 2009 Peace Corps Volunteers. Our ceremony took place at the U.S. Embassy building and included a speech from a fellow PCV, thoughts from some of our more accomplished linguists, and short thanks and talks by our country director, training director, and a few other staff members. It was a long and winding road through our training with many highs and a few lows, but in the end we all were extremely proud of what we had accomplished thus far as we head into the next phase of our Peace Corps experience. It seemed our class really was tested from day one with the fire in the hotel in Miami, the cancelled flight and then a hurricane right on the eve of swearing in, yet we are still here and excited to be official volunteers! On Friday, everyone headed out to permanent site placements and we are now spread far and wide across the country. The Belize City group quickly came together for a great dinner and good company at Clare’s house. It was nice, and we hope it will become a weekly tradition that we each host one another for meals, considering the cost sharing and the company, it will be a nice way to settle into the city and have an extended family and support network out here. We already miss everyone, but know we are not too far away and will see each other. Our week in the Garden City was interesting. We got to spend time with the second year volunteers and hear their stories and bits of advice for surviving the first year (and in particular these first few months as we integrate into our communities and projects). We also celebrated our swearing in with a lee party at the hotel where the Armenia girls coordinated a fun award ceremony and provided each of us with a special award. Then the dancing got started! It was a nice way to send ourselves off to the start of our work, and since it will be months before we are all together again (barring any further hurricanes) it was a little bittersweet. We took tons of pictures and have a few here to share the event with you. As we embark on the project portion of the PCV experience nerves are pretty high. It’s time now to head out on our own and get to know the community members and find ways to integrate and get to work on the many goals we set with our counterparts. For us, school starts September 3, so we have a week to settle in to the city and get through some reading about the different things we know we will be working on at the schools. Considering Ginnie has never taught elementary school – this will be a week full of cramming everything she can about literacy education into her head. Should be fun – trying to understand all there is to know about teaching phonics and putting together assessments for students’ reading and math abilities. Only slightly overwhelming, but the good news is that September is really a celebration month, so we won’t be getting right into the assessments for a few weeks. We are working on getting to know free and low cost entertainment options in the city and yesterday found ourselves at the USA Exhibit at the Radisson Fort George. It was interesting because it featured US made products – which consisted of some Kellogg’s and General Mills products, a lot of chewing gum, Spam, Avon, and some services from airlines. Anthony was able to get a whole package of bubblicious ink’d when he asked several questions about this new product we were not aware of, while Clare and Ginnie were only offered two pieces of gum… not sure how that happened! We think we are going to see Andy Palacio perform a free concert next weekend, but it seems the newspaper ad Anthony read yesterday is mysteriously no longer in any paper we have in the house – so we hope it is actually happening! It’s coming up on the Carnival and two big holidays and of course Ginnie’s birthday, too, so things in the city will be pretty exciting in the next couple weeks. In our new home we do not have Internet, so we will not be able to post as often, but we will make updates when we can. We also won’t be getting email as frequently, so now really is the time to write up letters and send them along so we can stay in touch! We hope everyone is doing well and are excited to hear stories about your new sites, too. As for the people at home, we hope you are all doing well and look forward to hearing from you with those letters:).

Here are a ton of pictures and they are NOT in order at all, but they show the last few days of training, swearing in, hanging out at the hotel, and the swearing in party. (We are at a cafe and our time is almost up, so we can't organize them or caption them this time, maybe next visit...)

Hurricane Dean News

Just sharing the update on Hurricane Dean. All the trainees and volunteers were consolidated to the capital Belmopan. We have been here since Sunday and stocked up on food and water to ride out the storm. We were so well prepared for the electricity and water to go out and for the tropical force winds we would get in our area. In fact, we bought the best homemade wheat bread, but that is beside the point:)

Well, the storm came in early this morning and we are all well - in fact the power was only out for a little over an hour and we don't think we lost water. We're waiting for another update this evening on how the northern part of the country is doing - it got hit harder since it was closer to the eye. We are curious to hear how things were in Belize City since it is on the coast and parts are slightly below sea level, so we flood in heavy rain. It appears it wasn't too bad though, but we want to be sure Miss Udeen's place is doing alright!

We were scheduled to swear in tomorrow, but that will now happen later in the week after we get in our last two days of training (all has been on hold during the consolidation). Next time we post, we'll be sworn in volunteers - it's exciting. We are looking forward to the big event - it should be a great ceremony.

Take care and post us some thoughts! We'd love to hear from you.

Musings on Life in Belize

As our pre-service training rapidly comes to an end in the next week, we felt it was time to share with all of you some of the observations we have made in our first two months in Belize. These are in no particular order.

Strawberry Cake is delicious - why have we not had this in our lives before? Despite the fact that the true sweet tooth over here is Anthony, we both appreciate the wonderfulness of this dessert. Actually, an interesting observation in the sweet tooth area is the strange phenomenon that has recently occurred in which Ginnie is eating candy just for the sake of it - something that rarely ever happened before since she does not much like a lot of candies and when she does indulge in M&M's or Reese's Pieces it takes several days to finish an entire regular size bag. Anthony's candy habit has not much changed - he is still an addict and devoted to the sweets. This strange candy habit seems to have manifested itself from the habit all of we trainees have of sharing our treats when the packages come. It almost feels rude not to take candy that has been so thoughtfully mailed from loved ones in the states and passed around during hours of training. I think once we all go our separate ways and do not have easy access to treat sharing the overeating of candy will subside. However, it is quite doubtful the love of strawberry cake will ever go away - we have had it at both host families and it's always good. For a person who doesn't eat much of these such floury breadlike products - somehow the mix of fruit and soft cake just overcomes any thoughts of useless calories! It's practically a serving of fruit, really :) At any rate, it is one of those things that makes living in Belize that much better! (Quick note, another delicious dessert which we had been prepared to have thanks to the wisdom and personal experience of Karla, is fresh fruit - when the mango comes out freshly cut it is a perfect way to end a meal!)

We can get Ben and Jerry's ice cream - if we want to not eat meals for a few days. Actually, we can get a lot of things you have in the states, but we live on a Peace Corps budget so it is not affordable. Take the case of Ben and Jerry's, at the Sav-U grocery store today (it's ten percent Tuesday!) we stumbled upon the ice cream case and our friend John spotted the B&J's {of which they only had 3 flavors, Ginnie's favorite Chunky Monkey, John's favorite Phish Food, and Anthony's favorite Heath Bar Crunch - what are the odds?} and then we saw the price - $18.96 for one small lee container. We will NOT be having Ben & Jerry's in the Peace Corps, but that's okay, we have Western Dairies (homemade ice cream by the Menonites, among other of their homemade products) and a nice little ice cream shop called Zero Degrees with extremely creamy soft serve.

82 degrees is chilly - who would ever think this would be the case? But, this morning, when both of us bundled up in our blankets because we were "cold" we discovered this new insight. Living in the high 80's and low 90's day and night we must be adjusting somewhat. When we looked at the clock with the temperature reading on it and saw 82.4, it was pure shock to us since we had gotten so cold overnight! But, this is just a small step since the true hot season doesn't come until late March, and we hear it's pretty hot around then and it is also the dry season so we won't be cooling off with any lee rain showers.

It is wonderful to have time to read again - we were always "too busy" in the states to have enough time to read all the books we wanted. Now, despite having lots of work for training, we have plenty of time to delve into books and love just spending hours reading. This picture shows Ginnie on a typical afternoon (especially since getting hold of Harry Potter!). Just substitute Anthony or imagine him next to Ginnie and that's a nice Sunday. (just below that you'll see the view from the veranda where we enjoy reading with a nice sea breeze - you get a glimpse of the sea just at the far end of the street)


Stray dogs just want love too - they are not out to harm us. Well, not all of them, but some are downright scary. Being the dog lovers we are, every stray dog makes each of us want to just give it some food. None of them has bothered us, but that may be due to our addiction to the Dog Whisperer and the use of calming signals we learned in training for Maya, or it could just be that the dogs are so hungry/thirsty they ignore us. Needless to say, there are a LOT of dogs here and many of them are living on their own, looking for food and love. There is a mom and puppy we have seen a few times on our walk home, and they stick together well. A lot of people have dogs at their homes too, they are generally here as guard dogs so most live outside in the yard and they bark, a lot. We've grown accustomed to the sounds of dogs barking to lull us to sleep each night. We have a few favorites we see on our walk - like the big scruffy dog who used to bark once or twice, but now he is just hot and lays across his porch and rarely even lifts his head. We think he just likes us now. We also have encountered some super scary dogs - right outside the PC office on the way to the store behind the building there is a chained up dog who just jumps out from behind anything and he has one scary bark - no one wants to cross his path at this point. The truth is, these dogs are probably fine this way, they've not known anything different and it's in a dog's nature to walk and roam and look for food so they may just be happy.
Belizean people are very welcoming and everyone knows everyone - everyone we have met has been so friendly and willing to help. When we try out our Kriol, while it may elicit a chuckle now and then, people enjoy it and like to help us learn. The best part of the walk each day is saying Maanin' or Aftanoon to our fellow travelers. We've felt welcome here by everyone and have loved talking with the many people we've met with Miss Udeen and with all the folks who work at ITVET, where we take our language and culture class. We're really lucky to be living among such amazing people and look forward to building our relationships with our host families, coworkers and new friends. Being such a small country, people know each other and they are very close and loyal. Just through the connections with our host families in our small training group, we've been able to meet so many people and someone who knows someone who can help us out or give us another connection. And, we run into people we've met already and it keeps making the place feel smaller when we are out in a busy event and bump into people from ITVET or a friend of Miss Udeen's...

We are taxi magnets - because people don't realize we are not tourists until we tell them, even though we are dressed in work clothes and only carry a small backpack. We may take a tally on one of our walks of how many times a taxi honks and rides by saying "Taxi?". It's nice that they want to rescue us from a walk in the heat, but we hope it subsides since two years of turning down taxi rides may be tiring. Ginnie's walk will be mostly through neighborhoods, so she may not see as many taxi's as Anthony will walking on a busier street to his school. We'll have to update on this as time progresses.

Many creatures like to live among us in our houses - you may recall the tale of the giant spider from Armenia. Well, we have resident geckos in the house who like to make their little noises every so often. We like having them, they eat bugs! Most recently, a blue crab tried to join the family, but only made it as far as the front door. This is our friend below...


We love our fellow PCT's - we just have to shout out to the great class of trainees we work with - it's been so fun to get to know everyone and spend so much time together these past 9 weeks. In fact, everyone at PC/Belize has been amazing, from the volunteers who so readily share their experiences and insights to the staff who really takes care of us, we are lucky to be part of this new extended family and appreciate everyone!

We really want letters:) - feel free to take out that rusty pen and paper and write to us, we want to hear from you. Letter writing is a fun way to stay in touch and we will write you back - fi true! Our address is on the right hand side of the blog, so you can't miss it.

The Rotary Club puts on a great show - we saw Breadfruit Kingdom at the Bliss Center for the Performing Arts on Sunday and we laughed so hard our cheeks hurt! It is a show that was adapted from one in Jamaica and is a political satire and sends a message about taking care of what you have and appreciating others. It was hilarious and Anthony made his Belizean acting debut when he was made part of the show as the king spoke to him and pointed him out among the people of the kingdom during the audience interaction portion. He did well, even spoke Kriol! Everyone should be very proud.

If di pin neva ben, di story neva en - a favorite Kriol expression that comes at the conclusion of folktales. Since there are many more things we will discover and so much more we already have and just can't fit it all in now.

It's Christmas in August

The site assignments are in the folders just waiting for us to open them!

Site Placement day was Saturday and it was like Christmas for the trainees. We were all so excited to find out where we will live and work for the next two years and even though we spent weeks speculating and trying to get information from everyone, we loved the surprise of the morning. Our APCD's (they are in charge of our projects and placements) set up a huge map of Belize on the floor of the meeting room and then put folders around all the sites. One at a time a person would go to a site and pick a folder and call out the name of the person on the folder at the site. There were a lot of screams of happiness and jumping up and down - it was so much fun.

Trainees sitting in their site areas (we're in the back to the right)

So... the big news is, we are living in Belize City! We have become pretty comfortable here so it's nice to get to stick around and we are in a great spot to be able to get out and visit everyone since the group is spread out from one end of the country to the other! It will also make an easy move for us since we can just hop in a taxi and drive down the street to our new house, can't complain about that. Before even coming to Belize we thought we may end up in the city and hoped for a smaller area, but this is where they see the best fit for us and we are excited to begin our service and work at our schools. We get to meet our principals tomorrow at our counterpart conference in Belmopan. We are both really excited to get to talk to them and learn more about what they need from us and what goals we can set. We will be moving from Miss Udeen's house since she already has new guests coming in next month, and we will miss her terribly, but she's just a short walk away and we know we will be back to visit often.

We've been added to the big map of Belize showing volunteers' sites

After the excitement of the weekend and getting to see our fellow trainees together again we had a great time hanging out and catching up and hearing all the stories from the different sites. With people in places ranging from the city to rural backabush, there is a wide variety of experiences! In two weeks we'll all be together again for a few days of bridge to service training and for the swearing in. It will be a little sad to then head off to all our separate sites, but I know we'll be in touch and be visiting one another throughout the country.

Today has been a nice relaxing day - we caught a nice not full bus back to the city and then went out to the BelConEx trade show at the Princess Hotel where Belizean businesses displayed and sold their products. We found a beautiful bed frame handmade in Belize from Bamboo and Rattan - maybe someday when we finish service we can have one sent to the states - it's perfect and is a canopy bed where the canopy hangs down from each of the four bamboo posts that surround the top. We hope we don't forget about it after two years! On the walk back from the Princess, Mica and John led us through a detour to see a school Mica thought might be the one where Ginnie will work. It turns out it is Ginnie's school - it's small and close to an area where we hope to live when we move out on our own. It's in a neighborhood and near a place where a large dachshund lives - Anthony has seen the oversized Dachshund, Ginnie has not yet, but will likely see it everyday when she walks to work! It will be nice since we miss Maya!

This week was also our camp week. The Belize City group worked at the YWCA reading camp from Monday through Thursday and split up among the grades - Standard I through Standard VI. We all focused on literacy with the varying levels and skills of our students. Anthony worked with John with the Standard IV (similar to Grade 5 in the US) and Ginnie worked with the Standard V-VI students (similar to Grades 6 through 8 in the US). It was a great opportunity to work with the pikni and get to know what levels teachers are working with since we will be helping them to work on literacy programs. The students were fun to work with and just remind us that no matter where they live, children are very similar.

Ginnie's Standard V-VI Campers

We may not be able to update for a while since Harry Potter has arrived and we need to know what happens! Thanks to everyone who's been sending us these amazing care packages - it truly was Christmas when we got to the post office on Friday and had lots of surprises, we love to hear from home! Oh, and a shout out to Diane because as we rode the bus home today they played a Grease song and Anthony and I both looked at each other and immediately knew we were both thinking of you and how we should have brought a copy of some good old favorite movies with us.