Giving Thanks Peace Corps Style

Over the Thanksgiving holiday many volunteers came together in Belmopan to celebrate Thanksgiving, enjoy a nice home-cooked meal together, and give thanks. Each district was responsible for providing various dishes, desserts, and appetizers for all 80 or so attendees, and Peace Corps took care of the turkey (5 or 6 in all). Our district was responsible for desserts and since pies are difficult as well as quite expensive to make here in Belize, we decided to make dessert faves into cookies of sorts. Ginnie made an amazing and quite popular pumpkin pie cookie and Anthony made oatmeal applesauce cookies. It seemed as though there was food to feed a thousand hungry souls. Everyone ate until they were quite literally stuffed. When all was said and done, as ravenous as we had been, we were still left with a table full of many appetizer, salad and dessert plates, as well as a few pounds of turkey. As in years past, Peace Corps gathers these foods and donates them to a shelter in Belmopan. Sooo, although we were unable to take part in the traditional day-after custom of building ginormous sandwiches from the leftovers, food was put to good use. We had a wonderful day and enjoyed the opportunity to spend some time together. Afterward, Josh came home with us to Belize to continue the fun with a meal at a PCV fave, Riverside Tavern, and to check out the entertainment options at the Princess. Once there it was off to the lanes for some bowling and then a lee trip into the casino for the highly addicting 5 cent electronic roulette game where we ran into Ginnie's counterpart also out for an evening of fun. Below are some photos.

We hope that you all had a wonderful holiday and wish everyone a safe, happy, and memorable holiday season.

Table centerpieces at Nicole's Thanksgiving Day turkey dinner

Our beloved Nurse Jackie (c) chats it up with a few volunteers

The appetizer table spread (potatoes, salads, mac and cheese, etc.)

Some desserts made by PCVs - bread puddings, cookies, pies, and cakes

Mr. Stanley continuing the turkey carving tradition. He carved all 5 birds!

One of the many decorative centerpieces at the George Price Center

Some fellow PC staff members - Ruth and Kent

Ginnie's amazing pumpkin pie cookies

The welcome sign at George Price Center

1st, 2nd, and 3rd year volunteers

Josh, Anthony, and John

Ginnie and Nikki looking perky...cheers

Check out these fancy shoes...perhaps some bowling is in order

Look who we found!

Check out these scores (not sure what happened with Ginnie on this one, she did better in the first game, really and look at Anthony's and Josh's almost turkeys in honor of the holiday!)

So many choices...which one do we roll with

Scott, April, Josh, and us, after our holiday bowling adventure

AHHHH!!!!!! Look out, Ginnie!

Yay Turkey!

Make a Smilebox greeting

Minister of Education Visits Our Schools

On November 6 and 10, the Minister of Education, the Honorable Patrick Faber, visited Trinity and St. Luke schools respectively. He was nearing the end of his nationwide tour of schools and shared a good message with the children about the importance of staying in school and receiving a good education to be independent and have good jobs. He also had all children make a pledge of nonviolence in light of the recent increase in crime in Belize. Minister Faber also spoke to the teachers about the significance the current government is placing on teacher training to strengthen the entire education system.

Each of the schools' different divisions prepared special items to perform for the Minister and the officials who traveled with him. They also planned a formal program for students and teachers to share remarks. At Trinity, our principal made an impromptu decision to bring the entire staff up to introduce everyone. A few days after the visits, a Ministry official contacted the principal asking if she could meet with her and the Peace Corps Volunteer to plan a training session on the new language arts curriculum, since she'd mentioned Ginnie works on literacy education with the teachers. Needless to say, Ginnie was pretty excited for the opportunity and quickly asked to have Anthony included. We'll be working on trainings for each division to present in January and February. We're pretty excited for the opportunity to work directly with the Ministry of Education, in fact, when the initial meeting took place with the principal, she shared a literacy schedule we worked on for the school and now we will be using that frame as our basis for structuring the training and for teachers to use as their model for planning their language arts time schedule! Situations such as this always remind us of how amazing it is to work in such a small country where a simple introduction can turn into a major project with a huge potential for impact!

Here are some pictures of the visits:

This is just too cute not to share!

The girls of Standard IV at Trinity

The pikni mi geh a lee restless

Look at those cute lee Infant I students

Introducing the staff of Trinity Methodist School

A dance performance by Standard II & III students

Minister of Education, Honorable Patrick Faber delivering his address

Yeah, she's adorable

Students of St. Luke Methodist School prepare for the visit

Chillin' on the veranda

What a great smile

Minister Faber making his way to deliver his speech along with principal and vice principals of St. Luke School

The children of St. Luke looking fabulous in their lavender and white

The choir sings for the honored guests

And now, more pictures from St. Luke, showing off the pikni!

Girls dancing and boys drumming for the occassion

The Minister's address for St. Luke children and staff

Some samera shy Infant I students

"Oh sun...please go away for just a lee bit!"

Standard III ladies striking a pose

Hey, Mr. Anthony, look at us!

One of the 25 teachers at the school strikes a pose

Work and Play in 'Shuga City'

This past weekend we traveled up north to Orange Walk town. Orange Walk is the agricultural and social center of northern Belize and is probably most famous for its abundance of sugarcane and being home to the ancient Mayan site of Lamanai. While in town we visited with fellow PCVs and also took a short 2-mile bike trip out to the village of Chan Pine Ridge to visit a local library started by a PCV a couple of years ago. Orange Walk is a little under two hours north of Belize City on the new northern highway. Getting there was less of a challenge than it had been in previous weeks since much of the standing water has started to recede a bit. During the last few weeks there has been widespread flooding across much of the central and northern parts of Belize due mostly in part to the swelling rivers, streams, and Caribbean Sea. Even though much of the water has dropped from its peak a week or so ago, much of the area on the way up north is still practically submerged by water. Many houses are flooded up to their windows and some all the way to the edges of roofs. The extent of the damage caused by the flooding is still unknown since so much is still covered up. One of the strangest sights were the trees along the highway that no longer looked like large ominous beasts, but rather lee mangroves just barely breathing above the flood lines. Unfortunately, both government and locals alike believe that much of this water will remain until at least the Christmas holidays.

Ginnie...AKA the gyal with the camera 24/7; never missing a Kodak moment, even enroute 60mph

We spent Friday night hanging out with fellow PCV, Nikita. Spending the night with a fellow PCV is oftentimes the equivalent of having a sleepover party, just like when we were kids...Ah, Good Times Fi Tru.

You're not coming back to Utah. There's just not enough room for you and all of my 'Belize it or Not' Souvenirs!

On Saturday we borrowed bikes from a couple of first year volunteers and headed out of town on our excursion to Chan Pine Ridge village. Chan Pine Ridge is a small Mestizo village nestled amongst endless rows of sugarcane, and is a short, scenic ride from the town center.

I can see for miles and miles and miles...wait, it's all sugarcane...Yummy!

At play in the sugarcane fields

As we rode through the streets and finally reached the turn off to the village, we all breathed a sigh of relief for the quiet and peacefulness found on the outskirts of town. Bicycling through at a relaxing pace, chatting and learning about the area was really great…until…well, being that it is a rather narrow dirt road and all of the past rains have completely disappeared leaving it a desert like landscape, let’s just say it was great until trucks started to slowly pass. As they came closer mounds of dirt churned like twisters down the street; into our mouths came the dirt and grime, teeth became crunchy and mouths turned dry and pasty. One man passed by (albeit, after covering us in dust and dirt), yelling from the cab of the truck…"Yeah Peace Corps!" As you can imagine, the required helmets that we all wear while riding our bikes around Belize sort of make it sometimes too obvious that we’re not from these parts. Safety First!

The Chan Pine Ridge library was really cool and allowed both of us to an opportunity to gather more ideas and insight about our own library projects going on at our sights. We’ll keep you all updated as things happen, so check back often.

The library at Chan Pine Ridge

PCVs have their own WID/GAD moment. Guys cooking, ladies chatting. *N.B. WID/GAD = PC acronyms for Women in Development and Gender and Development, an area that all volunteers are asked to spend time and energies developing while in Belize.

So, October was just a very strange month – lots of random things to do and no normal schedule, really.

It started off with our mid-service medical appointments (we’re healthy, yay!) and then just kept rolling with lots of rainstorms, workshops, new volunteers swearing in, and some highway flooding.

We spent two weekends in Belmopan for Red Cross’ HIV/AIDS Instructor Training workshop. Anthony has already been certified as an IT, but as coordinator for the PCV HIV/AIDS Committee he was asked to bring this to the members of the committee as well as members of the WID/GAD Committee (which Ginnie serves on). Now we are both certified ITs for the Red Cross and are looking forward to conducting youth education sessions to train peer educators and to do outreach to various villages for education to prevent further spread of HIV/AIDS. The training was full of activities and sessions we can use when conducting training. We were also paired up to present a session as part of the certification process. Ginnie and Janine covered the topic of sexuality and had the task of explaining the difference between gender and sex, which went very well with the group. The training was surrounded by a consolidation of the southern volunteers, so we got to see a bunch of them as well and catch up after several months.

Working on a group assignment - SOCA model

What training would be complete without a human knot?

Tropical Depression 16 was the cause of the southern consolidation as it was expected to drop a lot of rain on the south and of course wiped out the temporary crossing for the Kendall River. The rains from the storm left lots of flooding and continued rains hit the western part of the country hard as well – our training was nearly postponed due to flood waters rising above the bridge from Belmopan to the west. The Peace Corps vehicle came in to save the day and training continued as planned. The flooding in the west was major however with waters overtaking places like the market in San Ignacio and other bridges.

There were so many days of rain we struggled to get our laundry done since we’d get it on the line thinking a break of sunshine would last only to have to rush out to take it all down before it was completely re-soaked. It was damp for many days inside and outside with all the rain and because the rain waters eventually flow into the city, we just had flooding in our areas late last week, causing us to cancel our anniversary weekend plans. We were in Belmopan for the swearing in of the new volunteers and got the call in the morning we were to return to site that we were not permitted to leave until further notice. Fortunately, we were released the next morning, but were on standfast for the rest of the weekend – meaning we had to stay in site. We’d hoped to make a trip up north and hop over to Mexico to see if any Dia de Los Muertos celebrations were happening with a back-up plan of a trip over to our favorite relaxation spot, Caye Caulker. Since neither was a possibility, we took the opportunity to splurge on supplies for homemade chicken and eggplant parmigiana (which we cooked in the crockpot!) and American ice cream and homemade brownies. It was nice and gave us the time to finalize plans for our Christmas trip to Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

Best homemade bread ever - we finally made a winner!

This is some quite fabulous chicken and eggplant parmigiana as well

Since we were home on Halloween, we were able to see some trick-or-treating Belizean style. As we walked to SavU for the groceries a group of about 6-7 children with faces painted and silly costumes came running toward us shouting “Trick or Treat.” They asked for sweets, which we didn’t have and then said “Ok, money then.” We also did not have money to hand out, but we did ask them about their costumes, to which the reply was befuddled faces and silence, until finally one boy said “cats… meoooow.” We then saw more children coming and heard the full request “Trick or treat; money or sweet.” Later that evening, our friends Kim and Carl came by and Carl told us some of what people were doing for Halloween and then much later (around 10pm) children starting arriving at the house! That’s pretty late to be trick-or-treating, not to mention walking around the city!

So swearing in was last week and it was a great ceremony and celebration. The new volunteers seem ready and excited to get started on their projects. Listening again to the oath and to all the speeches about volunteering in Belize helped refresh us as we continue in this second year. The ceremony was held on the lawn of the Belize House, which is the residence of the Governor General (Sir Colville Young, Sr.), who also spoke at the ceremony.

Governor General of Belize, Sir Colville Young, Sr

Saying the Oath to swear in for Peace Corps service

First and Second Year Volunteers - almost all a wi

Mica, Janine, Anthony, Ginnie, Matt, John

Following the event was a nice lunch and then later on the annual first year vs. second year football game. In recent years a second year group has not won this game, but this year our team changed that. It was a fun game and looks like the Gibnuts (the PCV team name) will be strong with the talent in the first year group. Incidentally, we should point out that neither of us play, we just like to support the team when we can. Ginnie did, however, hold the title of time keeper for this game, so it was very important! After the big game, everyone got all dressed up again to head over to M.I. Hot Bites (probably the best restaurant name around) for Indian food and dancing. It was a great dinner! Then it was back to the good old Garden City Hotel for hanging out and attempted sleep on the solid mattresses.

Stretching for the big game - and Josh just being silly as usual

Cheering for the second-years

The players after the game

Anthony & Janine at M.I. Hot Bites

A not-so-good shot of how we managed to squeeze 26 passengers into a 15-passenger van

Wow, Anthony and Nikki look really happy to celebrate

October really just flew by and now we hope to resume somewhat of a “normal” schedule once again with the beginning of November. Ginnie’s working hard on getting a library open at Trinity (and Anthony has been helping a lot, too). We’ll share more on that in a later post when there is more to share! We also will be helping with more HIV/AIDS IT and Peer trainings later in the month and will be visiting some PCVs as well. So, can we get back to normal now?

Yes We Can!

Oh, yeah, and here we are anxiously awaiting the elections results!!