Wi Don Wahn Lata Tingz eena Chree Weeks!

It has been quite a while since the last post, so we've got a long one for today! We plan to put in lots of pictures too.

Our first week in CBT went well - we had a lot of Language and Culture Training for Kriol, spent a lot of time talking with Miss Udeen and her friends to practice our Kriol and get to know more about Belize and one another. We spent a lot of time learning about the city and even hit the streets to practice our kriol and make a map of our training area. On one morning, we went into town to visit the Mayor's office, the water taxi, the post office, the ministry of education, and see the Queen of the Bruk Down Miss Leela Vernon (that was an unexpected surprise trip when Ashley told us how she stayed the night with her host mom and had a show in the tourist village which is on the same street as our other stops). We had just learned the Bruk Down earlier in the week, so it was fun to get to meet Miss Vernon, Miss Alma introduced us. We waited in Tourist Village for nearly two hours and still didn't get to see Miss Vernon perform since she was hired to do her show for a Caribbean group that had not yet arrived when we needed to get back to the training site. {Tourist Village is a very strange place set aside for cruise visitors - basically people can come to Belize and just go into this village where Belizeans are not able to go and then never see any of the country! It's bizarre and we were all pretty uncomfortable in there, don't think anyone will be back there. Not to mention it was also extremely expensive since they had all their prices in US dollars, Ginnie bought the most expensive gross cookie!)

Back to Kriol and Tech Training - it's been fun. We've done a few presentations and sample training sessions for one another and get to hear from current volunteers about projects and other things we may do when we get into our schools. The more we talk about the jobs, the more excited we are to meet our principals and get to know our schools - in one more week we find out our site assignments! Everyone is pretty antsy to find out where we will be, but we're trying to just stay focused on training and all the things we need to accomplish in the next few weeks. We have lots of projects and homework, and with training 6 days a week, we stay pretty busy. We still have found some time to explore, though.

A Weekend Getaway

Last weekend, the Belize City group headed out to Caye Caulker, where we met up with some other trainees from Lucky Strike and Maskall. It was a great weekend and Caye Caulker is a nice little island to get away and relax for a night. We went swimming, ate, hung out in town where we witnessed some karaoke (it's a huge favorite for people out here) and relaxed under a palm tree for much of the day Sunday.

Sign as we entered the island from the water taxi

A dog on Caye Caulker - trying to cool off in the hot hot sun!

Posing with the "locals"

It was a nice restful weekend, and when we came home, Miss Udeen introduced us to a friend visiting from the States who took us out to dinner at a restaurant called Celebrity. It was so nice, and we got to see the area where the Princess hotel is. The Princess is a big hotel where there is a casino, movie theatre, and bowling alley.

Kriol Language and Culture

We've had a lot of great Kriol meals in the past three weeks. One is Boil Up - a dinner with green and ripe plantains, green and ripe bananas, kasava, cocoa root, boil up bread (a flour and water mixture), mashed potatoes, and fish - all boiled and cooked in a tomato and onion sauce. Other versions include even more things, but this is how we have it with Miss Udeen. It's delicious and very filling. Check it out:

We have also enjoyed rice and beans and for the first time tried stew beans last night - they are delicious! We've had johnny cakes and powder buns and fry fish and stew chicken - it's all been good. Miss Udeen heard we like eggplant, so she bought us two when she went to market on Tuesday and tonight Anthony made an eggplant parmesan - a little taste of home. It was delicious and went great with the cheesecake Miss Brenda made for us. We have a lot of great women taking care of us out here. We made fry jacks in class last week and they were delicious with homemade guacamole.

We have a special Kriol tutor named Jordan (Brenda's son) who has come over a few nights to talk with us and have us practice our Kriol. He has also taught us about the culture and shared with us some things he likes to do. He's a very bright and well-spoken young man (just ten years old), he would be a great teacher if he chooses that path - he's quite patient with us as we stumble over our sentences.

We are definitely improving in the Kriol area - see if you can decipher some of these Kriol phrases. (I borrowed this idea from my friend Mica - it's fun to have an interactive post - be sure to post your guesses in the comments section!)

1) Weh no kil yu fatn yu
2) Ful beli tel emti beli kip haat breda

3) Monkey know weh limb fi climb pan
4) Noh evriting wid shuga sweet

5) If kraab noh waak ih noh get fat, bot if ih waak tu moch ih looz ih klaa

Have fun with the translations!

Teacher Training

We had an adventurous tech training week. Belize City worked with Annaliza (our tech trainer) to facilitate a workshop for community based organization members who will go into schools to do manatee education. The goal is to get children to care about the manatees and learn about conservation so they will take the information back to their parents and spread the word to save these threatened sea mammals. It was a lot of fun - we put together a model lesson that the CBOs can conduct in class and then we worked one-on-one with the trainers to help them put together a lesson and then present it to one another. The workshop was in Gales Point - a maroon Kriol village on a small peninsula in a lagoon south of Belize City. It was a beautiful place surrounded by water, and supposedly a lot of manatees, yet we did not see any (despite spending a lot of time on the water in this lee boat that transported us to and from Tiger Point where the research facility is and where we conducted the workshop).

This is where we stayed overnight and where we had all our meals

The boat to Tiger Point

Gales Point

After the first day of the workshop (which was quite a funny day - there were some miscommunications so we had no trainees for quite a while, and then they were on Tiger Point and we were on Gales Point - but we finally got together. Then on the way home from the workshop - we got soaked on the boat! Which happened again the next morning, only worse when giant water splashes just bombarded us!) we had an awesome night. We got to experience drumming and sambai. It was incredible and so much fun - during the sambai the people dance around the fire and then call in a new person to dance, Ginnie was called in and went and danced with Mica and at one time with the drummer. It was a lot of fun even if our dancing wasn't the best!

The drummers

Day two of the workshop went well, our trainees did a great job at presenting their lessons. We got back to Gentle's to eat lunch and prepare to return to Belize City and found out the coastal road we took in was closed, so we had to take the long way and head out to Dangriga then drive up the Hummingbird Highway (which is the most beautiful ride - it was nice that Anthony got to see it since Ginnie had already when she took the trip to Dangriga for Mission Impossible) to Belmopan and then we took the bus back to Belize City and taxi's home - so we had hit pretty much all the major forms of transportation in the one day (which went quite well with the theme for Kriol this week, which is transportation!) with the boat rides, the car, the bus and the taxi!

We spent the day back in Kriol class with Miss Dorothy and rode the Belize Metro through the city to make a map of the route so we can be sure to help others find their way around. After a busy week and a long day, we are ready to rest up since tomorrow is all day Kriol and our group needs to prepare for camp week! Next week we are working with the YWCA on their literacy camp and will be working with kids all week to help them with literacy. It should be a lot of fun and we'll certainly share the adventure with you!

Hope you enjoyed the crazy long post!!

Belize City Here We Come

We got our community based training (CBT) site information on Thursday and we are off to the big city. Actually, we moved today into our new home for 6 weeks and are really excited. Our new host mom is Miss Udeen, and she is wonderful and so welcoming, we already went to visit with her friend for a Belizean breakfast of Johnny Cakes (delicious!) and a bread that I can't recall the name of, but it is cinnamon-y and quite good, and we had avocado, cantaloupe, another fruit that I think she called Marmy, and kalalu greens. What a meal! Miss Udeen is cooking now and it smells amazing. Good thing we'll be taking a long walk every morning and evening to get to and from the house for training! We'll need the exercise for sure.

Once our office based training ended Friday, we had a day off so we headed out to San Ignacio (aka Cayo) for the night. It was so nice to have a night away and just be able to relax, take a real shower and have a quiet meal. We ended up sharing our table with a family from Austin, TX and had a nice conversation. Cayo is a nice town that is just about ten miles from Guatemala. We can't leave the country as trainees, so we stayed in town and walked up the hill to the Cahal Pech ruins after a nice breakfast and leisurely morning. The walk was not too bad, it was pretty hot, but we took it easy and it was worth it to see the beautiful view of the landscape from the top. The ruins were fun to explore, especially since we were the only ones there! Ant's camera decided to quit on us right as we entered into the ruins, but luckily the museum had an outlet, so we just spent some time in there as it charged. {Once we get settled, we hope to be able to post pictures!} After the ruins, we took the bus back to Belmopan to spend some time in town. We'd heard about this great cafe called PerkUp that we wanted to visit for their high speed internet and smoothies! After a long walk - we definitely were sent in the wrong direction when we asked for directions - we made it. We didn't have our laptop, so we missed out on the internet, but the Mango smoothie and Lime Italian soda were worth the trip.

Our last night in Armenia was relatively calm - except for the lovely downpour right as Ginnie was finishing a bucket bath! It doesn't really matter since the bucket water is rain water (and the rain pouring down may have helped to get all the shampoo out for once!) but the clothes and towel got wet so they were not much help after the shower! It was bound to happen one day. Our "sister" Julissa loves her new Tom and Jerry movie, so she asked us to watch it with her again (we watched it on Wednesday too) and then we had dinner of stewed chicken, vegetables and, of course, tortillas! We also had this very sweet coconut dessert. Our breakfast to send us off to our new homes was cake! It was really good cake, we have had cake for breakfast too often this week, but it is tasty.

Our trip into Belize City was nice. We were driven in by Anthony from the Peace Corps and he pointed out a lot of sites and shared information on the area. This is Ginnie's first day in the city, so she was taking it all in. It's been a great day and we couldn't be more excited about living with Miss Udeen. She owns a restaurant that is attached to the house and serves lunches. It's really nice and we are looking forward to tasting everything. She was asked to speak to us in Kriol since that is the language we will learn over the next 6 weeks. We have a small foundation and can understand it well (when people speak slowly!) but we are not so good at talking yet. Miss Udeen lived in the states for many years, so she said she has to practice her Kriol, too! Her friend Miss Joy was working with us on it this morning, and I know she will be good at helping us to pick it up. We'll be working with the pikni (children) every Saturday and they will definitely immerse us right in, so we should be talking Kriol in no time!

Dinner seems to be near ready, so we're off for now!


This picture is from one of our last days in Armenia when we filled Mr. Pop's van with 30 trainees (plus Mr. Pop and the conductor). Being a yellow van, there was quite a fantastic singing of Yellow Submarine. By the way, the van is a 12 seater.







Cahel Pech Ruins in San Ignacio:

Happy Fourth of July!

We're still in full days of training, but we had a great Fourth of July celebration event on Sunday at the US Ambassador's house. What a day! We got some barbequed chicken and a delicious american flag cake! The ambassador and his wife were amazing hosts and were so friendly and welcomed us warmly to their home and to Belize.

We also got to spend time at the pool and that was a nice relaxing break from the busy schedule of training.

We find out our community based training sites tomorrow, so I am sure there are a lot of anxious trainees tonight, at least I know we will be just waiting for that decision and to find out what language we'll learn and what part of the country we'll move to next. The past two days were nice since we got to Armenia earlier than we had been and were able to walk through the village and see more of the area and just have some down time.

Our mom has been making us cake more often, so it's good to get some walking in too! She is very good to us with trying to be sure we have enough to eat and that we like it. We haven't had too many exotic meals, tortillas are a staple at home. We both love tortillas, so it's dangerous to have so many! We had an interesting breakfast the other day - it was rice and milk, it was warm and it tasted somewhat like oatmeal with a lot of sugar - Ginnie liked it, since it was close to a breakfast-y thing.

Anyway, not much new and exciting to share today!

Gud Maanin (That's Kriol!)

June 29
Training has continued to go well and we are still having fun. The more we learn about our specific project, the more excited we get. All the education people will be split into three groups when we head out for community based training and will either learn K’ekchi (to work with the Maya people), Garifuna (to work with the Garifunas) or Kriole. We do not know where we will be yet, but are lucky that we will find out next week when we split off for community based training where it will focus on language and technical skills and we’ll get a new family! More adjustments… Our medical sessions have begun and we must have the best PCMO (Medical Officer) because she is hilarious and just puts all the crazy medical stuff into a fun package – I guess when you have to discuss diarrhea for two hours you build a pretty good sense of humor! Our vaccines and malaria medicine started last week and we get more today. The malaria pills can cause “vivid” dreams and they did for Ginnie, it’s weird and sad that we have to take them weekly because Ginnie already has vivid dreams, so these are basically hallucinations! It’s bizarre, let’s hope they don’t continue! Wednesday was a really fun day – everyone was randomly split into small groups and given a mission to complete for our “Mission Impossible” day, which everyone had been curious about since day one (there were very few details on the schedule! Ginnie’s team was sent out to the district town of Dangriga on the coast, and Anthony was sent out to Belize City. It was fun, each group had several landmarks and things to find and pick up to get back to headquarters. We also took the opportunity to explore our sites and see a new part of the country. Ginnie’s group spent some time at the beach and had lunch at a great café run by a German woman who had lived here as a volunteer and decided to return for good. Anthony’s group really got to see a lot of the big city since they had to navigate a busier area and visited the Supreme Court and other places. They did some shopping and checked out all the things available out there. After a long and hot day with lengthy bus rides, we got out early and just had some down time for the afternoon. Because we are still adjusting to the “schedule” the buses run on, we really didn’t get home much earlier than usual! Our days are pretty full since we train from 8am to 5pm and catch the bus by 7am and then sometimes are not able to get a bus until 6:30pm or later! We have definitely started new sleeping habits – by 8pm, we’re exhausted and up and ready by 6am, it’s definitely a change, but a good one. Training is 6 days a week and this week we have all been invited to the U.S. Ambassador’s house for a fourth of July cookout and pool party! We had to sign waivers today in order to use the pool, but it is exciting to get to spend the day at the embassy and celebrate American-style (maybe they’ll have burgers… probably not turkey burgers though, but at least some grilled chicken would be nice!). Gotta get back to Kriol class.

Some fun training photos:

You Better Belize It! We're Finally Here.

June 21-24
We made it to Belize today, finally!! We were a bit worried that a few members of the group, including Anthony wouldn’t make it since they were on standby when the tickets were rebooked. We all said goodbye and those of us with tickets got on the plane and as it came time to close the doors, we saw one-by-one that our fellow trainees were making their way onto the plane and everyone cheered. We all made it! We then had a one hour bus ride to Belmopan from Belize City. It was nice to see our new home for the first time and see the scenery of the country – it’s quite green and beautiful. Once we arrived at Peace Corps headquarters, we had a Belizean lunch and got started on training. After a few hours together, they took us over to the Garden City Hotel for our first night in Belize so we could repack bags for our first home-stay, where we’ll live for 2.5 weeks and didn’t want to bring 80 pounds plus of luggage! The first night in Belize was fun, we had dinner with some other trainees at a little restaurant, Alawin’s, just across from the hotel where we split some dishes and hung out for a while. We even hit the market to gather some things we might need. This was also our first introduction to living without hot water – but it’s not so bad, the cold water here is not as cold as at home, and it’s actually more refreshing to take our showers with the cool water! (Note – showers in the sense of filling a 5 gallon bucket and proceeding to splash clean yourself) Friday started the full training schedule and we spent the day at headquarters in different sessions (which has been pretty much the make up of each day since). This was also the day we moved to Armenia to meet our host families for the first weeks of training. We had a fun Jeopardy session about living in this village and then we all split off with our roommates (Anthony and I are with our fellow trainee, Mary) and headed out in the vans/jeeps to the village to find our families. Our family is so great! Maira and Manuel are our mom and dad and Julisa and Daniel are our siblings (Julie is 7 and Daniel is 4) and we have a puppy, Manueco (aka Chuchito by Daniel). They speak Spanish, which is nice because we are practicing our language and having fun talking with the children and having them correct our words. We are lucky to have an indoor toilet! The bucket baths are a new experience, but they are nice – the cool water is refreshing. We’ve been at the home stay for a few days and have started to settle in nicely. Things are quaint and quiet aside from the testosterone charged roosters who compete with one another around 3:00AM each morning…it’s really quite entertaining to listen too, so much so that it lulls you back into a deep sleep, well not really a deep sleep, but rather drives you crazy to the point that you would like to turn them into dinner for the following evening. Breakfast and dinner are provided by our host mom and usually consist of tortillas and other sorts of foods (bananas, rice, beans, chicken, etc – and any of those are at either meal – eggs for dinner, beans for breakfast, etc). Water is the staple drink here, that is unless you prefer to live like the locals and drink Coke, Sprite, or Fanta with your breakfast. We are having a really great time in Armenia aside from the occasional giant tarantulas that for some reason, find it necessary to accompany us to bed each night (It’s quite fortunate that our little sister is a great exterminator – she helped Ginnie out by getting all the “diving” beetles out of her bag, we haven’t figured out the purpose of these giant beetles but evidently they dive toward things and end up upside down flailing – it’s an odd little bugger). Today is our day off, so we met up with a bunch of other trainees and went to Blue Hole National Park – just a few miles away from the village and not to be confused with the famous other Blue Hole reef! We hiked into a cave and then to a lookout tower. The lookout tower was a rough walk – ½ mile up! But, we all made it and we got to see the views of the landscape. After the climb and hike (in the jungle that is quite hot) we went to Blue Hole where people swam in the cool little “pool.” It was a fun day and we spent the rest of the afternoon lying in our hammocks reading and writing in journals – it was the first relaxing day!

Here are some pictures of our home in Armenia and the trip to Blue Hole:

The Home Stay sign Our "siblings" Our house - we stay in the

thatch roof hut on the left

Daniel, Julissa, & Manueco Ginnie & Anthony, Blue Hole Park Ryan, Matt & Ginnie

Are We There Yet?... Not Quite!

June 20
The plane broke! We'll follow up later on with fun pictures of our uncooperative plane, our fellow trainees and all that crazy luggage that 38 of us are carrying! (Something like 100+ pieces of luggage hauled too many times).We will try again tomorrow with the same flight time and number, let's hope it's not the same plane:)Anyway, it's quite a story, we just don't have time to fill you in now, but we'll share the details when we get a chance (and let's hope it's from Belize!).

Still Working Our Way Through Staging

June 19

We have completed staging, although Ginnie chose to spend a portion of her training time in the emergency room - yep, she got sick even before getting out of the country (what are the odds?)!We're both doing fine now and excited to get on the plane in the morning to fly out to Belize. One tiny snag is that Ginnie will need to get a final medical clearance before we check out at 4:30 am (yikes is it really that early!) for our 10:40am flight to Belize City.Anyway, staging was a lot of fun. We have a great class filled with people from all over the country and with many different experiences and a great age range (from 23 to 70). There are even four other married couples in this class, although they did mention that things don't typically end up that way. It has been great getting to know everyone (Ginnie has been very appreciative of everyone's support while she was sick!) and to participate in all the ice-breakers and team-builders (we played "Find Someone Who..." among others, but those who know Ginnie knows she loves these icebreakers - and this one was great because they took something from each of our applications that was unique and put it on the form so we got to know these little known things about each other in our first meeting). We also had an opportunity to express our ideas and feelings about our upcoming experience through some funny songs, dances, performances, and games. It's been a very long few days, but we're excited about finally heading out to our post. We will soon meet our new host families in Armenia, not the one in Eastern Europe :) but rather a small village south of the capitol Belmopan. We'll be updating things as often as possible, but our schedule is quite hectic for the next few weeks.

June 17th - On our way to Miami

We're off to Miami for staging (Peace Corps lingo for orientation). We definitely maximized our 80 pounds of luggage! Hopefully we have everything we need...We are both really excited about the trip and looking forward to our jobs as Teacher Trainers for Elementary Education, focusing on the area of reading. It's definitely going to be challenging to jump into a new job in a new country, but we are anxious to get started and meet our fellow trainees and learn more about our new home in Belize.Stay tuned for further posts!