here is my new favorite poem:
(as recited with motions by four little 5 year old girls)
"I love myself the way I am,There's nothing I need to change,I'll always be the perfect me,There's nothing to rearrange.I'm beautiful and capable of beingThe best me I can.And I love myself just the way I am.I love you just the way you are,There's nothing you need to do,When I feel the love inside myself,It's easy to love you.Behind your fears, your rage and tears,I see your shining star.And I love you just the way you are.I love the world the way it is'Cause I can clearly seeThat all the things I judge are doneBy people just like me.So till the birth of peace on earthThat only love can bring,I'll help it grow by loving everything.I love myself the way I am andStill I want to grow.But change outside can only comeWhen deep inside I knowI'm beautiful and capable of beingThe best me I can.And I love myself just the way I am. "
by Jai Josefs
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
saying goodbye
hi there! i just got back from a cultural presentation the students at Christ The King put on for us. it was amazing! they sang their national anthem in garifuna and then in english, and then had us sing them our national anthem. one class recited the pledge to belize, and one class recited a poem. there was dancing and four little girls from the infant 1 class (=kindergarten) recited a poem called "I Love Myself." it was the most wonderful thing i have ever seen! three girls did traditional punta dancing while two boys played the drums. then a young boy came out dressed in a headdress and costume to perform a dance that is traditional for christmastime and new years. for that dance one of the drummers keeps the beat and the other drummer looks at the dancer's feet and has to follow every step he takes on the drum. it is very cool to watch! the last dance they did was from five older boys. three of them came out dressed like girls (!) and did the girl parts of the punta dance, to laughter from all of us and the students, and then a boy dressed in a scary mask came out with a stick in his hand followed by a boy dressed like a bull with a stick in his hand. i didn't quite understand what was being represented, i think it was kind of a silly fun dance. all the kids were so excited, jumping up and down during that dance and creeping up to the boy in the mask until he would turn around and pretend to scare them and they would run away. it was really entertaining, and we took lots of pictures. at the end we called the hogs for the whole school and sang the fight song, then we taught them to call the hogs with us! it was so cute! the teachers will probably want to kill us because the "woooooo" sound became very popular very quickly :)
yesterday morning we had a town-wide trash pick up. we were in charge of about twenty kids from Christ the King and we picked up trash in Bangashe Park, which is about a 20 minute walk away from the school. this was a major test in us being able to motivate! i used an old St. Paul's trick of find the "magic piece of trash" and that worked for a while, then we were able to use snacks as a bribe to pick up trash. here they have these snacks called ideals, they are flavored ice in a little plastic package, kind of like an oversized pop-ice. they also sell plain water in plastic packages, too - it is a funny way to drink water! anyway - our morning was spent cleaning the city until we had to leave for pomona. we had mrs. e's for lunch - which is the little shack with chicken burritos homemade for $1 - they are incredible.
i have had three of my last tutoring sessions now. yesterday was with the bojorges family in pomona. this week we talked about the parts of a story. we had three extra kids all from a different family with us too. everyone picked characters and a setting together, and then we all wrote our own story up until the "problem" stage, and swapped papers with a partner who finished the "resolution" part of the story. then we read green eggs with ham which is proving to be a favorite. every day i am more amazed by the miracle of dr. seuss! consuelo brought me a burrito and some baby bananas - those really little ones - here they call them "gold bananas" she said. when we drove them home she invited us into her house to give us what i thought would be one coconut already ready to go from her kitchen. really what we did was follow her out behind the house where she, then isaias, then her husband mr. bojorges proceeded to break down a whole slew of coconuts from the tree for us to take back, using a very long stick, a homemade ladder and a machete. then mr. bojorges (who i met all of 10 minutes before this) chopped open two coconutes with his machete for us to drink. it was awesome. consuelo also sent me home with some fresh flour tortillas and when i told her i liked the beautiful purple flowers that kind of form an arch over their front door, she picked some of those for me too. they are the most wonderful generous people, and they have a beautiful family! she came out to the bus and blessed all of us. i told her we could write letters and stay friends and she said "yes, friends always. 'til God comes."
today i had my last reading session with dylan. we also read green eggs and ham and made up hand motions for each little phrase aka in a house, with a mouse, in a box, with a fox, etc. he loved it. in the middle he stopped and said "miss, i like this book!" he did a great job reading today, and was excited to get to take four books home with him. when i saw him later at the cultural presentation he kept waving to me from his seat and giving me a thumbs up.
we ate at our new german friend's restaurant again today. it was very tasty again! and we have had rain every night this week which has made the nights so much cooler for sleeping! i can't believe we really just have one more day here! i am excited to be back to air conditioning and going to bed without dousing myself in bug spray first.
miss you all and can't wait to see you in a few days! hope everyone is surviving the summer heat so far!
lots of love, hill
yesterday morning we had a town-wide trash pick up. we were in charge of about twenty kids from Christ the King and we picked up trash in Bangashe Park, which is about a 20 minute walk away from the school. this was a major test in us being able to motivate! i used an old St. Paul's trick of find the "magic piece of trash" and that worked for a while, then we were able to use snacks as a bribe to pick up trash. here they have these snacks called ideals, they are flavored ice in a little plastic package, kind of like an oversized pop-ice. they also sell plain water in plastic packages, too - it is a funny way to drink water! anyway - our morning was spent cleaning the city until we had to leave for pomona. we had mrs. e's for lunch - which is the little shack with chicken burritos homemade for $1 - they are incredible.
i have had three of my last tutoring sessions now. yesterday was with the bojorges family in pomona. this week we talked about the parts of a story. we had three extra kids all from a different family with us too. everyone picked characters and a setting together, and then we all wrote our own story up until the "problem" stage, and swapped papers with a partner who finished the "resolution" part of the story. then we read green eggs with ham which is proving to be a favorite. every day i am more amazed by the miracle of dr. seuss! consuelo brought me a burrito and some baby bananas - those really little ones - here they call them "gold bananas" she said. when we drove them home she invited us into her house to give us what i thought would be one coconut already ready to go from her kitchen. really what we did was follow her out behind the house where she, then isaias, then her husband mr. bojorges proceeded to break down a whole slew of coconuts from the tree for us to take back, using a very long stick, a homemade ladder and a machete. then mr. bojorges (who i met all of 10 minutes before this) chopped open two coconutes with his machete for us to drink. it was awesome. consuelo also sent me home with some fresh flour tortillas and when i told her i liked the beautiful purple flowers that kind of form an arch over their front door, she picked some of those for me too. they are the most wonderful generous people, and they have a beautiful family! she came out to the bus and blessed all of us. i told her we could write letters and stay friends and she said "yes, friends always. 'til God comes."
today i had my last reading session with dylan. we also read green eggs and ham and made up hand motions for each little phrase aka in a house, with a mouse, in a box, with a fox, etc. he loved it. in the middle he stopped and said "miss, i like this book!" he did a great job reading today, and was excited to get to take four books home with him. when i saw him later at the cultural presentation he kept waving to me from his seat and giving me a thumbs up.
we ate at our new german friend's restaurant again today. it was very tasty again! and we have had rain every night this week which has made the nights so much cooler for sleeping! i can't believe we really just have one more day here! i am excited to be back to air conditioning and going to bed without dousing myself in bug spray first.
miss you all and can't wait to see you in a few days! hope everyone is surviving the summer heat so far!
lots of love, hill
Monday, June 11, 2007
dr. seuss' secrets
hi everyone! this may be my last or next to last post before i'm back.
today was a great day. last night it started storming at about 9 and didn't stop until after 11 - it was wonderful to sleep in! and it actually felt cold in the middle of the night and i curled up in a little ball under my sheet. during the storm however i had to pull out my raincoat and put it over my head, because even with the shutters completely closed - i was still getting rain on myself while i was going to sleep.
this morning we made certificates for all our kids on the computer and a "Reading with your Family" handout for the parents so we can pass them out this week at our last sessions. we ate lunch at a new restaurant today called the seashell cafe. (our beloved king burger with its wonderful juice and ice cream apparently got shut down after its health inspection...eesh). anyway, a lady from germany opened up this cafe and it was wonderful. she told me that it had always been her dream to open a cafe and she first visited dangriga a year and half ago and decided to move here and she "changed her life." she had omlettes, bagels with cream cheese and mango and pineapple jam (that's what i had), coffee drinks, the best two glasses of orange juice i've ever had, great toast, etc. it was a really good lunch. she was so funny, she kept telling us how this was all new to her and laughing every time we would send her back for another glass of orange juice. she told us that it really frazzles her to run out of oranges as she has been the past few days, but she is finding that belizeans don't really mind. in her exact words: " i feel bad when i run out of oranges because, you know, germans are perfect, but the people here don't really seem to mind." she was so cute. we plan to go back tomorrow and bring more friends.
i had my last session with keedia and her mom martha today. it went really well. we got to sit by the beach again and read which i'm trying to take in because it's not every day that you get to tutor on the sea. we did another fill in the blank story about keedia and then read one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish...that is we got through half of it. those dr. seuss books are much longer than i remember. but they are fun. it's funny reading all these children's books now, because you realize that all the rhyming words and matching sentence structures are actually there for a reason. because it makes it so much easier for 5 year olds to recognize words. this is news to all of us 20 year olds who remember these books as just for fun. anyway, at the end of the session i got to give keedia her certificate and four books to take home for her very own! her mother was very thankful and promised me that keedia would read them at home. we also exchanged addresses so hopefully we can be pen pals.
tomorrow is trash pick up day for the whole group. this means from 9:30 in the morning all 40ish of us will be in various parts of dangriga picking up trash. i am excited to do a little bit of hard work/manual labor, it always makes me feel so productive - and it will make the day go by quickly i think. i don't have much else today, except that i've discovered val's (internet/laundry) owner dana makes incredible banana bread.
hopefully i'll get to write one last time on wednesday maybe.
hope everyone is doing wonderfully! i miss y'all and can't wait to be home and see you!
much love from the carribbean, hill
today was a great day. last night it started storming at about 9 and didn't stop until after 11 - it was wonderful to sleep in! and it actually felt cold in the middle of the night and i curled up in a little ball under my sheet. during the storm however i had to pull out my raincoat and put it over my head, because even with the shutters completely closed - i was still getting rain on myself while i was going to sleep.
this morning we made certificates for all our kids on the computer and a "Reading with your Family" handout for the parents so we can pass them out this week at our last sessions. we ate lunch at a new restaurant today called the seashell cafe. (our beloved king burger with its wonderful juice and ice cream apparently got shut down after its health inspection...eesh). anyway, a lady from germany opened up this cafe and it was wonderful. she told me that it had always been her dream to open a cafe and she first visited dangriga a year and half ago and decided to move here and she "changed her life." she had omlettes, bagels with cream cheese and mango and pineapple jam (that's what i had), coffee drinks, the best two glasses of orange juice i've ever had, great toast, etc. it was a really good lunch. she was so funny, she kept telling us how this was all new to her and laughing every time we would send her back for another glass of orange juice. she told us that it really frazzles her to run out of oranges as she has been the past few days, but she is finding that belizeans don't really mind. in her exact words: " i feel bad when i run out of oranges because, you know, germans are perfect, but the people here don't really seem to mind." she was so cute. we plan to go back tomorrow and bring more friends.
i had my last session with keedia and her mom martha today. it went really well. we got to sit by the beach again and read which i'm trying to take in because it's not every day that you get to tutor on the sea. we did another fill in the blank story about keedia and then read one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish...that is we got through half of it. those dr. seuss books are much longer than i remember. but they are fun. it's funny reading all these children's books now, because you realize that all the rhyming words and matching sentence structures are actually there for a reason. because it makes it so much easier for 5 year olds to recognize words. this is news to all of us 20 year olds who remember these books as just for fun. anyway, at the end of the session i got to give keedia her certificate and four books to take home for her very own! her mother was very thankful and promised me that keedia would read them at home. we also exchanged addresses so hopefully we can be pen pals.
tomorrow is trash pick up day for the whole group. this means from 9:30 in the morning all 40ish of us will be in various parts of dangriga picking up trash. i am excited to do a little bit of hard work/manual labor, it always makes me feel so productive - and it will make the day go by quickly i think. i don't have much else today, except that i've discovered val's (internet/laundry) owner dana makes incredible banana bread.
hopefully i'll get to write one last time on wednesday maybe.
hope everyone is doing wonderfully! i miss y'all and can't wait to be home and see you!
much love from the carribbean, hill
Sunday, June 10, 2007
my weekend
hi there! we are back from placencia where we spent the weekend. it was a BEAUTIFUL beach. we stayed at the Serenade Guest House, which was about a two minute walk from the beach. on the beach was a bar/restaurant called the Cozy Corner, where both yesterday and today i had two plate-sized pancakes for breakfast and fresh squeezed orange juice. the pancakes were SO good! before i got to the beach, a guy who had been there described it as looking like a corona commercial. and he was exactly right. there were little pastel colored cabins all along the beach, and fun seafood restaurants and arts and crafts stores. where i really tried not to buy any more things....so we spent saturday sitting in pastel painted wooden beach chairs right in front of the ocean listening to ipods and reading books. it was a wonderful day, i just kept thinking to myself how wonderful it was to be there relaxing and how lucky we were to get to do that. (and simulatneously be getting 6 hours of school credit).
two pairs of boys came up during the day to individually ask all of us if we would like to trade our ipods for some mayan crafts or souveniers. sadly, none of us handed over our ipods. on boy stopped me and said "hi, what's your name?...i'm santiago" (and shook my hand, he's like 8), pointed to his friend who also shook my hand "i'm peter." santiago proceeded to tell me that they were "out here just doing a little business" and asked if i had an ipod. i told him yes, to which he informed me that "you know, i really like to hear music. you know, it's my best subject in school....maybe we could do a little trade?" another couple of boys offered some of the guys in our group a salad spoon and a salad bowl for their ipods. it was pretty funny.
last night we ate at Wendy's, no hambugers, but wonderful seafood. i made a deal and ordered the beer-battered shrimp and split it half and half with someone who ordered herb garlic shrimp. both were amazing. and they had great mashed potatoes. and there was a gelato place across the street that i went to twice yesterday - once i got vanilla and choclate chip, and the second time i got pineapple- which really tasted like real pineapple. all in all it was a wonderful relaxing weekend! this week we are wrapping up our tutoring, we have one more time with each family. so i'm off to the hotel to eat dinner and make certificates for all my kids.
hope everyone is doing well! i can't wait to see you all when i get home! happy monday, hill
two pairs of boys came up during the day to individually ask all of us if we would like to trade our ipods for some mayan crafts or souveniers. sadly, none of us handed over our ipods. on boy stopped me and said "hi, what's your name?...i'm santiago" (and shook my hand, he's like 8), pointed to his friend who also shook my hand "i'm peter." santiago proceeded to tell me that they were "out here just doing a little business" and asked if i had an ipod. i told him yes, to which he informed me that "you know, i really like to hear music. you know, it's my best subject in school....maybe we could do a little trade?" another couple of boys offered some of the guys in our group a salad spoon and a salad bowl for their ipods. it was pretty funny.
last night we ate at Wendy's, no hambugers, but wonderful seafood. i made a deal and ordered the beer-battered shrimp and split it half and half with someone who ordered herb garlic shrimp. both were amazing. and they had great mashed potatoes. and there was a gelato place across the street that i went to twice yesterday - once i got vanilla and choclate chip, and the second time i got pineapple- which really tasted like real pineapple. all in all it was a wonderful relaxing weekend! this week we are wrapping up our tutoring, we have one more time with each family. so i'm off to the hotel to eat dinner and make certificates for all my kids.
hope everyone is doing well! i can't wait to see you all when i get home! happy monday, hill
Thursday, June 7, 2007
thursday update
hi everyone! i tried to write yesterday but it didn't post my entry, so i will try and catch you up again!
since my last post we have had three days of tutoring. monday was the herrera family in pomona, their Aunt Ann came with them so we had a larger group. Ann was telling me about a wedding she was going to later in the summer for her step-granddaughter, it sounded like it was going to be just beautiful. tuesday came to bring my laundry, read by the beach for a while, bought a hot dog, a watermelon juice and a piece of cake (for $2.50 US dollars!!) and ate it for lunch at the park before I worked with Dylan. we finished reading our book from last week and practiced some spelling before we started another book. he was so cute because the first day when we read the Caps For Sale book, I asked him which color was his favorite and he said the red ones. so everytime we came across the red caps he would grin really big and say "that's MY color!" Tuesday evening I worked with Keedia and her mom Martha. We practiced some rhyming words and I had made up a little fill-in-the-blank story for Keedia with her name in it. Everytime she would get to her name she would smile really big and read "Keedia!" really loudly. Something we've noticed in tutoring is that all the kids here seem so timid in reading. They get in trouble in school if they get a word wrong, so they all read very quietly and it takes some convincing to let them know that we are there to have fun with them whether they get all the words right or not. anyway, Keedia's mom was very helpful and is very dedicated to her kids. while we read our second book she got out a sheet of paper and a marker and was writing down all the words Keedia had trouble with so she could work on them at home. that afternoon we got all the kids together and played a game of duck-duck-goose - it was hilarious. they are such wonderful kids! tuesday night it rained buckets! from about 3 in the morning until around 8. it was so nice to sleep in though - the breeze was so cool and you could feel some little sprinkles coming in too! (our windows don't have screens, but we need to keep them open to get any kind of breeze).
the excitement of yesterday came at about 2 in the afternoon. we were supposed to leave for pomona at 1:15, but we were able to wait until 2:30 - so jessica, nathan and i were all reading in mine and jessica's room. my bed is next to the window, and i looked out the window and saw smoke billowing up. they often burn trash here, so at first it didn't seem like too big of a deal - i just thought the wind was carrying the smoke wrong. so then i shut the shutters because it was stinging our eyes, and when i looked again the smoke was even seeping through the cracks and i thought...hmmm, that is probably not normal. so i went into the room that connects to ours, where joe and jeff stay. joe and matt were on their balcony, and both of them were scheduled to be gone at that time in the afternoon also. so we walked in and i asked if they saw all the smoke coming into their room too. they ran down the stairs from their balcony and under the building ( the general manager of the hotel lives kind of underneath/attached to the building where our rooms are) and saw through the door that a whole clothes dryer had caught fire and the clothes were in flames! so joe and matt ran to the main building to get mr. usher and brought a fire extinguisher, luckily mr. usher was around because he is the only one with the key to the room that was on fire, and they extinguished it right away. apparently the lent in the dryer hadn't been cleaned out and it caused the whole thing to catch. all to say - it was an intense two minutes or so! i can't imagine how long it would have taken anyone to notice if we hadn't all been in our rooms and smelled it. it was crazy. needless to say - everyone should go clean the lent out of the lent filter of their dryer right now.
after the fire-fighting incident we tutored at pomona again yesterday. i had the bojorge family, which is the lady with ten kids. her birthday is tomorrow, incidentally. mrs. consuelo is about 4 feet tall, and when she saw me yesterday she gave me a hug around the neck and kissed my cheek. we read two more books yesterday and drew pictures. i also had the kids write a poem together and sign it with their names so they could take it home as their very own. after our session, danis (one of the grad students in charge of us here, she and drew have been here for a year preparing for us! - they are wonderful and a lot of fun!) was driving the family home and i rode with her, since they live a different direction from the other families, we take them first. and mrs. consuelo brought me a bag of fresh, sliced, cool pineapple picked from their farm! it was the best pineapple i've ever eaten! and i felt so thankful that she brought it just for me - they are such a nice family. i asked her how far away her farm was from her house and she told me it was a three hour walk that they go to several times a week if not every day! and her son, who i found out spells his name Isaias, pointed out the mountain to me that their farm is behind.
mrs. consuelo's words of wisdom of the day were "can't stop the rain, that's God's work."
last night we had our weekly big group meeting, and Steve Darr, the head of peacework, the non-profit we are working with is here as is the study abroad director from u of a. it was neat to talk to them and give them a run-down of how things have been going so far. i had never thought of it this way, but i guess part of the impact we are having here is messily figuring things out this first time so that the next years' groups will be set up to hit the ground running and continue what our projects have started. then a few of us went to this little shack, that only sells cake and is only open at night. it's amazing - just a shack that sells all different kinds of cake and pudding. i had chocolate cake, but they also had a lemon merengue (sp?) that looked good, but seeing how merengue is mushy and we all know how i feel about that, only my friend got that! we spent the rest of the night all sitting in front of jungle huts talking for a couple hours. it's nice to not have tv or distractions, because it makes people just sit and tell stories and laugh. which i think is sort of what we were made to do. also it is nice here to go to bed at a kind of normal hour and wake up at a good time and eat breakfast - too bad that just doesn't really fit into anyone's life the rest of the year at school! :)
this afternoon i've got another session with dylan, and probably another night of cake or ice cream and just hanging out! tomorrow we leave for placencia and the beach! hopefully the rain holds out for the weekend. we booked a hotel with air conditioning AND tv, for only $14 american dollars a night - it is going to be heaven.
hope everyone is doing well! i can't wait to see everyone in a week from tomorrow!
love to you all, hill
since my last post we have had three days of tutoring. monday was the herrera family in pomona, their Aunt Ann came with them so we had a larger group. Ann was telling me about a wedding she was going to later in the summer for her step-granddaughter, it sounded like it was going to be just beautiful. tuesday came to bring my laundry, read by the beach for a while, bought a hot dog, a watermelon juice and a piece of cake (for $2.50 US dollars!!) and ate it for lunch at the park before I worked with Dylan. we finished reading our book from last week and practiced some spelling before we started another book. he was so cute because the first day when we read the Caps For Sale book, I asked him which color was his favorite and he said the red ones. so everytime we came across the red caps he would grin really big and say "that's MY color!" Tuesday evening I worked with Keedia and her mom Martha. We practiced some rhyming words and I had made up a little fill-in-the-blank story for Keedia with her name in it. Everytime she would get to her name she would smile really big and read "Keedia!" really loudly. Something we've noticed in tutoring is that all the kids here seem so timid in reading. They get in trouble in school if they get a word wrong, so they all read very quietly and it takes some convincing to let them know that we are there to have fun with them whether they get all the words right or not. anyway, Keedia's mom was very helpful and is very dedicated to her kids. while we read our second book she got out a sheet of paper and a marker and was writing down all the words Keedia had trouble with so she could work on them at home. that afternoon we got all the kids together and played a game of duck-duck-goose - it was hilarious. they are such wonderful kids! tuesday night it rained buckets! from about 3 in the morning until around 8. it was so nice to sleep in though - the breeze was so cool and you could feel some little sprinkles coming in too! (our windows don't have screens, but we need to keep them open to get any kind of breeze).
the excitement of yesterday came at about 2 in the afternoon. we were supposed to leave for pomona at 1:15, but we were able to wait until 2:30 - so jessica, nathan and i were all reading in mine and jessica's room. my bed is next to the window, and i looked out the window and saw smoke billowing up. they often burn trash here, so at first it didn't seem like too big of a deal - i just thought the wind was carrying the smoke wrong. so then i shut the shutters because it was stinging our eyes, and when i looked again the smoke was even seeping through the cracks and i thought...hmmm, that is probably not normal. so i went into the room that connects to ours, where joe and jeff stay. joe and matt were on their balcony, and both of them were scheduled to be gone at that time in the afternoon also. so we walked in and i asked if they saw all the smoke coming into their room too. they ran down the stairs from their balcony and under the building ( the general manager of the hotel lives kind of underneath/attached to the building where our rooms are) and saw through the door that a whole clothes dryer had caught fire and the clothes were in flames! so joe and matt ran to the main building to get mr. usher and brought a fire extinguisher, luckily mr. usher was around because he is the only one with the key to the room that was on fire, and they extinguished it right away. apparently the lent in the dryer hadn't been cleaned out and it caused the whole thing to catch. all to say - it was an intense two minutes or so! i can't imagine how long it would have taken anyone to notice if we hadn't all been in our rooms and smelled it. it was crazy. needless to say - everyone should go clean the lent out of the lent filter of their dryer right now.
after the fire-fighting incident we tutored at pomona again yesterday. i had the bojorge family, which is the lady with ten kids. her birthday is tomorrow, incidentally. mrs. consuelo is about 4 feet tall, and when she saw me yesterday she gave me a hug around the neck and kissed my cheek. we read two more books yesterday and drew pictures. i also had the kids write a poem together and sign it with their names so they could take it home as their very own. after our session, danis (one of the grad students in charge of us here, she and drew have been here for a year preparing for us! - they are wonderful and a lot of fun!) was driving the family home and i rode with her, since they live a different direction from the other families, we take them first. and mrs. consuelo brought me a bag of fresh, sliced, cool pineapple picked from their farm! it was the best pineapple i've ever eaten! and i felt so thankful that she brought it just for me - they are such a nice family. i asked her how far away her farm was from her house and she told me it was a three hour walk that they go to several times a week if not every day! and her son, who i found out spells his name Isaias, pointed out the mountain to me that their farm is behind.
mrs. consuelo's words of wisdom of the day were "can't stop the rain, that's God's work."
last night we had our weekly big group meeting, and Steve Darr, the head of peacework, the non-profit we are working with is here as is the study abroad director from u of a. it was neat to talk to them and give them a run-down of how things have been going so far. i had never thought of it this way, but i guess part of the impact we are having here is messily figuring things out this first time so that the next years' groups will be set up to hit the ground running and continue what our projects have started. then a few of us went to this little shack, that only sells cake and is only open at night. it's amazing - just a shack that sells all different kinds of cake and pudding. i had chocolate cake, but they also had a lemon merengue (sp?) that looked good, but seeing how merengue is mushy and we all know how i feel about that, only my friend got that! we spent the rest of the night all sitting in front of jungle huts talking for a couple hours. it's nice to not have tv or distractions, because it makes people just sit and tell stories and laugh. which i think is sort of what we were made to do. also it is nice here to go to bed at a kind of normal hour and wake up at a good time and eat breakfast - too bad that just doesn't really fit into anyone's life the rest of the year at school! :)
this afternoon i've got another session with dylan, and probably another night of cake or ice cream and just hanging out! tomorrow we leave for placencia and the beach! hopefully the rain holds out for the weekend. we booked a hotel with air conditioning AND tv, for only $14 american dollars a night - it is going to be heaven.
hope everyone is doing well! i can't wait to see everyone in a week from tomorrow!
love to you all, hill
Sunday, June 3, 2007
"thank God, He deserves it"
hi family and dear friends! i just got back from my second weekend trip and feel like i have a lot to catch you up on!
thursday i worked again with dylan, the 8 year old boy at Christ the King. we read some more and did some more spelling - he is a great kid. i get worried that he is bored, but he has the best attitude! whenever i ask him if he's enjoying the reading he grins really big and says "yeah, fun!" also on thursday i met my second family from pomona, which was a mother of TEN, who barely read english at all, and her three youngest: saillas, abraham and consuelo. we had a fun time reading together and then kicked the futbol around. consuelo is also the mother's name, and as we were eating our snack we had been talking about how she is 49 and has 10 kids, the oldest of which is 35. when i came back from throwing away my trash she looked me right in the eye and said "thank God" and i looked around as if someone had a close call or something, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. as i turned back to her she smiled a little and continued "He deserves it."
thursday night some girls came to the jungle huts (our hotel) and tried to help us punta dance, which is the traditional dance here. it was pretty hilarious, the girls were about 14 or 15 i bet, and were being so nice to teach us with a minimum amount of laughing! it was really fun though, and i think someone took pictures that hopefully not too many people are able to get a hold of.
friday was Christ the King's school fair - so the literacy group all went to that, and the kids were all running around winning little prizes and eating all the different foods they were selling. they were playing really loud garifuna music from a dj and so even the littlest girls, like i'm talking 5 or 6, were doing the punta. i think they are just born being able to move that way - it is crazy.
the weekend we spent in caye caulker, which is an island off the coast of belize. it was INCREDIBLE. i realized when i was there that it was my first time to be on a tropical island - and it was a cool feeling. no one has cars on the island (except the police) so everyone walks, bikes, or drives golf carts - it was so nice to not have any noise or smells of traffic. their culture wasn't touristy, but there definitely were more visitors and it was more of an island feel. kind of like living in a bob marley song for a couple days: hammocks, reggae, white sand, seafood, and relaxing...i could have moved there. there is one peace corps volunteer that works at the library and teaches on caye caulker - he most have done something wonderful in a past life to get stationed there for two years. friday night we ate at a place called "wish willy's" owned by this guy maurice who went to culinary school in chicago. it cost 15 bz ($7.50) for all you can eat buffet dinner that he makes right there, and all you can drink rum punch. we all sat at one long picnic table in his front yard, and he grills the food right there and he flavors it etc. inside. it was sooo good, we had peel your own bar-b-que shrimp, snapper steak, grilled snapper, salad, etc. then we went to the oceanside - a little bar with a sand floor that had a band playing. the band was playing oldies, from 70s rock to elvis - and we all danced for probably two hours - it was such a fun night. all the other patrons of the bar were probably thoroughly entertained as well.
saturday we snorkeled, which was a first for me! it was amazing, too. we got to see lots of different fish and the 2nd largest coral reef in the world. the water was crystal clear - i have never seen anything like that. and the guides who took us made fresh fruit and iced punch for us between every stop. at the second stop we swam with sharks and sting rays and barracudas. and by swam with i mean sting rays swimming in and out between your legs and touching you - it was crazy. we ate at a little italian restaurant for rachel's birthday last night, and went back to the oceanside to kareoke. this included some professors kareokeing as well. jill and i sang "all by myself" by celine dion in honor of our temporarily long-distance boyfriends.
it has been a full few days! it is cloudy and cooler here which is a nice change, and we are on the downhill side of our month here. my new favorite treat here is cake and vanilla and oreo ice cream from king burger, of which i always get one of each because they are both so good and i can never decide which i want more - imagine that.
so i agree with my new friend consuelo, thank God - for dylan and for soccer and for the clear ocean and for good food and for dancing on an island and for you getting to read this from such a far way away! - he deserves it.
love y'all and miss you all the way from belize!....hill
thursday i worked again with dylan, the 8 year old boy at Christ the King. we read some more and did some more spelling - he is a great kid. i get worried that he is bored, but he has the best attitude! whenever i ask him if he's enjoying the reading he grins really big and says "yeah, fun!" also on thursday i met my second family from pomona, which was a mother of TEN, who barely read english at all, and her three youngest: saillas, abraham and consuelo. we had a fun time reading together and then kicked the futbol around. consuelo is also the mother's name, and as we were eating our snack we had been talking about how she is 49 and has 10 kids, the oldest of which is 35. when i came back from throwing away my trash she looked me right in the eye and said "thank God" and i looked around as if someone had a close call or something, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. as i turned back to her she smiled a little and continued "He deserves it."
thursday night some girls came to the jungle huts (our hotel) and tried to help us punta dance, which is the traditional dance here. it was pretty hilarious, the girls were about 14 or 15 i bet, and were being so nice to teach us with a minimum amount of laughing! it was really fun though, and i think someone took pictures that hopefully not too many people are able to get a hold of.
friday was Christ the King's school fair - so the literacy group all went to that, and the kids were all running around winning little prizes and eating all the different foods they were selling. they were playing really loud garifuna music from a dj and so even the littlest girls, like i'm talking 5 or 6, were doing the punta. i think they are just born being able to move that way - it is crazy.
the weekend we spent in caye caulker, which is an island off the coast of belize. it was INCREDIBLE. i realized when i was there that it was my first time to be on a tropical island - and it was a cool feeling. no one has cars on the island (except the police) so everyone walks, bikes, or drives golf carts - it was so nice to not have any noise or smells of traffic. their culture wasn't touristy, but there definitely were more visitors and it was more of an island feel. kind of like living in a bob marley song for a couple days: hammocks, reggae, white sand, seafood, and relaxing...i could have moved there. there is one peace corps volunteer that works at the library and teaches on caye caulker - he most have done something wonderful in a past life to get stationed there for two years. friday night we ate at a place called "wish willy's" owned by this guy maurice who went to culinary school in chicago. it cost 15 bz ($7.50) for all you can eat buffet dinner that he makes right there, and all you can drink rum punch. we all sat at one long picnic table in his front yard, and he grills the food right there and he flavors it etc. inside. it was sooo good, we had peel your own bar-b-que shrimp, snapper steak, grilled snapper, salad, etc. then we went to the oceanside - a little bar with a sand floor that had a band playing. the band was playing oldies, from 70s rock to elvis - and we all danced for probably two hours - it was such a fun night. all the other patrons of the bar were probably thoroughly entertained as well.
saturday we snorkeled, which was a first for me! it was amazing, too. we got to see lots of different fish and the 2nd largest coral reef in the world. the water was crystal clear - i have never seen anything like that. and the guides who took us made fresh fruit and iced punch for us between every stop. at the second stop we swam with sharks and sting rays and barracudas. and by swam with i mean sting rays swimming in and out between your legs and touching you - it was crazy. we ate at a little italian restaurant for rachel's birthday last night, and went back to the oceanside to kareoke. this included some professors kareokeing as well. jill and i sang "all by myself" by celine dion in honor of our temporarily long-distance boyfriends.
it has been a full few days! it is cloudy and cooler here which is a nice change, and we are on the downhill side of our month here. my new favorite treat here is cake and vanilla and oreo ice cream from king burger, of which i always get one of each because they are both so good and i can never decide which i want more - imagine that.
so i agree with my new friend consuelo, thank God - for dylan and for soccer and for the clear ocean and for good food and for dancing on an island and for you getting to read this from such a far way away! - he deserves it.
love y'all and miss you all the way from belize!....hill
Thursday, May 31, 2007
festival of arts day
hello everyone! it is another more than warm morning in dangriga. yesterday was a great day - we went to the beach for the morning and it was wonderful. we went to the beach that is right behind vals (internet and laundry) by a little park. the water was very clear and we walked out probably 50 yards and were still just wading about up to our knees. it felt really good. i got a hot dog from a stand on the street for lunch and it was very tasty - the traditionally put cooked onions, ketchup, mustard and one other sauce on it, but i got her to just put mustard on mine yesterday since i tried it the authentic way a couple days ago. she thought i was really funny for just wanting mustard.
after lunch i went to tutor Dylan at Christ the King, since his family could not come on monday. he was so sweet! we got to sit upstairs in the shade and with a breeze which was nice, and we read together. he is 8 and has the most trouble reading than any of my other kids so far. i think i will try to go back and work with him every other day or so to see if he can get a little better before i leave. that is what makes two more weeks seem like a very short time. he had a wonderful attitude though and kept insisting that he was having fun with a big grin. so even if i was boring him to tears - he was still kind enough to make me feel good about it :) he also is very good at math, and he showed me some of his math problems after we got done reading.
last night our other tutoring sessions got cancelled, which means we showed up at 4 and the principal ms. young told us that it was the night of festival of arts, so most students and families were preparing for that all evening. (no one really uses calendars here or anything like that, and everyone kind of flies by the seat of their pants...and sometimes half an hour late, which i guess is what makes for the relaxed atmosphere!). anyway, we got to eat a lot of the catered snacks and frozen juice ourselves and took some back with us. ms. young also invited us to the festival of arts.
a big group of students went to the parish hall for the festival, and we stayed for probably an hour. there were dance performance by whole classes, there were poetry readings, songs performed, plays - everything. it was so great! the kids were so cute and you could tell they had worked so hard! we also got to see some of our kids from school.
we are off to make up our reading sessions from last night, hope everyone is doing well and that the rain has stopped maybe!
i will be going to Caye Caulker this weekend, which is where the 2nd largest barrier reef in the world is and we are going to snorkel through it. yes i will wear sunscreen. lots.
love to everyone, hill
after lunch i went to tutor Dylan at Christ the King, since his family could not come on monday. he was so sweet! we got to sit upstairs in the shade and with a breeze which was nice, and we read together. he is 8 and has the most trouble reading than any of my other kids so far. i think i will try to go back and work with him every other day or so to see if he can get a little better before i leave. that is what makes two more weeks seem like a very short time. he had a wonderful attitude though and kept insisting that he was having fun with a big grin. so even if i was boring him to tears - he was still kind enough to make me feel good about it :) he also is very good at math, and he showed me some of his math problems after we got done reading.
last night our other tutoring sessions got cancelled, which means we showed up at 4 and the principal ms. young told us that it was the night of festival of arts, so most students and families were preparing for that all evening. (no one really uses calendars here or anything like that, and everyone kind of flies by the seat of their pants...and sometimes half an hour late, which i guess is what makes for the relaxed atmosphere!). anyway, we got to eat a lot of the catered snacks and frozen juice ourselves and took some back with us. ms. young also invited us to the festival of arts.
a big group of students went to the parish hall for the festival, and we stayed for probably an hour. there were dance performance by whole classes, there were poetry readings, songs performed, plays - everything. it was so great! the kids were so cute and you could tell they had worked so hard! we also got to see some of our kids from school.
we are off to make up our reading sessions from last night, hope everyone is doing well and that the rain has stopped maybe!
i will be going to Caye Caulker this weekend, which is where the 2nd largest barrier reef in the world is and we are going to snorkel through it. yes i will wear sunscreen. lots.
love to everyone, hill
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
my new watch has winnie the pooh all over it
good morning! we are on our way to lay by the beach and read until our tutoring and reading starts this afternoon. monday and tuesday went well. monday we went to Christ the King school and maria and i read a story book to standard one (like 1st/2nd grade aged kids) and they seemed to love it. we were in a little classroom with open windows and two kids in each old wooden desk. it is funny, kids are kind of the same everywhere - you can tell who the class clowns are, and the front row students who want to answer every question, and the quiet ones who pay close attention. when they want to get your attention or answer a question we would ask their hands shoot up in the air and they say "miss! miss!" it is very cute! yesterday we drove to pomona, which is the town about ten minutes inland, and read with families there. my family was stephanie (13), johnathan (11), steven (8), and abby (5) with their mother sharlotte. they were great kids, we read two books and wrote down words from the books and talked about things we remembered or what we didn't understand. abby isn't quite old enough to write well - so she drew pictures of the things she remembered. steven is very meticulous, and got out his ruler to draw lines on the blank paper he could write his words on. stephanie has beautiful handwriting and always remembered lots of words and johnathan is a wonderful artist and remembered lots of details from the book. their mother is very sweet, they live on a farm "in the bush" and the house they live in is the same one their mother was born in which i thought was kind of neat.
at night we have taken to sitting around outside and talking instead of always making the 20 minute trek to the pier at the pelican resort. the air feels so nice at night and it is less stuffy to sit outside while our rooms cool down from the day. we bought some bread and peanut butter monday in an effort to save money on lunch, but needless to say when i pulled the bread out tuesday, there were little spots that had been nibbled away and the other pieces were moldy. i suppose we will stick to eating out for lunch.
they say the rainy season starts like clockwork on june 1st, and the past three days early early in the morning it has rained pretty hard. it is kind of nice because it cools it down and the dust isn't so bad, but it also makes the air more humid and there is not as much wind.
we are off to the beach! and mom and dad don't worry i am wearing sunscreen and have even been taking vitamins every day :)
love to everyone, hill
at night we have taken to sitting around outside and talking instead of always making the 20 minute trek to the pier at the pelican resort. the air feels so nice at night and it is less stuffy to sit outside while our rooms cool down from the day. we bought some bread and peanut butter monday in an effort to save money on lunch, but needless to say when i pulled the bread out tuesday, there were little spots that had been nibbled away and the other pieces were moldy. i suppose we will stick to eating out for lunch.
they say the rainy season starts like clockwork on june 1st, and the past three days early early in the morning it has rained pretty hard. it is kind of nice because it cools it down and the dust isn't so bad, but it also makes the air more humid and there is not as much wind.
we are off to the beach! and mom and dad don't worry i am wearing sunscreen and have even been taking vitamins every day :)
love to everyone, hill
Monday, May 28, 2007
the coolest thing i've ever done
hi to everyone! this weekend in San Ignacio was amazing! we had so much fun. first of all, our hotel had air conditioned rooms, cable television, a balcony, and a shower with a shower curtain - i felt like i was staying at the ritz. it was so nice to sleep in air conditioning with no bugs! friday night we ate at a place called Cayo Cafe and i had fried shrimp and hummus and a smoothie - it was great! saturday we woke up and had breakfast at the hotel and then our tourguides picked us up for the ATM cave. ATM stands for three mayan words that i've forgotten right now, but i have them written down. anyway, we rode in a van for about an hour - mostly on gravelly roads filled with potholes to the jungle.
a sidenote: traffice in belize is a funny thing. i feel like there are almost no rules to driving. there is no speed limit, people pass one another in two way traffic in very close proximity to oncoming cars, and when there is a narrow road - two passing cars simply keep driving halfway on the road and halfway in the ditch. for instance - as we were driving to the jungle, we were going down a hill and a huge truck carrying lots of huge logs was coming down the opposite side of the hill toward us. neither vehicle slowed down at all - i bet we were six inches away from a log flying through our window! lots of bus/van rides to various destinations tend to feel like rollercoasters here. and we all just kind of look at each other and laugh and hope the driver knows what he's doing.
anyway, once you get to your spot in the jungle, you carry the lunch they packed for you in a styrofoam container and a bottle of water and you hike about an hour through the jungle. we waded across the same river three times to get to the campsite. when we got to the campsite we ate lunch, went to the restroom in a jungle outhouse and fitted our helmets for the cave. the opening of the cave looks like it is out of a movie. i kept thinking the whole time that it wasn't even real - it seems like something at disneyworld maybe. anyway, you dive into a pool of cold water and swim about 20 feet into the entrance of the cave. it is AWESOME. the water is so cold! but it felt wonderful. we were in the cave for three hours, part of the time you are wading at various depths like to your ankles your thighs or your chest, part of the time you are swimming, part of the time bouldering, and part of the time crawling. it was so much fun. and it was cold inside which was even better. our guide's name was gonzo - and he was hilarious. he was very smart, he is mayan, and is a field archaeologist so he was giving us lots of history lessons along the way! as you get deeper in the cave (420 feet below the earth) you take off your shoes and only wear socks. this is where you see the mayan artifacts - there were lots of pots and 14 skeletons/pieces of skeletons. it was really cool. this is getting long so i will stop with the details, but it was a LOT of fun! i will have to tell y'all more about it when i am in person! all in all - it was objectively the most hardcore thing i have ever done. it was a blast. saturday evening we went to Eva's to eat in San Ignacio where i had some amazing quesadillas and an ice cold coke, and then to a little bar across the street to listen to music and watch soccer.
Sunday we went to xuanantunich to see more mayan ruins. these were also incredible, we climbed all the way up them and i took lots of pictures. it was amazing to think people had really been there so long ago and had build such huge structures.
now we are home sweet home in dangriga, where our rooms got cleaned and we got new sheets over the weekend which was really nice! and this morning at about 5 am we had our first rainstorm and it was LOUD - i felt like a little kid peeking out the window at it! i am off to buy a new watch at the grocery store, as mine didn't quite survive the water in the cave.
i hope y'all are doing great! happy memorial day!
lots of love, hill
a sidenote: traffice in belize is a funny thing. i feel like there are almost no rules to driving. there is no speed limit, people pass one another in two way traffic in very close proximity to oncoming cars, and when there is a narrow road - two passing cars simply keep driving halfway on the road and halfway in the ditch. for instance - as we were driving to the jungle, we were going down a hill and a huge truck carrying lots of huge logs was coming down the opposite side of the hill toward us. neither vehicle slowed down at all - i bet we were six inches away from a log flying through our window! lots of bus/van rides to various destinations tend to feel like rollercoasters here. and we all just kind of look at each other and laugh and hope the driver knows what he's doing.
anyway, once you get to your spot in the jungle, you carry the lunch they packed for you in a styrofoam container and a bottle of water and you hike about an hour through the jungle. we waded across the same river three times to get to the campsite. when we got to the campsite we ate lunch, went to the restroom in a jungle outhouse and fitted our helmets for the cave. the opening of the cave looks like it is out of a movie. i kept thinking the whole time that it wasn't even real - it seems like something at disneyworld maybe. anyway, you dive into a pool of cold water and swim about 20 feet into the entrance of the cave. it is AWESOME. the water is so cold! but it felt wonderful. we were in the cave for three hours, part of the time you are wading at various depths like to your ankles your thighs or your chest, part of the time you are swimming, part of the time bouldering, and part of the time crawling. it was so much fun. and it was cold inside which was even better. our guide's name was gonzo - and he was hilarious. he was very smart, he is mayan, and is a field archaeologist so he was giving us lots of history lessons along the way! as you get deeper in the cave (420 feet below the earth) you take off your shoes and only wear socks. this is where you see the mayan artifacts - there were lots of pots and 14 skeletons/pieces of skeletons. it was really cool. this is getting long so i will stop with the details, but it was a LOT of fun! i will have to tell y'all more about it when i am in person! all in all - it was objectively the most hardcore thing i have ever done. it was a blast. saturday evening we went to Eva's to eat in San Ignacio where i had some amazing quesadillas and an ice cold coke, and then to a little bar across the street to listen to music and watch soccer.
Sunday we went to xuanantunich to see more mayan ruins. these were also incredible, we climbed all the way up them and i took lots of pictures. it was amazing to think people had really been there so long ago and had build such huge structures.
now we are home sweet home in dangriga, where our rooms got cleaned and we got new sheets over the weekend which was really nice! and this morning at about 5 am we had our first rainstorm and it was LOUD - i felt like a little kid peeking out the window at it! i am off to buy a new watch at the grocery store, as mine didn't quite survive the water in the cave.
i hope y'all are doing great! happy memorial day!
lots of love, hill
Thursday, May 24, 2007
today i bought a fourth of a watermelon for 1 dollar and ate it by the beach
hi to everyone,
today we had our first tutoring session! i was with keedia and her mother martha, martha has six kids and keedia is her youngest. we read "caps for sale" in the shade by the beach this afternoon and it was wonderful! keedia did a wonderful job of reading and her mother was very eager to help. some of my counterparts has much more rambunctious kids so i got lucky :) tomorrow we are off on our first weekend excursion to San Ignacio, a town in western Belize with mayan ruins and lots of caving. the plan is to do a caving trip where you hike about an hour to the cave, then hike through a river and eventually swim into the cave - so hopefully that works out! it will be great to see a different part of the country. a great thing about working with schools is that everybody gives us snacks, yesterday we got peach juice and mini coconut pies, and today we had chicken wings, breadsticks and punch.
so far the living accomodations have been good - although i did come in the other afternoon to find that my ziploc full of granola bars had been chewed into by a little visitor. i am telling myself it HAD to be a mouse, and could not possibly have been a rat. i was hoping the biology professor would tell me a gecko was the culprit but his exact words were "small mammal." yuck. anyway, the nature valley bars are now zipped in a different bigger suitcase and haven't been bothered.
i will be gone for the weekend so the next post will be sometime monday i think! but things are going well. and mom - there are TONS of hibiscus plants everywhere! giant bushes of them with red blooms. i am taking pictures of everything so y'all can see what it looks like here. it really is beautiful.
goodnight, hill
today we had our first tutoring session! i was with keedia and her mother martha, martha has six kids and keedia is her youngest. we read "caps for sale" in the shade by the beach this afternoon and it was wonderful! keedia did a wonderful job of reading and her mother was very eager to help. some of my counterparts has much more rambunctious kids so i got lucky :) tomorrow we are off on our first weekend excursion to San Ignacio, a town in western Belize with mayan ruins and lots of caving. the plan is to do a caving trip where you hike about an hour to the cave, then hike through a river and eventually swim into the cave - so hopefully that works out! it will be great to see a different part of the country. a great thing about working with schools is that everybody gives us snacks, yesterday we got peach juice and mini coconut pies, and today we had chicken wings, breadsticks and punch.
so far the living accomodations have been good - although i did come in the other afternoon to find that my ziploc full of granola bars had been chewed into by a little visitor. i am telling myself it HAD to be a mouse, and could not possibly have been a rat. i was hoping the biology professor would tell me a gecko was the culprit but his exact words were "small mammal." yuck. anyway, the nature valley bars are now zipped in a different bigger suitcase and haven't been bothered.
i will be gone for the weekend so the next post will be sometime monday i think! but things are going well. and mom - there are TONS of hibiscus plants everywhere! giant bushes of them with red blooms. i am taking pictures of everything so y'all can see what it looks like here. it really is beautiful.
goodnight, hill
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
greetings from belize
hi everyone, i am going to try to keep this up every other day or so while i am in belize for the next four weeks. it is beautiful here. i am here doing a service project with the u of a, and my team is working with family literacy. this is our fourth day here, and we are learning to find the cool spots and the shady spots around Dangriga, the town we are working in. my favorite restaurant so far is King Burger, which has wonderful cheeseburgers and grilled ham and cheese. the best thing they have though is the fresh and very cold watermelon juice and orange juice. the orange is very sweet and the watermelon tastes like you literally just put a straw in a watermelon and sucked out the juice. today we got to take a taxi (that when we got in there was a tv playing the music video for shakira's my hips don't lie) to a little town called pomona, which is about 15 minutes away from dangriga. i got to read to three little boys, edwin who was 12, patrick who was 14, and jonah who was 11. they were wonderful. they all want to be soccer players when they grow up, and they told me i wasn't too boring. tomorrow will be our first day of tutoring at christ the king school in dangriga - this school is right on the ocean, and their uniforms are light blue and navy. ms. young the principal has picked out students that are slower readers for each of us, and mine will be kedia, she's 5 and adorable, and dylan, who is nine and very sweet. i am excited to start working with them. i am definitely getting used to the food, they have lots of great juices and fruits, and today i had rice and beans with beef from the market for lunch. we ate it on a little picnic table by the beach. we have learned to spend as much time on the shore as possible because there is more of a breeze. the people here are very friendly, everyone rides bikes all over the place, or just walks. anyone you pass always says "good morning," "good afternoon," or "goodnight." the man who owns our hotel, the jungle huts, is named mr. usher, he has three little daughters that we get to play with every night, they are really cute too. i had better go so we can walk back for dinner.
love to you all, hill
love to you all, hill
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