We have Mail!! - 8/27/06

Yay! During the last week we have gotten several pieces of mail, this means that the address we have given out truly works!!

We got thank you cards from Dad, Deb, and Haley We got birthday cards from Jim and Sheilah, Nathan’s dad and step mom, which was a great surprise! (Hey you two, thank you for remembering us, it is sooo appreciated!) We got a happy, fun, just-thinkin-‘bout-cha-card from Auntie Reda and Uncle Marv. And I got a birthday card from Levy and she even sent us a wedding card!! (Better late than never, Lev!) Ironically, some of our junk mail has also made it across two countries and into our rural mail box as well. No thanks, Capital One, I really, truly, do not want your credit card... seriously... now leave me alone!

Just an FYI: If you are sending anything to us, whether a package, or an envelope, please write AIR MAIL on it. I have recently learned that sending it that way takes about 2 weeks. If you don’t write AIR MAIL on it, and the Post Office does not take pity on you and write it for you, it will take about 2 months to receive a package or envelope. Good info, huh? I thought so! Thanks, your letters are sooo appreciated!

Salbutes, Banana Splits & Mennonite Madness…Oh My!! – 8/27/06

What a fun Friday night we had!! But before I get into that, I need to get something off my chest. Most of you who know me well, know that bananas and I have not gotten along for a very long time. I don’t want to get into who did what and who hurt whom, because that will just bring up past bad feelings. But suffice it to say, I have never enjoyed or understood how others can find enjoyment in the taste or texture of bananas. However, I now live in a country where mangos have a very short season and are currently not available, (I know, isn’t that devastating?), pineapples cost $3.00 each, apples cost $1.85 each, and good ol’ bananas cost only 50 cents a pound. Since I have decided to eat better and try new things, I have given in and decided to put my life’s struggle with bananas aside in order to get the vitamins and nutrition I need at a cheaper price. It has been rough, and we still have a long road ahead of us. Although there is much bad history between bananas and I, but I believe in the end, we may learn to appreciate each other, even if we’re not best of friends.

Back to Friday night, it started with Nathan and I and our neighbors, Liz and Maria going to Three Flags for their Friday menu selection. On Fridays they offer several items for $1.00 and when peanut butter costs $11.00 US and 1 quart of milk costs $4.00 US, Fridays are a chance for us to fill our bellies with good food for a reasonable price. At the restaurant, we met another couple, Rosie and Cuatro, and Abe. Also, since everyone eats out on Fridays and all the tables are long, seating about 25, we set with a few other familiar faces and were visited by students during the course of our meal.

We ate salbutes and garnachas to our hearts content and washed it all down with good Belizian hot sauce and iced tea. Garnachas are very similar to a tostada. They are fried corn tortillas topped with refried beans, wonderfully seasoned chicken, tomatoes, cabbage and cheese. Salbutes are corn tortillas that are cooked in a way that makes them “puff” and the inside is filled with seasoned chicken, cabbage, and tomatoes. Those are my favorite!! I ordered 3 and topped them with lime and hot sauce….mmmMMmmm!

After the restaurant we all were off to Abe’s house to play card games and a game he had been promising to teach me….Mennonite Madness! And that is a very appropriate name for it! It is not a complicated game, most of the games we played that night were extremely simple, but all were very competitive and a lot of fun! In Mennonite Madness, everyone is given a blank sheet of paper, but there is only one pen.You pass a die around the table and if you roll a 1 or a 6, you grab the pen, and start writing numbers from 1 to 100 as fast as you can, while the die continues to be passed around and rolled. When someone else rolls a 1 or 6, they grab the pen out of your hand and begin to write their numbers. Sometimes as soon as you get the pen out of a person’s hand, another person rolls and 1 or 6, so you lose the pen before you had a chance to write down a single number. The first person to 100 wins! It is as simple as it sounds, but OH is it fun!! At one point, I rolled a 6 and then knocked the die off the table, so I would get more time to write. People were throwing themselves across the table, I fell out of my chair, and everyone got plenty of opportunities to laugh.

We took a break from the games to eat banana splits—quite a treat here because food is expensive, especially sweets! We had bananas, strawberries, chocolate sauce, almonds (which we hammered ourselves into small pieces to sprinkle), cool whip, and ice cream. I didn’t even put any ice cream in mine because it was sweet enough with all the other ingredients!

We met a few new people on Friday night, but mostly we had a lot of fun with familiar faces. I am always encouraged when I am reminded how much fun you can have, just being with people.

Kids & Crocs - 8/27/06

"Ehh! Ehhh! Ehhhh!"

That's the sound a baby crocodile makes when you grab it around the neck. I don't normally make a habit of strangling baby animals, but I also don't want to get into the routine of letting them gnaw on my fingers. That's just not being a good steward of what God's given me.

I didn't really hurt the thing, I just wanted a picture of it. I was at a student's house - really a farm - to see the crocs they hatched in their backyard pond. He told me about them in class and invited Melissa and me over to see them. After school I knew he meant it, because he came back on his four wheeler, pulled up to my window, and informed me that, "If you and your wife want to see my crocodiles you have to come either right now or at six, because I have to mow." So, I left work right away. Such a funny guy!

I don't think he got much work that day though, I hope I didn't get him in trouble. But we weren't expecting to find so much cool stuff at his house. The view itself took awhile to get over, I swear you could see the edge of Belize from his house. Their hill faces the school, so you can see everyone coming and going, then across from that our apartment, the medical center, the park, the hills leading down from Blue Creek, then the farmland and roads stretching across the flat terrain all the way to the coast. It was a hazy day but I can imagine how breathtaking it would be on a sunny day in the dry season.

This property pretty much has everything you would ever need. A comfortable home, thatched roof garage and shop, cows, coconut palms, lemon trees, mango trees, banana tress, a garden and pumpkin patch, one sheep, chickens, turkeys, huge Mayan artifacts, dogs, and two trampolines. I'm sorry, did you say you were leaving to Canada and wanted me to house-sit for a year?

While we were there, Earl knocked a few coconuts down and got his machete to give us something to drink. I thought he was going to cut the nut out of the middle of the thick, green case they grow in. Instead, he just chopped away at the top until there was just a quarter-sized opening into the nut itself, stuck a straw in, and handed it over. Now, I knew in my head that it was natural, unsweetened coconut. But, my tongue is still very American. It is not familiar with the flavor of coconut without sugar. So, the first sensation when you taste the clear, watery coconut milk is confusion and surprise. You have to work through that. Then you taste it for what it is. MAN THAT'S GOOD STUFF! After we drank all the milk - which was a lot - he chopped them in half and with a spoon we ate the coconut flesh. mm MM mm!

His mom was very sweet, too. It's such a pleasure to talk to the families of my students and meet new people in the community, everybody is so friendly and thoughtful. While we were talking she had Earl go pick a bag of lemons for me. It didn't take long before he returned with a heavy, clear plastic back filled with small, perfectly round fragrant lemons. "Six per gallon plus one cup of sugar."
"Thanks, Earl. Oh, and this will not effect your grade - you still have homework."

On the way out, his mom mentioned something about the turkey. I couldn't see it by the chicken coup, so Earl said something to it in what was probably low Turkey (since they speak low German). "Lobolobolobol!" Suddenly I saw and ugly red thing flip over the beak of a giant white head in the shadow as it responded, "LOBOLOBOLOBOL!" I think the turkey likes Earl. Then it walked toward him. Huge! This bird was huge! I want to go there for Thanksgiving!

That's a meal we still need to plan for, I think it will be exciting to have it here. Last night's meal was good though. The youth of the community planned a "Disco Supper." I got really excited, got my wig, platform shoes, bell bottoms, and gold chains. Then they explained that a "disco" is a type of wide shallow pan they put over a fire to cook a lot of food for a lot of people. So, the youth cooked for the community last night, accepting donations as a fundraiser for a new piano.

It was a good time, with volleyball and a chicken game after dinner. They had a raffle for the chicken game. $2 a ticket. Then they drew the numbers on the ground, put a plywood fence around it, and dropped a chicken in. Everyone screamed at the chicken, it pooped, and the number the poo landed on was the lucky winner of $50! I had number 37. The chicken pooped on 53. I never win the chicken poop game.

I watched Melissa play volleyball afterward. That girl can play! She got game still! But I was standing there watching her, enjoying the sport, when I felt a stray cat brush up against my ankle. I looked down and saw instead that it was a Jurassic Moth. It was not my happiest moment ever.

So, time to get ready for tonight. Our neighbor Maria had an awesome conversation with her students that turned into a student-led worship service tonight. It's going to be in the common area/open room by our apartments. It's going to RAWK! So pray that leads to something that happens often because I am SO excited to see the kids take initiative for the first time and start something they want to see happening anyway. I love this job! Let us know how you guys are doing!

Love ya!

August Showers Bring.... 8/22/06

I am blogging this now, but I wrote it last night...

It is after 1 a.m. and I have been awakened by the sound of rain. I can hear thunder in the distance and see lightning flash, even through my closed eyelids. The smooth tile floor, which keeps its cool even in the heat of the day, gives me goose bumps as I walk across the room. I open the door to see for myself the rain, the thunder and the lightning, whose sounds have awakened me. For the first time since we arrived here, the air outside our air-conditioned bedroom is cool and comfortable on my skin.

Being from the Pacific Northwest- the land flowing with rain and lattes- you'd think a simple evening rain would be of no consequence to me. But these Caribbean thunder showers do not bring with them any rain I have ever seen. Here, clear skies cloud over suddenly, bringing strong winds, the crash of thunder and spears of lightning. A sheet of cool, clean rain quickly follows. Large puddles form in minutes, the limestone streets fill with water and the deep ditches along the road swell and rush. The showers never last long, usually no more than half an hour. As quickly as the storm arrives, it is gone again. The sun reappears and the heat returns. All but the deepest puddles quickly dry and the humidity hangs in the air.

Tonight the rain pours and pours. I have watched the lightning flash and brighten the darkened land- but only for a brief moment. For nearly an hour now I have looked out the window into the inky blackness of the night. I can hear the rain beating the ground and the drops "ting" against the metal rooftops. With each flash of lightning, I am reminded I am surrounded by thick green landscape made of jungle, hills, valleys, fields, and river. The ocean is too far to see from here, but I know it is there. We have come to a beautiful and mysterious country.

I am reminded of the words to a song

Holy Spirit rain down, rain down.
Oh Comforter and Friend, how we need your touch again.
Holy Spirit rain down, rain down.
Let Your power fall, let Your voice be heard
Come and change our hearts as we stand on Your Word.
Holy Spirit, rain down.
No eye has seen, so ear has heard
No mind can know what God has in store.
So open up heaven, open it wide.
Over our church and over our lives.
Holy Spirit, rain down.

I am enjoying the cool of this summer evening. But I am going back to bed now. The rain has slowed and the gentle patter will lull me to sleep as it waters the land and keep it growing lush and full and green.

Welcome to Blue Creek! - 8/17/06

Hello all! I am sorry it has been so long since you have heard from me. But now, I am here to be your very own guide through Blue Creek, Belize! If you look to your right you will see a river. In fact, that is the border between Belize and Mexico! Passports and other travel documents neither desired or required! All you need is 10 pesos, $2 Belize or $1 US in order to catch a canoe ride across the river! Once you have crossed, you will find yourself in the small town of La Union, Mexico. Nathan and I go there for a better selection of fruits and vegetables at about half the cost of produce here in Blue Creek. When we first crossed the river, we attempted to stop at the customs office ahead of time, to make sure everything was legitamate. But, we must have shown up during siesta time, becuase the door was locked and no one responded to our knocks....okay....so we'll just be leaving the country then....

As we continue along our tour we are now driving toward Blue Creek itself. Notice the hills, looming ahead? The town of Blue Creek is just at the top of them.

But before we start up the hill to Blue Creek, we will pass the airport on our left. This is where we landed when Nathan and I first arrived in Belize. Wave to Abe, I am sure he's there somewhere, I know it's hard to spot him in the crowd!

Once you have driven into Blue Creek, the first business you will see is the Hillside Bed and Breakfast, owned by the Klassen's. They also own the Hillside Gifts 'n More, where Liz and I have been buying our fabric! Mrs. Klassen has been very helpful and patient with me as I attempt to become a skilled seamstress. She is also a big fan of Nathan! She laughed and clapped her hands together as she recalled her grandson's report of his first day of school and his scary teacher, Mr. Lemanski! The Hillside Bed & Breakfast is a beautiful piece of land where travelers can rest, relax, enjoy horses, a beautiful view, and a wonderful breakfast, all for $40 US! (shameless plug).

Now, stick close as we leave the Klassesn's property, because the last bit of hill is steep and the road isn't very good. Mind the potholes and keep at a safe speed, any number of vehicles may come around the corner toward us. I have seen other pick-ups, tractors, a cowboy riding his faithful steed, a child on a bicycle, or teenagers on scooters or 4-wheelers! Quick, to your right is the Blue Creek Medical center. I haven't been there myself yet (thank you Lord), but Liz told me that the nurse most often recommends that you, "drink more water dear, you're not used to this climate." But, since it turned out she had Typhoid Fever, drinking more fluids wasn't exactly going to cure her.

Now we are at the top of the hill and find ourselves in the heart of Blue Creek. The building on your right holds the Credit Union, one of the local hardward stores, one of the grocery stores, and our apartment! The hardware store is to the left of the white truck and the market and Credit Union are on the right. The Braun (pronounced Brown) Family ownes the market, and here is their second oldest daughter, Justina, manning the register. This is where you can usually find her. Her parents pulled her out of school in order to help out with the family business. She is a very nice girl who always greets us with a smile.

There is another store in town, called La Rosita, which is located a little further down the road. If you will get back into your vehicles and follow me...we have so little to do and so much time...wait, stop, reverse that. Now, we don't have time to stop, so we will just look at it out our window as we pass. The store is owned by an elderly couple, who live above it. I do now know thier names, but this is where we get our water, because it is cheaper here than at the market near our house.

There are also two resteraunts in town, Travelers and Tres Banderas (Three Flags.) Travelers is owned by the Rempels and is so close to our apartment we could walk there is less than 3 minutes. Mrs. Rempel offered me a job as a cook one evening as we sat eating dinner. I thanked her and told her I would be happy to work for her as long as she could teach me how to cook. She repied in a very exasperated voice, "I don't have time to teach you, I am too busy, that is why I need a cook!" I apologized and thanked her for the offer but told her without a lesson, I did not think I would help business much.

The other resteraunt, Three Flags, is located further down the road. It is owned by a couple with a TON of adorable children--one of their daughters is in Nathan's class. The food is good and the atmosphere is GREAT!! It's an outdoor restraunt covered with a thatch roof and it is absolutely packed in the evenings! They keep the iced tea coming and the rice and beans combined with a cool evening breeze make this our favorite place to eat outside of home.

That just about concludes our tour of Blue Creek. Our final stop is the Archelogists Camp, located right along the highway. As we have mentioned in previous posts, Ancient Ruins are found all throughout this area, and teams of Archelogists come to live and work for several months each year. These white buildings are what they call home while they do their work. The oldest Myan ruin found to date, La Milpa, is located just outside of Blue Creek. Nathan and I haven't had a chance to explore any of these historic sites, but I hope to be able to soon.

Well, the tour is now complete! I hope you enjoyed seeing our new home and you have a better idea of while daily life is like for us. If you want to visit, book a night at the Hillside and we'll treat you to a meal at Three Flags! We can take a day trip into Mexico, just be careful not to upset the border guards!

Ya'll come back now, ya hear?

First Day of School - 8/16/06

Well, this was it – the first day of school. Summer is officially OVER. Though, the weather would have me believer otherwise.

I loved this day. It was only a half day, but it was good. The students were SO well-behaved! Of course, that could have been in my approach…

All of the students met at the church at 8:00am for a Grand Chapel. We had a word from the pastor, some prayer, and some redirecting of the junior high and high school boys in the corner. Each teacher was called forward beginning with Kindergarten and working up through high school.

I have the largest class in the whole school, in all of grades K-12. I watched the other teachers walk away with their little group of students buzzing around them in loose formation and quickly realized this would so not work with middle schoolers. By the time we got to the bottom of the hill, I’d have two students with broken legs, one crying girl, a missing child, and the side of the church building might or might not be on fire.

To prevent this, I waited patiently for my crowd of students to surround me, and then led them to the side of the meeting area where I got military on them. I told them to line up against the wall, 8^th graders in front and 7^th in back. I said something about a sloppy line, made them keep their hands at their sides, explained to them what about face meant, and had them do it. Once I had them pointed in the right direction, I made them start marching in place. Some kids were stepping timidly up and down… did that work? NO! GET THOSE KNEES UP! I said MARCH! Don’t look at me, look ahead! Keep marching until I say stop! Do not move ahead until I say so! I finally gave them the go ahead, and the whole junior high began marching single file toward the Level 3 classes. All the while, I was monitoring their form, making sure their knees were stepping high and reminding them that they would not rest until we got to the classroom.

Once there, I had them line up single file against the wall, and began laying down some ground rules. I gave them their seats, and began laying down more rules. For the first hour these kids were dead silent. Occasionally I would ask them to respond to a question, and they wouldn’t speak a word without slowly raising their hands. No blurting at all!

When I got to roll call, I wouldn’t accept a simple, “here” or “present.” I made them do it like they do in the strict Japanese schools. When I said their name, they were required to respond with a loud “HAI.” Some of the girls whispered, “hai” when I said their names, but I pretended not to hear until I got them shouting. It was glorious! They didn’t even TRY distracting each other!

Eventually recess came along and I noticed, but it didn’t register. I know the kids noticed, though. The bell rang to end recess, and one girl sheepishly raised her hand and asked, “Are we really not going to get a recess?”
Another girl started reaching into her bag to pull out a bag of chips as I responded,
“We’ll see…” and the girl put her chips back into her backpack without saying a word

I let about five minutes go by before telling them they could have a late recess. HOWEVER, I let them know that since the other classes were in session now, they had to keep it down and not distract them. THEY HARDLY SPOKE! AT RECESS! My whole class was hanging out in front of the door whispering to each other and softly eating their potato chips and sipping their water. They would look in the classroom every couple minutes to make sure they didn’t miss the time to come back in. It was awesome! I kept cool and straight-faced the whole time so they never knew it was all a ploy.

Earlier I had been warned, too, that the kids will want to bring pillows to the classroom to sit on. The teacher last year let them, and it was a disaster. It was distracting, and once she said yes she couldn’t take it back. One girl had the nerve to slowly raise her hand and ask, “Can we bring pillows?”
“PILLOWS? Why would you want to bring pillows?”
“To sit on.”
“No, you can’t have pillows! I don’t get a pillow to sit on, so neither do you. You will just have to sit in these hard wooden chairs. By the end of the year you’ll all have flat bottoms. Besides, I don’t want you to try to use the pillow to sleep in the middle of class or break out into a pillow fight. Sorry.”

It wasn’t mentioned again.

I then told them that I wanted to send a picture of the class home to my family in the United States, and that I was going to take their picture. I asked if anybody had any objections, making it as clear as possible that I would seriously honor that. One girl said as long as she didn’t look bad in the picture, it would be okay. So I showed her. Before taking the picture though, I had them all take our their notebooks and pens and “look studious.” So, they did….

All day it went like that. What I expect of them, what I WILL NOT tolerate, and what the consequences will be when they cross that line. At the end of the day, they had a list of things they needed to bring back and an even longer list of expectations. They took me so seriously, which is really good when you consider that I explained how I won’t tolerate put-downs, teasing, or anything of that nature.

After school, one of the men on the school board came into my classroom to talk about the day…he had already heard the report from his son – my student.
“What did you say today?” he asked me.
“Why’s that?”
“My son told me, ‘Dad, the class was so quiet, if a mouse ran across the room you could hear its footsteps!’”
“Oh really? I wonder why…”

Apparently, that’s atypical for this group of students. It was only the first day, but I think I saw the effect I wanted. On their way out, the kids all lined up at the homework calendar on the wall by the door to write down what they needed to bring/do by tomorrow. AWESOME!

Don’t think I was horrible all day though – I’m still me. I can’t help being light hearted and had to hold that back, though I still had them laughing a few times and shared enough about myself that they have a sense of who I am and how we can get along in class. It’s always like this, tough in the beginning, really close relationships by the end of the year.

We’ll see what the rest of the week brings!

Parent Open House! - 8/14/06

It finally happened! The curriculum for the entire school was trapped at the border, held up by customs for two weeks. It wasn’t released until Friday, which meant that Saturday morning was spent unloading the boxes and sorting through the books. Ridiculous! This was R-I-D-I-C-U-L-O-U-S.

One box would have a 1^st grade writing tablet, a high school English text, a few 4^th grade readers, and maybe some 8^th grade science books – all saran wrapped in a bundle and thrown in a box. I mean, seriously folks! Who packed this? We had to open every box and sort out each text, student guide, teacher’s copy, quiz … every publication that goes into running a school. They had to be stacked by grade, inventoried, and then put on trucks and moved to the building that those classes were in to be sorted again to the individual classrooms to be sorted again by the teacher. In the end, I was only short four books and those are on order now. I figure in a year or so they’ll be shipped and make it through customs and trucked to Blue Creek…

Monday night was the Open House for the parents to come and see my classroom and listen to my spiel about the coming school year. It was very positive. The parents were responsive, and a few of the school board members came to my room to listen to my presentation. Afterward, I was told that they were very pleased. They were monitoring the reaction of the parents and determined that the parents were glad to see somebody who knows something about education in charge of Junior High. That’s me! Cool, huh?

I did have one parent try to convince me that reading was bad, though. It seems – and I was unaware of this – that reading ruins your eyes. Ruins ‘em! Might as well dig ‘em out rather than read! She has a daughter who loves to read, and she has to stop her from doing it all the time because it’s bad for you. BAD FOR YOU! Uh … ma’am … I’m an English teacher at heart. Your daughter is going to be blind by the end of the year….

I also let the parents know that at the beginning of the year, especially in the first couple weeks or so, I am very heavy-handed with my classroom. I made it clear that if their kids come home crying, or whining that their class is hard and that Mr. Lemanski is too mean and demanding, not to worry. It’s all planned! They laughed and appreciated my approach. I eventually lighten up once I set the tone and expectations for the year. They loved that! The administrators did as well, since they seem to have had a problem in the past with classroom discipline in the Junior High. Not this year, baby!

Anyway, two more days until school and I still have a lot of prep work to do. One thing that I was turned off by at first in the A Beka curriculum is that all the lesson plans are pre-written for you. I like to write my own. I was told however I can still do so since I have teaching experience and I’ll be using thir texts – except for Belizean history where I’ll be doing all the work. However, as the first day approaches, prewritten lesson plans are looking more and more attractive to minimize the work ahead of me. I’ll probably use them as I get settled in, then add my own spice later on. Pray for me! We've got a big year ahead of us!

Can’t wait!

So, You're Americans, Eh? - 8/10/06

This is one of our neighbors, Liz, posing with me outside of our apart-ments. She, like nearly all of the people in this village, is a citizen of Canada. She is a returning to Blue Creek this year to teach 1st grade. Last year was her first year here and she still remembers what it's like to be new in this town. She has been so helpful and supportive of us! She has been hanging out with us in the mornings, drinking lattes, planning ways to add color and style to our apartments, giving us tips for getting along in the community, laughing, and trying to convince Nathan that Celine Dion is a talented performer with a wonderful singing voice. Most of the people here ask us where were are from and when we reply "Washington State" they are surprised and say, "Oh, you're not from Canada?!" I get the idea that Canadians tell the same jokes about Americans that Americans tell about Canadians.

Here are a few more pictures of our apartment, so you guys can get a better idea of where we are living. Basically, the bottom floor of this building holds the Credit Union, a market, and a hardware store. The top floor houses a large, cement-floor room where the town occasionally holds town-wide meetings. Also on the top floor is an office, a smaller meeting room which is used several times a week by various community boards, a laundry room, and in the corners of the top floor they built two small studio apartments (currently empty) and two larger two-bedroom apartments.

Our apartment is small, but surprisingly, hasn't felt too small for us yet!! We thought our last place was too small for us, but since we brought so few of our belongings with us, we don't feel as crammed into this place as our last one. We have turned a corner of our kitchen/dining room in to a living room by making a make-shift entertainment center. With our speakers, laptop, and PS2, we can listen to music, watch DVDs or play video games. We were looking forward to playing a lot of DDR, but so far, haven't been able to get that particular game to work.

Our bedroom still needs work, it's pretty bare!! It is difficult to decorate our apartment because the walls are cement, so we have to think of creative ways to add color (notice the "table cloth" above). I bought a cool towel and hung it in one of the widows for some color, and we turned one of the Rubbermaid tubs we brought onto the plane into a night stand. This is only temporary though, and I hope to have it a bit more "homey" soon--something for me to do while Nathan is at work if I don't find a job! Although it's bare, this is till our favorite room, because it is where our AIR CONDITIONER lives!!

So, we are making ourselves home here and making actual friends! Last week, Liz, and I picked out fabric at a local store and we recovered our dining room chairs. They are now a little less 1980s and stained and a little more tropical! Today, Nathan, Liz and I went back to that same store (the only one in the town) and bought more fabric for curtains!! I bought a blue tropical pattern for the living room/dining room/ kitchen and a maroon tropical pattern for our bedroom. Look at me, I am becoming domestic!! The fabric will add some color to our clean, but very drab apartments and I will learn a new skill--curtain-making! (Don't worry, I will add pictures at a later date when the curtains are finished)

Look at us, Canada and the US, bonding, laughing, having things in common and enjoying each other's company! What's next? World peace?

Clear Night Sky! - 8/10/06

Even though there is contstant lightning on the horizon tonight, we're enjoying one of the first clear nights since we've been here. I think all the fireflies are responding to the lightning, too - they're putting on quite the show. Here are some things I recently learned about this crazy country we are calling home for now:

• We have vampire bats (you MUST have screens in your house)
• Yellowflies are miserable insects responsible for the drops of my own blood on top of my feet and legs
• Locals call Jaguars "tigers" because the Spanish speakers here refer to them by the Spanish word, "tigres" ... and we just can't stop them from doing that...
• We're approaching the end of the rainy season - the road to Orange Walk Town was completely underwater in some parts and is still very rough where it had been washed out

The night before last, we had dinner with the English-speaking pastor and his family. Their children are so nice! Their funny/crazy son will be one of my students, and they're somehow related to our neighbor, Liz - so we all ate enchiladas together. That, and a delicious "eclair pie" that Corrina made. Mmmm...eclair pie...

Yesterday we drove to Orange Walk Town. Thirty miles, with four villages in between. It took an hour to drive. The main road really wasn't as bad as the people in Blue Creek made it sound...it's a rough road but manageable. The bad spots were in the towns themselves - you couldn't drive more than 20 miles per hour through them and swerving like a madman all the way through to avoid the potholes. The roads are mostly limestone, so even where it's paved it doesn't take long for the soft lime to wear away beneath it, leaving gaping white holes that throw you around and slow you down.

Then there were the two spots on the road that had been washed out and still held standing water. One section had three small lakes in a row - with an island of sandy road between each of them. We were in a small two-wheel drive pickup truck. Only one option there - we got as much speed as we could before hitting the water and flew through them all hoping to still have enough momentum by the time we hit the third puddle that we wouldn't get stuck. It worked! And, it was fun...

Orange Walk didn't have everything we were looking for, but it did have a lot. We'll have to go to Chetumal for the wall art and a couple other random things.

We went to an open-air market though market and a fancy restaurant that had a TV in it. We didn't realize that Orange Walk had a siesta - around lunch time everything everywhere closed. So we stepped inside a restaurant with a nice breeze and looked over the menu - each of us about to order some roasted chicken or a hamburger before the man behind the counter interrupted us,
"We only have rice and beans."
"Excuse me?"
"We only have rice and beans."
"Okay...I'll have, uh.. the rice and beans. And a red Fanta. With a straw!"
I'm an American, I want options! But, it was the best rice and beans I've had yet! It came with some chicken pieces cooked with just a bit of yellow curry and garlic along with saltwater cabbage and this big piece of ... something like a vegetable. It smelled like squash but had the color and texture of an avocado. It was good with hot sauce! I love all the hot sauces in Belize.

Now we're just planning for the coming week - school starts on Wednesday and the parent's open house/meet the teacher night is Monday. The only bit of stress there is that the entire curriculum - textbooks, workbooks, materials - has been tied up in customs for two weeks now. It came to Belize in a large container that included everything recently ordered for this area: school supplies, an airplane engine, random tidbits necessary for suvival in the jungle, everything in one cargo container - and the red tape kept it in customs longer than usual. So, that will come to Blue Creek tomorrow and I'll have just a couple days to set up the classroom. It will be perfect!

Last year, 7th and 8th grades were separate, but this year I'm teaching them both in the same class. For the first time tonight I was able to get into the 7th grade classroom to drag the desks over to my room. Holy Teaching Materials, Batman! This room has everything! And I get to use it all! We did have to move cautiously, though...before moving each desk we had to look inside for scorpions, centipedes, frogs, geckos, the chupacabra... I don't know how these things find their way into a locked up classroom but they do.

So tomorrow, I work! My classroom is going to RAWK! Anybody coming by for Open House? See you there!

This is My Surprised Face - 8/10/06

Nathan has written about some aspects of living in Belize that have surprised him, now here are some of mine!

• No speed limits, seatbelt, helmet, or hunting laws in Blue Creek
• Running outside during sudden rain and thunderstorms is an exciting 5 minute break in the middle of the day.
• Patience is a virtue practiced on a regular basis here: Mail is only delivered once a week, it takes two weeks to open an account at the Credit Union (makes Bank of America not look quite so bad, huh?), and when you order a pizza at the market downstairs, you have to wait 1½-2 weeks for the next batch to arrive.
• Mennonite girls pierce their ears, dye their hair, and gossip about boys. Mennonite boys fight with their parents about piercing their ears, wear their shirts unbuttoned and show off on their scooters and 4-wheelers to impress the girls.
• Many of the vehicles have been converted from unleaded gas to butane, because of the ridiculously high gas prices.
• The families that can afford to, fly to Houston for the weekend once or twice a year to buy clothes and other necessities or luxuries not readily available in Belize.
• Lightning bugs are sooo cool!! When we go walking at night they swarm around us, blinking away. For a moment it seems that the stars have fallen from the sky and are blinking all around us.
• Geckos are cute and very useful for eating bugs, but cleaning up their poopie and waking up with the babies right next to my head gets old fast.
• Frogs predict weather better than Woppler--when you hear them all in a chorus you know you have 5 minutes to grab some cover before the rain starts pouring!
• You can enjoy an amazing lighting show nearly every night right after dark.
• Although they live and work very close together, Mennonites and Mexicans worship very differently.

P.S. Our mailing address in the left column is correct. I've double and triple checked. Unfortunately, Amazon.com doesn't deliver to Belize. If you're ordering anything from our wishlist, you will have to mail them to yourself and then ship them to us. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Où est-ce que je suis? - 8/6/06

Where am I again? Last night I found myself returning from Mexico in a van speaking broken French to a man from Quebec and Spanish to his wife from Colombia, arriving in our village in Belize. He drove here with his family to Belize from Montréal. I can't imagine driving all the way through the United States and then driving all the way through Mexico, but he's an eccentric fellow. Just spent $7.5 million on shrimp to sell to Europe for his business. He had us over for lunch after church, which was an exciting prospect because he was a professional chef in France for 25 years. He killed two young goats for lunch and served them with rice and cabbage salad. I guess the French like young goats. If I were still as picky of an eater as I was as a child, I would starve to death here. It's good though to start making connections in the community, we're learning what to do and what not to do; where to buy the cheapest things and how to get around the country.

There is a former Mayan city near the border here in what is now Mexico - Chetumal. It is now a large modern city with a giant mall, Wal Mart, and shopping center with American movies (with Spanish subtitiles) and American stores and restaurants. It's where most people go for big shopping trips - clothes, gifts, art, souvenirs, etc. and it sounds like we can go there whenever we get homesick and need an American culture fix. There is a law though in Belize - if you are not a citizen, you must pay an exit tax when flying out of the country or crossing an international border. It's about $37 per person. This applies to going to Chetumal. But, we learned last night that if we cross the river here in Blue Creek to Mexico (where they don't enforce the exit tax), we can spend a few dollars to take a bus to Chetumal. Cheap, easy, and saves gas! It will be an adventure, and we'll probably do it soon.

It's all just part of exploring our new home. A couple nights ago, Melissa and I went for a walk after dinner. I found out that she is cool with everything - the vultures, fire ants, geckos, wasps, bugs, alligators, everything except scorpions and bats. I found that out when a bat flew toward us, flapped around above our heads, and went back into the trees. That never happened in Pullman. We never really had a scorpion problem in Pullman, either.

We were outside listening to a speaker Thursday night, and while he was talking he sat on the stone ledge of a garden spot. On the edge of the pillar behind him, I saw a beetle crawling down toward his head. At least, I thought it was a beetle until it crawled around the pillar. The "beetle" was just the curved-tail part of a large scorpion. They're big, dark brown, with long skinny pincers. Here, the people just step on them like they were only house spiders, though the crunch tells you it's something much larger...

Tomorrow we're going to Orange Walk Town to get our visas and work permits from the immigration office. It's my understanding this will be an all-day process. Can't wait! So excited! I mean...uh....woo hoo!

Also tomorrow, the rest of the teachers are supposed to arrive to Blue Creek. Our neighbor is an elementary school teacher from Canada with a big personality and good sense of humor. We have enjoyed her company and having her over in the morning for coffee. She loves our fancy coffee machine. We are SO glad we brought the espresso maker - it makes mornings much easier during this transition.

Overall, we're still getting settled in. Melissa bought some tropical fabric for a tablecloth and for some color in the windows. We still need stuff to hang on the walls, but we'll probably get that in Orange Walk or Chetumal. More like home every day!

Keep the comments and emails coming, it's great to hear from home. Love and miss you all!

SHOUT OUTS - 8/3/06

Hey all!

I wanted to take a second to make you guys chuckle at this goofy picture and to thank you guys publicly for checking in on us via our blog and for leaving such great comments. Some of you made me laugh out loud (you know who you are!) And of course, some of you (dad) made me cry.

Also, thanks to dad and Auntie Reda for sending pictures so quickly!! I really appreciate it! Mom, I love to open my e-mail and get one from you each day telling me you're praying for me and that you love me. You're such a mom, even though I'm nearly 26 years old!

I also wanted you to know that we are getting your complaints about the mail too and we're not really sure what to do about it. The address we were given is the one posted at the bottom of the page, but some of you have had trouble sending things through Amazon.com. We were never given a county code or zip code of any kind and we have been told that the address at the bottom of the page is our address in its entirety. Nathan has suggested people just put a series of zeroes where you would normally put the zip code. However, I am not sure that will work. I am going to double check again this evening and find out if there is a better address to send to our friends and families.

It is so nice to know so many people want to hear about our lives and see pictures of what we are doing here. Thank you for keeping in touch.

We love you all very much!

Guess What? God is in Belize too! - 8/3/06

Do not store up trea-sures here on earth, where they can be eaten by moths and get rust and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where they will never become moth-eaten or rusty and where they will be safer from thieves. Matthew 6:19(NLT)

I think of this verse when I survey the land surrounding our town. The land appears to be fairly flat with small hills scattered about the countryside. There are a number of archeological digs in the area which uncover, study, and preserve the ruins and artifacts of a once great and powerful Mayan civilization.

When you realize the number of ruins located all over in the area, you begin to look at the landscape in a new light. It seems obvious that the hills so many have built their homes on are ancient temples, oratories and other building used and built by the Mayans. However, they are now nearly unrecognizable, having been covered by hundreds of years of weather, soil, grass, tress and bushes. What were once great buildings, places of teaching, worship, and markets are now foundation for new housing, restaurants, and markets of a more modern people. These ancient cities are also pastures and grazing land for horses, sheep, cows, and Brahma bulls.

The cities once treasured by their inhabitants have become rubble. How humbling this thought is as I mourn the loss of my T.V, sofa, microwave and cell phone- not to mention access to friends and family. Every time I look out a window or scan the skyline in this beautiful country, I am reminded how temporary “things” are. What we hold dearly one day may be outdated or insignificant to someone else the next day.

The only constant in my life is God. He is the same day to day, year to year, lifetime to lifetime. I do not need e-mail to stay connected to Him. I do not need to send Him pictures for him to gain some perspective of our life here. He is here with us each day and for each new experience! I do not need to wait for my cell phone to be unlocked and brought back from Orange Walk Town before I am able to speak with God. He is available to listen to my worship, concerns, fears, doubts and praise. It is so sad that I often ignore or take for granted the most powerful, accessible, and most highly treasured Being in the universe!

Perhaps this time without distraction is a “spiritual boot camp” for Nathan and me; in order for us to take our eyes off of the temporary things of this life and concentrate on the eternal.

The Lord is like a father to his chil-dren, tender and com-pass-ionate to those who fear him. For he under-stands how weak we are; he knows we are only dust. Our days on earth are like grass; like wildflowers, we bloom and die. The wind blows and we are gone—as though we had never been here. But the love of the Lord remains forever with those who fear him. His salvation extends to the children’s children of those who are faithful to his covenant, of those who obey his commandments!...Praise the Lord, everything he has created, everywhere in his kingdom. As for me—I, too, will praise the Lord! ~Psalm 104:13-18&22 (NLT)

Am I Tan Yet? - 8/3/06

Here are some things I'm sur-prised to find in Central Amer-ica:

• Coyotes
• Lighting Bugs
• Brahma Bulls (We decided they look like short-hair yaks)
• Rice Paddies
• A Mennonite Church that uses drums and guitars during worship

We were also told that, "Jaguars eat cows and sleep in cats." Many farmers use the caterpillar brand equipment and they have to check the cab and backhoe because for some reason jaguars find this to be the perfect place to nap.

Kids are still kids wherever you are on the planet. Here, the girls get really excited when they pierce their ears, the boys hate school and just want to play outside, they wear funny tee shirts, and they all own dirt bikes or four wheelers or both. They start driving around eleven years old, and often go into the bush to go alligator hunting.

I saw my classroom for the first time yesterday. It is SO COOL! I haven't seen an actual blackboard in years! All of the student desks are mahogany, as is mine, and I have three walls of windows. No AC, but two ceiling fans and very breezy - we're on top of a hill. While we were in there however, I had the windows open and a prehistoric-sized dragonfly flew in, buzzed around the room a bit, and flew out the other side. I thought to myself, "I don't think anyone I went to school with in the teaching program at WSU will have to worry about tropical insects or lizards entering their classroom in the middle of a lesson."

Still, it's going to be an amazing, unique experience that cannot compare to anything I've ever done or ever will do. We will begin each day of class with a Bible lesson, and then move into the rest of the subjects. I need to go through all the materials today to decide which two subjects I want to give up in order to teach high school Spanish. I found out that all students in the high school will be taking level one, and I'm the only Spanish teacher. That's awesome! That means I'm going to get to know every high school and junior high student in Blue Creek. I'm going to ask them all to take Melissa and me alligator hunting and bring us a mango or extra oranges and limes. They do that kind of stuff here, we already have more limes and eggs than we can consume on our own, but the French Toast this morning was mm mm good!

For now, we need to finish getting ready. We're going to cross the river into Mexico today and get some tortillas and hopefully something to hang on these walls. The only decoration on these bare white surfaces at this point is gecko poo. Darn you, Dobby! Darn you!

Email us!

Bein' Belizean - 8/1/06

We're here! We're Here!

Wow...we're here...

Here are some reality checks recently cashed:

• Normal outdoor humidity and showers differ only in the amount of soap at hand
• Gasoline is the only commodity priced in US dollars because double digits don't fit on the screen (it is $5.26/gallon, we are charged $11.00/gallon Bz)
• Reptiles in the home are a good thing
• Carpets = mold, all floors are tiled
• We are living atop the ruins of an ancient, advanced culture.

As we were flying into Blue Creek, we cruised over the Mayan temple of Lamanai. This is a popular tourist attraction because of the size of the main temple, but the Mayan ruins are scattered all around us. Our friend/guide told us that whenever they clear out the jungle to make room for more houses or farmland, they just bulldoze through. Always, always they find evidence of Mayan culture and there are two archaeological digs here. You can look at the strange shapes of the terrain and make out the angled edges of what could very likely be Mayan buildings beneath the jungle growth. Such a fascinating place!



The people are SO friendly and acommodating. We set up our bank account today at the Credit Union and did some shopping at the local market. We were invited into the home of one of my students for dinner yesterday, and again tonight at the home of another student. Our friend Abe has made a point to introduce me to every 8th grader's parent that we come across in the community - either at the restaurant or the store or stopping by their house to say hello. I've never seen so many blue eyes and blond hair in one community! We are in central america, right?

So far the only real regret/problem I have is the music. I left my Sirius receiver at home, and when I arrived I saw that EVERYBODY HAS SIRIUS!!!! I could have still kept it! I am kicking myself I'm so upset. So, I might have to order a new radio and have it sent here, because now that I know we can get it it will be hard living without that connection to the latest music, sports, comedy (insert Sirius commercial here).

Our biggest accomplishment today is collecting our truck. It's a fancy-mobile! We expected a beat-up cattle truck or something with rust holes large enough for a jaguar to crawl through. Instead, we have a newer red chevy pickup that drives pretty well and gives us independence and the ability to go out and explore! Yes!

While we were at the office of the farmer who's renting the truck to us, I noticed a quote they had printed off and taped to the wall:

When God ordains, He sustains

HOW TRUE THAT IS!




I know this is a God-ordained mission, and He has definitely provided for our needs in order to sustain us while we are here. It would be nice to have more pictures of our friends and family than we brought and small mementos like that, but every need has been met. We have been given food, invited into people's homes, given a job, a place of our own, FREE laundry (which I haven't had in 11 years), and the ability to carry out what He has called us to do.

To God be the glory!

WE LANDED!! - 8/1/06

It is Tuesday and we have spent our first night in a two-bedroom apartment with a tile floor and no air conditioning! We have been assured that the a/c will be completed today, I hope they are able to keep their word!!

In the picture who see Abe Rempel, Nathan and I in Abe's Cessna 172 E; you can see I got to be the co-pilot!! Abe (who seems to be the man-of-all-trades to his town) picked us up from Belize International and we had a short 30 minute flight to Blue Creek where he showed us the village from about 200 feet in the air. The Mennonites moved to this area in the 1950s and have cleared out miles and miles of jungle to make their homes and farmland. From the air, we could see the rice paddys, soybean fields, and cattle farms surrounded by lush, green, thick jungle.

Our small two-bedroom apartment is very clean and they just installed a brand new gas stove and oven; although I can't imagine baking anything in this heat. The apartment is located in a building above the local hardware store, market and bank--so we are very close to all the necessities!! (You can just make out our apartment in the picture below, it is the building in the top right hand corner) The store graciously provided milk, bread, bagels, cream cheese, jam, sugar, cereal (Honey Bunches of Oats, our favorite!) and some instant coffee. It was waiting in our kitchen for us when we arrived.

Belize is well-known for their beautiful mahogany wood and our apartment is full of it! There are two large bookcases in the kitchen/dining room/ livingroom and each of the bedrooms have a large mahogany wardrobe and bookshelves. I already cheked the wardrobe in the spare room, there is no magical land where it is always winter (I had been hoping) and no Aslan.

Our apartment also came with a house gecko, which we named Dobby. The gecko is good beacuse he eats the bugs. He must be doing his job beacuse we have seen hardly any bugs in our place at all!! The bathroom is very small and the shower is a little scary, but I plan to get in there tonight (once the weather cools off) with some really intese cleaning supplies, it should be fine by tomorrow!

The people have been very welcoming and gracious. We ate dinner with a local family last night and another family has offered to cook for us tonight. The family we ate with last night has lime and orange orchards and the wife offered to bring us limes and oranges for fresh juice! They are so generous and giving here! The community is very small and word travels quickly, I have had several women approach me, call my by my name, and introduce themselves to me. Hopefully they will be so generous with a job for me to do!

This afternoon Abe and I went to a nearby farm to gather eggs. We can purchase eggs in the market, but this farm has 18,000 chickens and they give away the eggs that are too big or too small to sell at the market. They allowed me to collect a small bucket full of eggs, so we will have plenty of scrambled eggs, french toast, hard-boiled eggs, and I am sure I will invent a few new eggs recipies!

Thank you to everyone who has posted comments, it means so much to know that you are thinking of us. I am already a little homesick, and seeing our apartment for the first time was quite a culture shock for both Nathan and I. We have a slideshow set on our computer that plays pictures of some of our friends and family, to make us feel a little closer. So, if you have any pictures you would like us to have, e-mail them to us! We would love to update the slideshow as often as possible.