I've come to find out

Somethings I've learned this past week...
How jade is formed - When you see a falling star, a special falling star you watch it watch it watch it as it falls to the ground, never taking your eyes off the glow. If you can keep your gaze without blinking until the star is within reach you then grab it and it will become jade. Don't look away for one second or it will disappear. (The story is told much better by Florentina.)

Why my villagers want my parents to visit - to inform them I will never be leaving.

Why it's fun knowing even basic K'ekchi - a stranger in town passed me on the road smiling big and saying "xic cue" I think as a joke, but when I responded, "tawil awib" he laughed and said, "us"

How Santa Teresa came to be - I updated our community profile and Mr. Chub suggested I add a little history and since I know you're all curious as well I thought I would share it with you, too. In 1933, three men from Delores settled in a place known as Hinchosonnes, others followed. Ten years later, in 1943, the last hurricane of the season hit southern Belize and destroyed many trees and houses in the village. The Catholic church had a statue of Santa Teresa that was destroyed. They decided to reestablish the village and name it Santa Teresa after the statue. The local name of the village is Se Pan, which means bread. The reason behind this name comes from when villagers would take a dory down the creek to the Moho River then paddling three days to reach town to sell. A man by the name of Mr. Wilikim was taking pigs to town and along with him was a woman and her child selling bread. While crossing Trayal fall the dory overturned, killing the woman and her child, since all the bread was lost, too, the village was then known as Se Pan. Other interesting facts: The road came to the village in 1983. Santa Teresa didn't have water pumps until 1996, then just four years later installed a water system. Communication was an issue, and they didn't have a community phone until 2005. Then just two years ago there were only a handful of individuals with cell phones or house phones - at this time the community phone was not working because it was struck by lightning and six houses had solar panels. Now ten houses have power through solar panels or generators, three families have house phones, the health clinic has a phone, and at least 20 individuals have cell phones with Digicell service. Business initiatives include a rice huller and logging company that provide services to surrounding villages. And not to forget our health clinic. Wow! I wonder what will happen in the next five years.

School Happenings

This year the Santa Teresa RC boys did well in the Primary School volleyball competition. The zone elimination took place in Santa Teresa and our boys won! They then went on to district finals in Punta Gorda Town where they played the winners of the other seven zones in Toledo. They won the first game against San Vicente and pulled through for a second win against Indian Creek which meant we made it to the final match in the district. We played our best against Toledo Christian, but were unable to take the title. Maybe next year we'll make it to Nationals.

I gave my first professional development workshop of the year on alternative assessment in reading and writing. I think it went okay. Of course I started it with an icebreaker, bringing Word Jumbles to the staff at Santa Teresa. We had good discussions about surveys, checklists, response journals, scoring writing with the 6 traits, and portfolios. And speaking of workshops, I've been able to attend a couple as well. The first was an expressive arts workshop put on by the Ministry of Education. It was a two day workshop, but I found out about it on the first day so I could only make the second. I figured it would be talking about ways to implement expressive arts in the classroom, but no, it was more like dance camp. When I realized we would be learning a routine I couldn't keep from laughing. I had the biggest smile on my face during the entire warm-up and I'm sure the other 30 teachers were wondering what was wrong with me. And to make things better, the routine was to a Christmas song. Oh, how I love Belize. The second workshop was one on classroom management. Mr. Chub had asked me to go along with him so we could present the information to the rest of the staff together.


The garden is coming along, too. Not only are the students tending to it during their scheduled time in the garden but also they have took it upon themselves to do extra watering and care throughout the week.

Our library now has a librarian! Mr. Teul has attended the training in Belize City and now comes to work in the library 8 hours a week. Right now his focus is on organizing the books so I try to get in there as much as I can to help out. It's so exciting to me that there's interest to use and take care of all the books we already have and of course to expand the library as much as we can, making it accessible to our community and eventually surrounding ones. Santa Teresa will be the place to come visit!

Note: For some reason I can't get the computer to read my other memory card to share more pictures. Next time. Loves and Hugs!