Through the eyes of another...

I asked my friend Lauren who visited in April to write her own blog post. Here it is:
"Lauren, do you know what you’re getting yourself into? You know you are going to have to bathe in a river." my friend Amy said as she was explaining the living situation in Belize. Amy has been volunteering with the Peace Corps for about a year and a half now and lives in a village with no electricity. While telling fellow family members and friends of my travel plans to visit her and to teach in the school she volunteers at as well as travel, many responded to me not only with puzzling faces but also with many questions. "People actually choose to live like that?" they said. "What do they do with their lives?" "No television?" "Are you going to have to drink out of the water you bathe in?" All valid questions that I was eager to find the answers to.
I left Colorado as it was snowing early in the morning on April 4th. The plane ride was fairly quick compared to traveling to Europe. A couple hours to Houston, then a couple more hours and I arrived at the Belize International Airport in Belize City. Once I stepped off the plane, warmth and humidity instantly welcomed me to the city. I quickly passed through customs, picked up my luggage and made my way to the waiting area for my connecting flight to Punta Gorda. The airport was pretty tiny and cute so I took a couple pictures, bought some water and sat on a bench until it was time to board. As I was drinking my water, I noticed a lady with a really cute hat sitting across from me. When the lady started to speak, I quickly realized by her southern accent it was none other than Resse Witherspoon with her new husband and her children. So crazy! I really couldn’t believe it! What a fun way to start my Belize adventure!

After about an hour and a half domestic flight, I arrived at my final destination for the day, Punta Gorda. Punta Gorda(PG) is often described in travel books as a sleepy town in which the people are soooooo tired that they cannot even pronounce the entirety of the name hence its initial nickname PG. I liked the quiet town and enjoyed meeting up with my friend Amy there and catching up on life! We stayed the night at a PCV (Peace Corps Volunteers) house and got to see more of the town the next day. My favorite thing about PG was the Jonny Cakes (these delicious biscuits filled with cheese) and Fry Jacks (similar to sopapillas) that are served with beans and eggs for breakfast.

Later that afternoon, we took the high school bus for a two hour ride into the village where I would be living for the next two weeks, Santa Teresa! I absolutely loved everything about the village from the kindness of the people, to the culture, to the food, to the simplistic way of life and even the language. Santa Teresa is a relatively small Mayan Indian village where the people speak a language called K’ekchi (Q’eqchi). English is spoken as well). It was actually really fun to learn some basic K'ekchi. Here are some of my favorite words and phases:
Yo’os- Hello
Ma sa aachol? How are you? (literal translation- Do you have good in your heart)
Sa inchol- I’m fine (I have good in my heart)
Chaabil -beautiful
Laa’in X…-My name is……
Tojokre -Thank you
Tawil Awib -Take Care
Naka thin ra- I love you
Mas chick sak’e – The sun is hot.
Heehe- Yes
In’ka- No





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The way of life would be considered old fashioned compared to the States. Most women stay in the home during the day taking care of the children, cooking, doing laundry (in the river) and household chores while the men are out working various jobs from farming to bus driving. Women are almost always seen in knee length skirts and shirts that have short sleeves. A lot of the women and girls also wear the Mayan traditional clothing (uks and po’ots). Amy was so sweet and had some traditional wear made for me to wear in the village. I absolutely loved wearing it!


Since there is no electricity, food is made fresh daily. Most families live on caldo (soup), beans and corn tortillas. Silverware is not needed because everything is eaten with a tortilla. I had the opportunity to enjoy many of the foods when I met and visited with the families. Everyone always offers you food if you come to visit. The food is amazing! They really like to make their food peppery (spicy) which was great. I had everything from fresh fish, to caldo with a wild rodent, to chicken tamales, to tons and tons and tons of corn tortillas, sometimes flour (my favorite), the most amazing beans as well as porridge and a cacao(chocolate) drink. They also had the most beautifully tasting zestful oranges! One night Amy and I visited 3 families and were so extremely full but it’s considered rude to not take or eat the food that is given to you. Amy told me once that she went to visit a family that had only 3 eggs to feed 4 kids and the family gave her an entire egg to eat for herself. She felt so bad about it but ate it out of politeness.
My days spent in the village were always fun! A typical daily schedule looked like this:
5:30- Wake up (Usually by dogs barking, rosters crowing, howler monkeys making a creepy howl sound or the neighbor family playing Mexican music which was fun because it reminded me of my family and covered up all the animal noises)
6:00- Go for a walk or run
6:45- Go
to the creek to do laundry and bathe
7:45- Get ready for school and eat breakfast
8:30-School
11:00- Lunch break (1½ hours! )! Make lunch and rest in the hammock!
1:30- Walk back to school.
3:30- Schools out!
4:00- Rest
4:30- Play futbol(soccer) with GLOW girls (they play with bare feet..wow)
5:00- Visit various families to make tortillas and play with the children.7:30- Back to the thatch house to relax, read, write, talk with Amy, get things ready for the next day, etc.
8:30- Bed time! :) :) :)

Getting to teach at Santa Teresa R.C. School was a very great experience. It was really neat because the school in the village happened to be Catholic although there are 3 different religions in the village (Baptist, Protestant and Catholic). They start the day in prayer, have religion class in the morning and transition breaks/lunch as well as ended the day in prayer. A priest comes into the village once a month for a school mass and the children spend a week preparing the songs to sing at it. It was neat to see how a Catholic School works and is operated in Central America.




In Belize, most of the teachers start teaching right out of high school and don’t receive any training to teach. I had the opportunity to teach math to all of the grades showing the teachers different strategies to use when teaching as well as ways to get the children to participate and make learning math fun. I am really a big advocate on positive reinforcement and will never forget the first day I taught math in Belize. I was teaching Standard 3-4 students how to reduce fractions in which I did whole group instruction, board practice for the students, a fun game and then seatwork review practice. When the students were finished, I checked the problems and if they were all correct I gave them a star with a pen. I have never seen kids so excited to receive a star on their paper. Once other kids heard about it, I started hearing many voices say “Can I have a star, Miss?” “I want a star, Miss.” I don’t think I will ever get over how excited these kids were to receive a star on their paper!

Something else that I got to experience in Santa Teresa R.C. School was a field trip to the Food Fair. If you have ever been on a field in the States you might remember your teacher always counting and taking attendance multiple times to make sure no kids are missing and everyone has showed up. Belizean culture by nature is just very relaxed. We arrived on the bus by the school a little before 7:30 and at 7:30 the principal, Mr. Pop stepped onto the bus, and announced, “Well, looks like everyone is here.” And we were off for the two hour ride to the nearest city Punta Gorda. There were literally 6+ children in some seats and tons of children were standing in the aisle. When we arrive at the fairgrounds the kids were free to do what they wanted. No real supervision. There were many booths set up that sold various types of foods and some were learning booths. There was also a MC that had music and games.
I was really excited for our booth! We not only had great food and drinks to sell, but the kids, Amy and I made a punchboard for this event. I brought a ton of prizes from my mom’s classroom to Belize and we used them for the punchboard. We had the kids write the prizes on white slips of paper and also messages about healthy eating on others. We folded them and punched them into the board. At the food fair, kids came up to our booth and paid a shilling (25 cents) to pick a slip from the board. Some would win the prizes I brought and others just got the message. The kids loved it! With the prizes, we ended up raising $164.25 for the school!! So cool!





Highlights of life in Belize:
*Amy and I have birthdays that are 4 days apart so we spent one weekend on the beach in Placencia for a little relaxing birthday bash. We had a blast snorkeling, swimming in the salt water, and Karl-okie-ing!
*Also for my birthday, killing a chicken to make tamales, learning how to weave a kuxtal (purse) and then having homemade doughnuts made by the neighbors.
*Going to Blue Creek to swim in the caves. I felt like I was in The Goonies movie…it was awesome.
*Biking 2 miles up and down the steepest hills, then hiking a mile to see and swim in these beautiful waterfalls.
This is definitely an adventure I will never forget. I loved living in the village, napping in a hammock as well as playing with and teaching the children. I always wanted to be in the Peace Corps so it was really cool that I got to have a mini-experience. Amy does so much good in her village daily. Peace Corps is known as, “the hardest job, you’ll ever love.” She is pretty much always “on-call” to any of the villagers at all times and spends the days working with reading groups in the schools, putting together field trips and leading an after school music club. The kids are currently learning to play the recorder and one afternoon I taught them, Hot Cross Buns. Amy has also taught many of the women in the village new things to bake as well as showed them how to make soap. In addition she has taken over a GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) group for Standard 6. I had the privilege of leading a GLOW group session about inner beauty and self-esteem. The village is extremely lucky that they have Miss Amy and everyone loves her very much. It will be so hard for her to say goodbye in October.
Looking outside at all the Colorado snow falling in May as I finish writing this makes me miss the humid heat of Belize (even the days I needed a sweat rag). I hope to go back someday. I was telling my mom I want to adopt a Belizean child…lol

I have so many other fun stories and things to share about the culture in Belize that I could probably write a book. If you are still reading and want to know more, feel free to ask! Also if you are thinking about going, don’t think…DO IT!


A BIG THANK YOU (tojokre) to Amy for inviting me to her village, sharing her Belizean life with me and being a superb hostess! I am very thankful and blessed to have such a wonderful friend! I have been extremely fortunate to have so many amazing experiences in travel but this has been hands down my favorite!


Guatemala travels are up next!


All my love,
L