Confirmation!

Confirmation was in Santa Teresa this year. We had 15 confirmants so I knew it would be worse than Christmas, me having too much food to eat that is. I wasn't invited to all the houses even though I most likely could have gone. I won't tell you how many bowls of caldo I was served or how much meat I brought home, but I do remember each time I left one house I thought to myself while walking to the next, 'I'll just tell them I already ate, they won't be offended, for sure they'll understand..." Didn't happen, instead one time I must have been actually forming the words with my lips for a practice because as my mouth was open, a bug flew in. That shut me up, not because it grossed me out to swallow a bug, but I coughed it up to spit it out as there was absolutely no room for him in my stomach. My favorite part was witnessing the godmother/godfather treatment and the exchange of thank yous when they left. I was a little nervous to go to the first house since I didn't want to intrude. My only reason for choosing what house to be first was location, wanting to go from one side of the village to the other. Luckily, I knew the godfather a little bit and he welcomed me inside, "Ok'an comad" (short for comadre, what the parents call their child's godmother) was what he said, asking me to join him, so I guess I was a step-in godmother for a day. If anything, it made me feel more comfortable. Even after being here a year and a half, there are still times I'm reminded I don't belong completely. It's at these times I really miss my family. Anyways, back to "comad...compad..." I love how they add that to every sentence when speaking with each other and how godparents are treated with high respect here. The relationship is beautiful.

Keep GLOWing

Wow! Time is really getting away from me. Only seven months left in Belize! Ay yi yi! So much has been happening, I don't know where to begin catching you up on life in Santa Teresa. One thing I'm most excited about is the GLOW Club. I had four girls go to camp last year so I was a little discouraged when we weren't meeting regularly once the school year started again. We had a hard time organizing ourselves for the first meeting, but once together, found a focus. The girls were interested in visiting a neighboring village so I told them in order to go they must raise money. I knew I would not be in the village the following weekend but told the girls I knew they could sell cakes by themselves. Which they did!! I was so proud of them. Every Saturday of February we sold cakes and let me tell you, there girls are entrepreneurs, coming up with ideas of other things to sell since the people might get tired of cake. They even had the idea of asking for donations from the tourists that come on Wednesdays (sadly,this was vetoed by the Chairman of the Village Council) and brought up to me wanting to fund raise at the football marathon that happened this past Tuesday. Go girls! We have decided though that every Saturday is quite much, so instead we'll fund raise every other week, but will still meet the other Saturdays for activities such as playing at the field, picking up trash, and assisting elders. Oh, and thy are pretty much planning their own trip to San Benito Poite, things they want to do, what they want to learn, transportation, food, lodging, etc. The expense won't be too great so we might be able to send a couple girls to Camp GLOW again in Cayo (this year each girl needs to raise $100) and or course in my mind we'll make enough money to start a scholarship fund for girls going to high school. Talk about empowerment! But of course, our first purchase, other than ingredients to make the cakes we well, will be a football for the club to have as their own. I hope the girls know how proud I am of them.

Garden Graduation

It may be true that Belizeans make reasons to party, but does this cause me to love them any less? Quite the opposite my friend, quite the opposite indeed. A perfect example of this happened mid December when PLENTY came to graduate our garden. How does a garden graduate? Or maybe a better question is why? I'm not sure. You tell me. Anyways, back to PLENTY, it's an organization that has been assisting rural Toledo schools with creating gardens the past few years. They helped get it started, providing fencing, tools, and seeds, and to officially hand over the responsibility a celebration must be had, of course. (Did I ever mention our health clinic was inaugurated not once, but twice?) These ceremonies look quite similar... National Anthem... Invocation... Welcome Addresses by all the village leaders... item from the school children... then we hear from the sponsoring organization. After all is said and done, traditional marimba music is played and a select few people start to dance in their cultural wear. The ladies even made me get up and dance with them this time.


Finally, not to forget the most essential part, we all eat lunch together. This event was a little different than most as a variety of food was prepared. Usually it's lone caldo and poch (see pictures) but part of PLENTY's goal with the gardening project is to get students to start eating more balanced meals by simply adding vegetable to their diet, you know, the vegetables they grow in their gardens. :P

I didn't get to help with the cooking as much as I would have liked because I was busy with the punch board as a fundraiser for the school. Students pay 25 cents a chance to pick a paper stuck in a board. The paper will either have a message i.e. "Better luck next time," or the name of the prize on it. Thanks to Bernard, a tourist who stopped in Santa Teresa last season and brought a bunch of cool toys with hime, and Larka and Mikah, who brought a few fun things with them, too, we had all the prizes without expense. Yes, I've been holding onto all these things for a long time but was waiting for a fair way to disperse them and must say it was a success. We made $100 for the school and the children got some pretty neat things for a shilling, plus punch boards are tons of fun. (I apologize mostly to Bernard who has been witing a long time for this photo.)

Who knew it would be the men that were the only ones to wear the animal visors. I guess age is just a number and still can't keep from laughing.
Well, that's all for now and if you ever need any help planning your own graduation, you know who to come to. Loves and hugs!
Note: I hope you enjoy reading my blog as much as I like writing it, or only half as much, that would be good, too. Sorry I've been slacking a little, more to come... more to come. :)

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!