Here’s a short list of things that might surprise you about living here in Belize but are like second nature to me:
1. Students won’t know what you’re talking about if you ask them to take out a sheet of paper. You have to say, “Please take out a folder sheet.”
2. If you need them to take out another, you can’t say, “Please take out another.” You have to say, “Please take out a next folder sheet.”
3. You cannot reject anything that anyone offers you. They told me that when I first got here, but I didn’t really take it seriously, so I tried to say “no thanks” to a student who was offering me part of their lunch. Well, he was very hurt and kind of offended and I felt awful. Needless to say, since then I have had about 2 times as much as I would normally eat, plenty of escorts to walk me home, and about a billion shushies.
4. Shushies are a brand new thing down here this year and are a HUGE hit! They sell them at many of the Chinese stores (most of the businesses are run by the large Chinese population here in Benque) and students love to get one on their way home.
5. I have counted about 2 blonde people the whole time I have been here. Very different from Midwestern Kansas.
6. They refer to the teachers by their first name, so I am known at school as Miss Shelby.
7. The classrooms have a chalkboard and desks. The windows are wooden shutters that need to be opened in the morning and closed at the end of the day. There are no fans or a.c. It is hot while teaching, so sometimes on especially hot days, I will take my class out to the basketball court which has a tin roof for shade.
8. Instead of having the students rotate classes, it’s the teachers who move from class to class. We do not have our own classrooms. All of the teachers are in one large ‘teacher’s lounge’. Each of us gets a desk. If the students need us, they have to wait outside the lounge and call to us. They cannot come into the lounge. If they need help with something, we have to go find somewhere else to sit. Maybe at the picnic tables or at the basketball court. I do not like any of this at all. I would greatly prefer my own classroom.
9. Students sometimes take advantage of the fact that I don’t speak much Spanish, so that’s what they use to speak to each other when they have their little side conversations during my lessons. It pisses me off.
10. It’s the rainy season here. It rains probably about 3 times/week.
11. I walk to and from school and anywhere else I need to go in town. It’s about a 10 minute walk to school.
12. They have a class that teaches you how to play they recorder. They do not call it a recorder. They call it a flute. On these ‘flutes,’ they ALL know how to play Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On. They do not call it that. They call it Titanic. It is obnoxious.
13. For volleyball games, usually in the States, normal teams would get transportation to the schools. Not here. We have to walk to the schools if we’re playing away. We only play versus 2 different schools, but they are about a 30 minute walk away. We have to bring all of our equipment too.
14. It’s almost impolite to show up to anything on time. You have to live on ‘Belize time,’ which equals about 30 minutes or more late. I hope I can kick the habit when I return.
15. The male students, even the 14 year old ones think that they actually have a chance to marry the women volunteers. Ha!
16. I had not experienced air conditioning or a warm shower until a couple weekends ago when we (the volunteers) went on a mini vacation to Placencia on the coast. It was a magical.
17. Dogs like to have a barking competition every night at about 3am.
18. The roosters think that morning begins at about 4am. These aren’t just normal cock-a-doodle-dooing rooster either. When they cock-a-doodle-doo, it sounds like they are being tortured.
19. I have learned to drown out the sounds of the night with the wonderful fan in my room. At first I thought it was obnoxiously loud, but now I could not sleep without it.
20. I have something else in my body that presents its symptoms as blisters. They started on my legs then moved to my armpit then I got 2 on my face, then a couple on my hand. I haven’t been able to shave for about 3 weeks now because of how many there are. I fit in well with the unshaven Belizean ladies. I should have gone to the doctor a month ago, but I have just put it off. They finally just went away a couple of weeks ago. Praise the Lord!
21. Rice and beans is the main course of any meal and often the only course. As in white rice and black or kidney beans. I think I’ve started getting used to it and am beginning to like it now.
22. I do my laundry by hand and hang it on a line to dry.
23. Students sometimes come by the house to ask for help or if they have a question or whatever. They don’t knock on the door. They just shout your name outside until you come to answer.
24. My proper use of the English language is in a steep downward spiral.
25. In my classes, I have students with many different backgrounds. I have Creole, Mayan, Mestizo (Spanish and Mayan), Mexican, and many many Guatemalan students.
26. Benque is about a mile from the border of Guatemala, so about 30% of the students that come to Mount Carmel are Guatemalan. They come from a town called Melchor. (I have not been yet because the administration still has our passports to work out our temporary visas.)
Well, there’s a “short” list of fun facts for you.
In other news, my classes are going very well. Mid-semester grades were due this past Friday and very few of my students are failing, which I am very happy about. Let me tell you, my class is not easy to pass, so the ones that are, are working very hard. The students who aren’t are the ones who have been very lazy in and out of class.
Volleyball ended on a low note. The team’s confidence was crushed when we lost to Mopan, the school that “always wins every sport.” We were a very talented team, even by American standards, but we lost in a mental game. Now I have unusual amounts of free time after school which will be soon filled with Dance Club. Signups were last week and continue through this week. I plan to have practice 2-3 times/week in which we will learn many different styles of dance. I’m very excited about it!
7 of the 11 volunteers went to Placencia over Columbus Day (referred to here as Pan American Day) weekend in celebration of Dave’s birthday. It was a very relaxing time laying on the beach, but it ended far too soon. FAR too soon. The 15 hours of travel over the weekend were made up for by a 3-story air-conditioned house with hot showers, cable, boating, biking and beaching.
There is much more to write about, but I have to go get ready for Mass. I slept in this morning and will go to Spanish Mass at 6:30pm.
I will try not to go another month without updating you all. Muchisimos amor.
Student Council Retreat:
The group out for Dave's birthday dinner:
Me and Jonathan on the water taxi:
