Before and After

Things I miss:

-Sweeping up normal things like dirt, or crumbs… NOT dead cockroaches. Granted, the real treat is when they are still half alive.

-FamJam, Friends, and all the great people I left behind (yeah, yeah.. Cliché but necessary, right?)

-My D-Girls… all of D4 actually

-Internet that isn’t monitored and blocked by the… Government? Service providers? Belizean Mafia? I don’t know. It’s annoying though

-Vegetables! Mostly soybeans.

-Non-stick pots and pans. (Dishes take foreeeeever)

-High heels… *sigh*

-My previous vocabulary including “monkey” “silly” and “punk”

-Unlimited texting

My favourites:

-Waking up to rays of sunshine streaming through the curtains

-Video dance-offs.. even when there’s no music

-Perkup, my two-in-one fix of caffeine and taste of home

-My Chinese neighbors’ huge screaming matches

-My Chinese neighbors’ music selections. Backstreet boys dominate by far

-Sitting on my balcony reading, writing, whatever, in the warm Belizean breeze

-Just sitting and observing everything going on. Seriously unreal.

-Jungle mountain biking

-Watching and learning the mechanisms of the home

-Getting lost in Belmopan - and not caring because it's gorgeous and I have all the time in the world

-Finding out that “Potty-trained” Alicia wasn’t put in a diaper again by way of a wet lap. Not actually my favourite, but it’s happened like 3 times already! Ay yi yi

-Eight bananas for one Belizean dollar. (50 cents American!)

-Every time one of the boys remembers something I’ve been teaching and I feel somewhat effective

-Afternoon naptime when there’s toddler’s sprawled all over the couches in the play room

-Never having an empty lap when I sit down

-The smell after the rain has just finished pounding; It’s like spring over and over

-All the colourful houses!

-Spontaneous conversations with a new face, whether traveller or local

-Not always being freezing, Hallelujah! Sunshine > Snow by far.

-Cool breeze in my hair while cruising on my new one-speed

-Talking about “Juvie’s” (boyfriends/girlfriends) with the teen girls. They usually try to deny it but someone always rats them out

-Remembering new names – I’m gettin there!

-Belmopan's "Yellow Brick Road" – The sectioned path that lies all throughout town

-Edgar’s huge smile when he reaches for the monkey bars, knowing full well he is going to get tickled

-“Hi Bebe!” – Greetings between Alexia and I

-Alicia’s wild hair and magnified emotions

-Multiple photo shoots (and face-wars) with Josiah

-Playing along with Laquisha’s fake irritancy towards me until she cracks and slips a giggle

-When JR wears cologne and greases his hair to wheel the babes in his grade two class

-Being blown away by the kids’ maturity

-Ashton singing along to the ipod even though he doesn’t know the words

-Nathan and DJ’s favourite form of transportation- the cartwheel

-Mia hopping onto my lap and automatically reaching up to play with my ears

-Seesawing with JR and Marlon so they bounce really high

-Chatting about music with Crystal

-Playing "Suppose I..." with Marlon

-Every single day I get to spend here.

There is so much more I could write about. I could never run out of material here, but maybe I’ll end off with a “To be continued…”

January 27

I’ve been here about two weeks now, which feels impossibly short. I’ve already generated so much love for these kids, and I feel like I’ve known them for years, rather than a mere few days. I’m sure those of you who’ve spent time here know exactly how I feel. There is so much individuality and character packed into each and every little body, and it’s unreal to experience more and more of it each day.

The home is basically just a family on a larger scale; Leonie and the kids with a couple smaller families tied in as permanent fixtures of the home as well. One major difference here is the independence of the children. They grow up a lot quicker, mostly because they have to. There’s not always someone available to coddle and carry around the babies, so they learn to walk and start to wander on their own sooner. If someone gets hurt (which, as you can imagine, happens often) their tears are more often met with encouragement to toughen up than with hugs and soothing words. Kids, who are just that-kids, are taking care of, and at times parenting, themselves and each other. In our society children seem to be nurtured, and sometimes babied, a lot more as they grow up. Who’s to say which method is better than the other; it’s just interesting to observe the contrast between the two.

Teaching the boys is still quite challenging, and I don’t feel like this is the most effective way for these boys to be getting their education, but I’m trying to make the best of it. The curriculum is not very straightforward, and the days are not well planned out. The main focus is to set the foundations of reading and writing, but there’s a long way to go to say the least. I can’t remember the last time I sang, let alone had to teach, the ABC’s before this week. Some (most) days I wish there was two of me!

As for life outside of the home, I met a girl from Australia who invited me out with her and a few other girls, most of them are med students from Australia or Europe who've chosen Belize for their practicum and will be here a few weeks. So monday I grabbed Lucie (a girl from France who's family also helps at the home) and we met them for dinner and chats! It was nice to socialize a bit. I finally picked up a bike; walking everywhere is fine, but it takes soo much longer. My friends at the home are slowly dying off.. the cockroach count is up to 11 now! I'm looking forward to having the Project Serve team come visit in only two weeks!!!

Day In The Life

My new life was a little lonely for the first few days, but as I get to know the kids better, and fumble my way around town, my niche here in Belize is beginning to unveil itself a little more each day, bringing with it some comfort and familiarity. I am genuinely happy in my new surroundings. My main focus at the children’s home is to help homeschool two of the boys, Josiah and Edgar (whom everyone calls “Papito”) I work alongside another girl, Elizabeth, who is studying Education in university, to hopefully complete the curriculum of each of their appropriate grade levels. It’s a bit of a challenge most days, and the boys can be quite stubborn, not leaving us a large span of their attention to work with. They’re great kids though; I love them both a lot and I feel like we’ll be able to make progress in the next few months. Elizabeth teaches a couple hours in the morning, I join for a couple more until lunch break, and then take over in the afternoon. We get lots of visits from Alicia, one of the most independent toddlers I know, and also the home’s puppies, whom Edgar LOVES to play with whenever he can sneak away from math and spelling. I know I shouldn’t encourage distractions, but he honestly has one of the most infectious heartfelt giggles I’ve ever heard, and I can never help but to laugh along with him. Class ends at two thirty and the boys race to the computers to play all sorts of games on their favourite websites. Meanwhile, all the young kids, Dj, Aiden, Alexia, Nathan, Alicia and Benjamin, are just waking up from their afternoon nap so I usually wander over and scoop up a baby or two to cuddle while they suck their thumb and rub bleary eyes. Sometimes I just sit in the kitchen with some of the ladies and listen to them chat and cackle away for a while. Everyone speaks English here, for the most part, but I can’t always follow conversations if they are speaking quickly in their Belizean accents. Deciphering what they are saying becomes easier each day though! Shayanne, a super outgoing young teen girl, was telling me about a boy in her class today, “He is American and talks funny, like you!”

The rest of the kids arrive home from school a bit later and the house sees a little more action as it fills up and there is forty-some people milling about. The rest of my time at the house is less structured; changing diapers here, washing dishes there, and just hanging out chatting and playing with kids until around dinner when I usually start my trek back to my house because it gets dark early here, around six. I have a lot of time to myself in the evenings so far, as I can’t (shouldn’t, anyway) walk anywhere while it’s dark. So my nights usually consist of various combinations of reading, writing, cleaning, napping, yoga, organizing, or playing with the kids from the family also living at the house. I know.. exciting, right? I’ve met a few people outside of the home who are also visiting Belmopan for awhile, so maybe I’ll have some sort of social life at some point, but for now I’m quite enjoying to relaxation!

In The Beginning

The idea of moving to Belize didn’t feel like a reality until I finally booked my plane tickets, and even then it felt surreal up until the moment I had to make my way from the Tim Horton’s to the security gate in Saskatoon’s tiny airport. Thankfully flights went well and, as scheduled, I hop off the plane at 11:40, January 15, in my jeans and hoodie into a humid twenty some degrees. (Yes, that’s positive!) James Brown, the pastor of the church attended by, and mostly composed of, the King’s Children’s Home members, is waiting outside Belize City’s even tinier airport to drive me back to Belmopan, where I’ll be living for the next couple months.

The countryside here is fabulous; kind of a small town feel, but with flourishing foliage and lush green mountains off in the horizon. About an hour later we pull into Belmopan. At a population of only around seven thousand people, it feels a little more like Hepburn than an independent country’s capital city. There is one road, ring road, that forms a loop around the town and accesses pretty much anywhere you’d need to go. It’s like our own mini Circle Drive ha! We pull into the Kid’s Home and after a few quick introductions I’m left to find my way around and meet some of the kids. I feel somewhat scattered and out of place, but soon some of the little ones have coerced me into giving multiple piggybacks and building cakes out of gravel on the seesaw (Edgar looks at me like I’m a little crazy when I refer to it as a teeter-totter). Dj, one of the preschool-aged boys clambers up into my arms, pops his thumb into his mouth and begins to order me around. He’s so cute that I simply comply. It feels like a slow process, but I’m beginning to connect names to the faces and plant the first seeds of the relationships I’ll be forming with these kids.

In the evening I head home to the volunteer house a few minutes away, unaware of the roommates I share living space with. There is a family of seven staying until Saturday, but more so I mean my new friends: cockroaches, spiders, one scorpion (previously dealt with, no worries) and newly discovered, gecko’s! (or some type of small lizard anyway. They are on my team though-they eat cockroaches). Aside from the roomies, I haven’t got anything to complain about. The house has much more space than I’ll ever need, cable TV, locked gate, giant backyard, most appliances, etc. After a long day of flights, new sights, new names and faces, playtime, supper (I’ve decided, once and for all, to officially declare Rice and Beans as Belize’s national food item,) and energetic devotions, I hit the hay at 8pm. I’ve found Belize to be the cure for my previously nocturnal lifestyle.