7 days left with the palm trees...

It looks like this may just be my final blog post in Belize!

I have a coundown on my laptop that is currently at 7 days. It's eight thirty in the morning on Friday and at this time next week we'll be boarding our flight home in four hours. Crazy!
Yesterday was my final day at my last placement, because today all the teachers are in Belmopan at a "demonstration" (basically a riot) protesting against the Belizian government, particularly the prime minister Musa. So what I'll be doing is homework. Basically a pretty boring day.
I really enjoyed my last placement. It wasn't as good as my first, because often I'd find myself with no real jobs to do. My mornings were always occupied by working in the back of Miss Linda's class. She discovered I like to draw, so I was given a lot of things to do in that area, particularly posterboards to hang up around her classroom. I had to draw a poster full of insects that have no backbones, and then yesterday I finished up another one about personal hygiene. I really enjoyed making them,, and I almost wish I could take them home with me because I worked so hard on them! : P
There was one day last week where I was sitting in the office, waiting for lunch to be over and the students to return to class. Suddenly I realized I was wasting my time sitting down when I could be outside on the playground. So I grabbed my camera, and before the buzzer went I'd taken close to 100 photos of the kids running around. They loved my camera...they posed for me, wanted pictures with me, and wanted to take pictures of me! It's probably going to end up being one of the most memorable experiences from the trip, and to think it might not have happened if I'd stayed in the office!





Today is when the people working at their placements get picked up for the final time, and we'll spend our last weekend in Belize together, hopefully going on a little daytrip on Saturday to do some last minute sight-seeing. Sunday will be a day of rest as it always is, and Monday will be begin the craziness! We'll probably all begin doing a cleanup of our house and beginning the packing process by trying to find all the stuff we lost three months ago. :P Then on Monday night we're going to have a big banquet in the dining hall with all the people we were involved with from our various placements over the entire trip. This is also where we're going to say our final goodbyes to them. That's going to be difficult for me, especially saying goodbye to my host family when I worked in the Mennonite school. It's easy to say that they are the people I'll miss the most out of everyone we're leaving behind. I think living with them at the beginning of the trip was the main reason why I didn't experience serious homesickness at all. I just felt so at home there, right when I walked into their house.
Tuesday will be utter insanity! It's our last day in our house at YWAM, and it's the BIG packing/cleanup day. By the evening hopefully all our rooms will be as clean and as empty as they were when we first walked into the house three months ago. It will be extremely exciting knowing that I'll be home soon, but the thought that I'm going to walk out of the bedroom I've lived in for three months and not ever walk into it again, is a very sad one. Our whole team has grown to love this house, and believe it or not, we're used to living with so many people under one roof! It's going to be quite the change to go from 20 people in the same house to five back home.
Early Wednesday morning (3:00 or somewhere around there) we lock up the empty house and hop on our bus for one last ride...but it'll be a long one. We'll be on the road for 12 straight hours to drive from Belmopan, Belize, to Cancun, Mexico. Hopefully we'll arrive sometime in the late afternoon/early evening. We'll spend the night in a hotel, and the next morning we're off to the airport to see off the team members that are flying out a day early so that they can go to prom, which is Friday night. The rest of the day will be spent relaxing, hopefully grabbing a couple last rays from the Caribbean sun on the beach. On Friday morning we'll check out of our hotel and be at the airport in time to board our flight which takes off at 12:37! Hopefully if all goes well I'll be touching down in Buffalo by 8:06 p.m., and in my house no later than midnight.
I wonder if I'll have any time to actually THINK this upcoming week!
Hope to see many of you, Lord willing, very soon! : )

Want the specifics?

So I was bored at one point today, and I decided to do some math. Yes, some math in Belize. These are taken as of 12:00 noon on May 22, 2007.

Hours left in Belize---180
Hours left in Central America---228
Minutes left in Belize---10,800
Minutes left in Central America---13,680

Hours living in Belize---1,992
Minutes living in Belize---119,520
Seconds living in Belize---7,171,200

And the grand total once I step off the plane...

Hours total in Belize---2,172
Minutes total in Belize---130,320
Seconds total in Belize---7,819,200

Nine days! Crazy to think that I'm into the single digits now.
Watch this space for a slightly more informative post coming soon!

Three months, three weeks, finishing third placement!

Hey everyone!
I'm officially finished one third of my final placement, and in less than three weeks I'll be on a plane flying home.
This week went by very fast. I'm helping out at Belize Faith Mission in Ontario Christian School (yes, that's the name of the village!) doing various things. I do work in the office like typing up various documents, but I also get to work in classrooms correcting students' work. There are about 350 students in the school which is roughly the same size as my old grade school back home, I think. In just one week my name has gotten around and the name "Miss Elena" has resurfaced from my first placement. The kids especially just like to watch me when I'm sitting outside the office and when I smile at them they smile back and wave at me almost every time. There's also an orphanage on the property where some of the students live, so there's a mix of students that have families and students that don't.
I spent a bit of time talking with the principal Mrs. Adolphus during lunch one day. She asked me about my family back home and about my faith. She just listened while I talked about how this trip has caused many changes in me, and about the differences between this country and Canada. One thing I particularly noticed is different are the church services. They have no bulletins, no set schedule...however they want to worship they do it. I've seen people dancing, raising their arms, I've seen people collapse in prayer lying facedown on the ground, I've heard people speaking in tongues numerous times, which is something I've never heard before. I've actually been prayed over in tongues. All these things I've only heard about but never thought people actually did. These people are absolutely on fire for God, which is what I really needed to see when I came down here. It allowed me to see that there is more than one way to worship and that whatever way we choose is acceptable. I just got a taste in Belize of a different type that I've never really experienced before.
The week went by very fast. Each day walking over the swinging bridge I was surprised to find that it was already the next day and I was about to do it all over again! Something tells me that these last two weeks at my placement won't take their time to pass...they're going to be gone in an instant.
Our whole team's general mindset is that we're ready to go home. Three months is a very long time to be away from home, especially for the first time, in my case. Before this trip I'd never been away from my home or my family for longer than a week. That's a strange thing to think about...that for my entire life I've been living in such close quarters with my family. This trip has been a new thing in my life in many different ways, that being just one of them. Even though we're all ready to go home, we're not quite ready...just yet. It's slowly starting to hit us that when this trip is over, it's over and we can't go back. Something tells me that we're going to be trying to live for every moment in these last three weeks which we haven't necessarily done for the entire trip, especially during the rough patches. Closer to the beginning of the trip if I tried to imagine myself home, it didn't seem like a reality. Now, it's very much real. The countdown is at 20 days. I've been here for seventy three days, I believe. Three months ago today I was doing my first day at my short term placement at HMDCS. Hard to believe three months have passed since then!
Lesson for the week: Live for the moment, because later on when I'm home I'll look back on those moments and remember how much I've enjoyed myself here.
This has been an overall thoughtful post. I need those every once in a while, especially right now when this journey that's been constantly on my mind for the past year is coming to a close.

See you all soon!



Jumping back two weeks ago...the youngest cowboy in the rodeo who did some "bull" riding...but it was more like a calf :P

In Between

This past weekend I had a really interesting opportunity. I got to volunteer at the National Agricultural Trade Show, otherwise known as the Belize Rodeo! Emily (a group member and good friend) and I were up nice and early in the morning to be at the fairgrounds.
We were actually the official timekeepers! It was neat when the security guard would come up to the rodeo tower and ask us why we're up there, and we'd get to say "we're staff...we're with John." (He's the head guy that runs the rodeo.) Another perk was the free drinks! (aka...pop!)
The days were really long though. We were there from about eight to six on both days. Sunday was the official rodeo day so that was when our timekeeping was really crucial. I think we did a really good job of it, even though they'd be telling us how to time a new event right before it was about to start. Things aren't as organized as they are in Canada, but I guess that could be expected. I also learned a bunch of different rodeo events like pole bending, keyhole race, wild horse race, and a bunch of other ones. It was really exciting, especially since we had two of our team members participating in some of the events! Liesl Thomas and Meghan VanHoeve were competing in the women's division, and Liesl took a second for the arena race! She's been practicing each evening after her placement for the past few weeks at a ranch close to the YWAM base.
All I've been thinking about this past weekend was rodeo rodeo rodeo. Now that it's over, I'm brought back to reality, and realizing just how long ago my last post was. I have yet to talk about my final week of my second placement. Looking ahead, I still have one more three week placement left, but besides that, there isn't much between the present and the day I'm on the plane home. When I'd worry about this trip I'd worry that three months was too long for me to handle. Now, with 29 days left, I'm amazed at how fast it flew by. I think I've mentioned that a couple times already in previous posts, I'm not sure.
So, I finished my second placement a while back at the orphanage. To be honest, it was harder than I thought. It was quite a challenge actually. The kids were great though; they were the ones that got me through it, as well as Aislin, and the girl we met there. Her name is Lisa, and she's a whole separate story! She's from Oregon and she's 23, and she's volunteering at the orphanage for two months. Her first day was our first day, and she came to Belize by herself. When we found out that she'd probably end up sleeping with the children inside the orphanage rather than at the director's home, we talked to Mr. K and ended up inviting her to stay with us for the weekend. She ended up applying to live at YWAM, and now has her own little cabin here on the base! She's not officially a part of our team, but I feel like I've known her for longer than just a few weeks.
The last week I was at the orphanage I spent a lot of time painting. There were a couple teams that passed through the children's home while we were there, and so we did some painting in the kids' rooms, but we also helped to paint the exterior of the building. Thankfully the heat wasn't too intense, and I actually really enjoyed painting because it allowed me to be outside. The home is cramped to say the least. Some of the kids there I'm never going to forget, like Amelia, Leah, Ashton, JR, and Marlon. I don't know if they'll always remember me, because every single morning they were faithful in asking me what my name was!
Right now our team is on our break that we have between our placements. We haven't been doing much, which ended up kind of getting to me. Hannah Smele's family was visiting and they asked me if I wanted to spend a night with them on Caye Caulker, just to get away for a day. It ended up being so refreshing for me just to be able to sit at the end of a dock at ten thirty at night with the other girls that came along and just stare at the moon and talk. Every time I look up at a clear sky at night (but especially down here by the sea it's BEAUTIFUL) I realize just how small I am and how big this world is. It makes me realize that I need to make sure I put in a lot of effort into this trip because there are a lot of people in this world that need to feel love.
I'm back at the base now because I only stayed for one night. It was a pretty long trip to get back to Belmopan from San Pedro. First Lisa and I (we went home together) took a water taxi from San Pedro to Caye Caulker, and that took half an hour. Then we took another water taxi to Belize City, which took probably over an hour. At the boat terminal we found a nice cheap taxi to take us to the bus terminal, and then from there we drove for another hour and a half to finally get to Belmopan! Oh, and Belize transit isn't the prettiest. Just think school bus, but add more seats and reduce the leg room. Travelling back to the base wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The most annoying thing about Belize is probably guys passing in trucks and yelling to you, offering a ride, or just generally making you feel uncomfortable. It's really unavoidable here though. We're always dressed appropriately because we're under the supervision of YWAM, so it's not like we encourage it. We're all really good at not responding anymore though, because we don't want to give them a reaction.
Oh, and I'm going to put it out there...it's Suzanne's birthday today! Yet another sister's birthday I'm not around for, but I have 30 days left on the calendar that I'm here so it won't be long until I'm home again to officially give them birthday hugs!
I'm going to put in an extra effort from now on to keep these blogs consistent because I need to make sure you can all know everything I'm experiencing, and I'm experiencing a lot! There are times when I feel it's not easy to write it all out in a blog post, and then everything builds up and the blog post becomes insanely long. I'm going to have to learn how to write posts about things as they come, not as they build up. I still have a month to master that, so I'm hoping for the best!
I hope you're all enjoying the warm Canadian weather that I hear you're having!


This is Lisa and I painting...sort of. Those spindles took a crazy long time to paint because there are so many corners and curves and annoying parts you need to reach.


This is Leah! She was always ready to be picked up and held.


This is J.R...he's pretty much the coolest kid you'd ever meet.


This is Louis. He drooled a lot but had the cutest smile. At one point they gave him a blue M&M and he drooled blue alllll down his front.


Amelia and Nathan. They were both so incredibly cute you can't help but love them. I never saw Nathan when he wasn't happy!


Although this isn't the best picture of me, here I am with Ashton. Ashton and I bonded after he had a rock dropped on his head and I had to escort him back to the orphanage with one of my shirts covering his pretty bashed up head. He was nice to Aislin and I the rest of the time we were there. At one point while we were at the park he found a dollar and then insisted on buying the two of us a snow cone from a vender walking his cart down the street. The thing was so insanely sweet it almost made me sick, but I appreciated the general thought of it : )