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! : )
6 comments:
Hey Elena, did you take any pictures of the posters you drew? That's what we always did with projects we couldn't keep or had to throw out or something.
Looking so forward to seeing you in a week! Hard to believe it!
Love, Mom
wow. humongeous post! i loved it though. i don't even know where to start my comment. so i don't think i am. except we gotta figure out the dinner sometime soon eh?
and six days. wow. six days. more til i'll actulaly see you. but six days until we're actually in the same country. though hearing about you leaving that place sounded sad. though i can't wait to see you.
oh and those kids are too adorable.
I think more people will read this blog after you come back, then when you actually were in belize. Good way to keep memories though. You should save the entire page to your hardrive, so if blogger ever goes bye bye you have a backup. :) See ye soon by the way.
Thanks so much for sharing your experiences with us Elena. Loved your pictures!
You'll remember this time for the rest of your life!
Gwenda
24 hours from now, you'll be on your way home!! sounds like it's been fun.
you're coming home TONIGHT and i'm going to see you TOMORROW. i can't wait!!!
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