one more thing

I forgot to mention... the music teacher had my second form girls write love songs on Valentine's day, and one of the girls wrote what's sure to become a classic. It began saying, "I love you once, I love you twice, I love you more than beans and rice." Great, eh?

Spiders, Marimbas and Love Letters...

Oh, I've had such a good time teaching the sixth commandment and all that it entails to my classes these past couple weeks. I'm convinced Religion teachers have all the fun when it comes to getting to know their students in unique ways. For example, on Valentine's day, I assigned love-letters to their future husbands and wives. They had to talk about what they understood love to mean and how they were putting it into practice. Let me just say that first of all, my Christian Marriage professor Dr. Asci would be proud because almost all of them wrote something to the effect of, "do you know what love is? It's to will the good of another". These letters were by far the greatest assignment I've gotten to read yet, it really gave me an insight into their heads... Anyways, the boys were the best: one began and kept refering to their future wife as "beautiful lady", another opened the letter with "hi, my name is Usher" (his name is Errol) and another closed it with, "I have to go play football now". They were such fun to read!

I gleaned some insight into their culture the other day when I was talking about the Church's teaching on respect for life and family planning. I'll spare the details, but when I was teaching about accepting children as a gift from God, one girl raised her hand and said, "Miss, you mean you have to have a marimba?". I had no idea what she meant, and my face gave that away. The other girls were looking at me as if nothing was wrong. I said, " a what?" and she said, "a marimba". I asked the class, "should I send her to the office for that?" and they all laughed at me and said, "no miss, you know, when the children are all like this..." and they gestured with their hands to indicate varrying heights. I said, "oh, a marimba!". Apparently, in addition to being their national instrument, a "marimba family" is a term they use to describe a family with a lot of children close in age. I started laughing so hard I almost cried, the girls were laughing at... er, with me too. Isn't that a great description?

Finally, I realized I had turned a corner in Belize last night when I was getting ready for bed and looked over to see a huge spider on my pillow. What was my reaction? I kid you not, I scrambled for my camera because I thought, "oh wow, what a photo opportunity. No one's gonna believe this!". Only after I took it's picture did it occur to me that I should probably kill it since I had to put my head on that pillow in a couple minutes and sleep would probably be sounder if I didn't have to worry about sharing my pillow with Charlotte's cousin. Who sees a spider on their pillow and reaches for a camera instead of a shoe? Not me, or so I thought...

Speaking of cameras, I am going to try to have some photos up here soon! I received a digital camera for Christmas and I really do intend to finish learning how to use it! However, if you'd like to see my friend's pictures (and read about their experiences), I've posted links to Ali's and Cathleen's blog in the sidebar there. I'd really encourage you to check them out!

The strike is over!

And has been for over a week, but alas, life in Benque has just been to busy to post anything new! Mea culpa, sorry to hold everyone in suspense over the fate of this wonderful country. The teachers went off strike a little over a week ago and I think they got some of the agreements they wanted but not all. There's still a lot of frustration in the country so keep praying! Anyways, it's FANTASTIC to be back in the classroom... The blessing of this unexpected, unplanned and moderately unproductive time off is that I definately have a much greater appreciation for how much joy these kids bring to me every day. Even when they're making me crazy!

Speaking of unconventional discipline, while watching a football game, I talked to one of my second form boys (one of the few polite ones) about how I could get his classmates to behave better. He said, "well miss, I don't know but I think it's good when you start out punishing". In light of that advice, on Friday the first seven or so kids to open their mouths without permission were pulled up to the front of the classroom so their desks were touching the chalkboard. When they picked up the chalk to start scribbling on the board I made them clasp their hand together and hold them above their heads. I then made the most ridiculous statement of my teaching career thus far. I told them, "using your hands in my classroom is a privelege, and you just lost it" to which they nodded seriously and proceeded to keep their hands raised out of fear that I'd send them to the office. Never mind that the use of ones hands is probably an intrinsic right, I proceeded to have one of the best classes ever because my troublemakers were occupied with keeping their hands up and the good kids were so thrilled to see them publicly humiliated that they were very willing to answer questions and participate. It was one of the most amicable classes I've had in a while. Go figure, what do the experts know about protecting kid's egos?

Today we began the process of Confirmation and RCIA classes. Please keep the students in your prayers. It's an interesting group-- We have three loud Creole girls from fourth form (seniors), one forth form boy and three quiet first form girls from Guatemala. It's really hard to describe the personality that comes with any Creole student and these girls pack enough in for a whole class. I knew the dynamics were going to be interesting when I had them sign up for classes and the quiet little first former, Kely, was hunched over her paper and Tricia, one of the fourth formers proceeds to say, "girl, gimme yo pen" and reached across the table and yanked the pen that was holding Kely's hair in place right out of her head. Kely just sort of nodded in a fearful daze. All of the Creole girls are in my small group for classes and I asked Sharen Jones, who's up for full initiation, why she's deciding to enter the Church. She explained to me that a teacher from last year, Eddie Lowen (I don't know if I spelled his name right) whom many of y'all know, hung out with them alot and taught them a lot about the Faith. She explained that he wasn't their teacher but he was, "down with de brown". The other teacher who was leading the group with me and I almost lost it when she said that... So anyways, keep these students in you prayers! It's not an ideal amount of time for the formal process of RCIA, but we're making due!

Thanks for all the prayers everyone!

two weeks later... still striking.

Today makes it officially two weeks that Mt. Carmel High School has been closed. This was the first morning I woke up and didn't even think about comming into school, all the students have since stopped comming in uniform (although the fourth-formers are comming in for tutoring for their standardized tests) and are just waiting to hear what happens. Please pray for us down here, it's gone from annoying to downright discouraging. All of us are here because we want to teach and it's hard to see why we're not able to do that right now!

In the meantime, we've been entertaining ourselves in a variety of ways. I'm reading a lot, and have spent some one on one time with a couple students. I had the opportunity to visit a students house a week ago and that was a real treat. You tend to forget how different life is here when you're in a house with indoor plumbing and a shower heater (which we just had installed this last week!). Anyways, my student invited me to her house for this traditional food which I don't know how to spell, but it's corn meal and chicken and beans all cooked together with lard. A little heavy in the stomach but a special treat around here. I met her mother, who only speaks spanish and her father, who speaks perfect English but allowed me to flounder in spanish for a couple minutes before he let on. Her family raises orchids and sells them abroad, so their whole backyard is full of them. It was really neat to see the different varieties. The one thing that I was chagrined to notice is that while we had just installed our shower heater that allows us to have warm water comming out of our faucet, their toilet and shower was in the middle of their backyard, in a little shack. It's so easy to forget where my students come from!

The church is being renovated so we've also taken to scraping paint off the church to assist the seminarians. It's possibly the most mundane task ever-- the paint comes off in particles the size of dust... so it's a long difficult job. The most interesting thing to see is the way the Belizian kids will just run up and down and jump off the scaffolding, in their bare feet! These kids are little monkeys!

And, speaking of monkeys, we went to the zoo a couple days ago. It's a scary sign of how little there is to do when I'm seeking out wildlife to look at, but it's actually really cool. All of the animals are in their own habitats, there's no concrete or obvious caging. You really feel like you're in the wild! We were standing about two feet away from a huge crocodile and jaguar-- all that separates you is a little electric fence, unlike a zoo in the states that would have massive canals, cages and bulletproof glass!

So, that's the news from Belize... Please pray that this country is able to find a peaceful resolution to everything so the kids (and teachers) can get back to school!