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!