rain, rain go away

Pardon the delay in an update on our return to San Pedro but I accidentally discovered Facebook.com and have been slowly weaning myself away from the dozens of people who I’d all but forgotten about, asking to authorize our status as “friends”, “classmates” or “travel buddies”. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. This amazing network of on-line pictures and profiles is a welcome addition to our socially isolated status out on the rock. However, while the new year has made me a facebook junkie, it has also brought some pretty bright developments for us San Pedro missionaries.

Well, bright in a sort of metaphysical sense because the past few days have been nothing but RAIN. One of the truly amazing aspects of a society whose transportation consists solely of open-air means (bikes, golf carts and the occasional compact car whose motors are smaller than that in the typewriter I learned my “q-w-e-r-t-y-u-i-o-p” on) is that all events and commitments are postponed or excused when it begins to rain. The excuse of “but Miss, it’s raining” boggled my mind when I stared at my half-empty homeroom at Mt. Carmel last year, filled only with students whose parents plopped them in a taxi so they could get to school without getting wet. The almost phobic reaction that Belizeans have to rain doesn’t make sense until you’ve survived a few rainy seasons (at great cost to any leather shoes you owned) and realize just how wet you get when you’re walking or riding everywhere. I remember the first couple times I shrugged off the rain and attempted to walk to my commitments while dumbfounded Belizeans stared at me from under the shelter they had hastily sought out. Even the men who are usually cat-calling and hissing can only shout out a concerned, “mind that you get wet, Miss!” (the phrase “mind that you…” doesn’t quite translate for us… To us it sounds like sarcastic mocking but to Belizeans it’s a show of genuine concern… Another example, after tripping and falling off a ferry last year a group of concerned men told me, “mind that you fall again miss!”) So, anyways, after you trudge through mud and rain to arrive at your destination drenched to the bone you begin to learn that you are there, on time and…alone, dripping wet. You wait until the event is supposed to begin on Belizean time but everyone else heeded the unwritten social code that allows you to stay home. Although I still venture out into rainy weather at a frequency that alarms my Belizean friends (Always for good reasons though. For example, today I had to pay the water bill… And let me tell you, to show up at Belize Water Service Limited, wringing water out of my hair, clothes and eyebrows to pay a bill to turn our water back on was irony like Alanis Morisette never imagined) I have really shifted into a more Belizean state of mind and taken to staying at home or stubbornly refusing to leave a store I don’t even like for the sake of avoiding the rain. Today the rain was so torrential that as the streets rapidly turn into mud puddles good for nothing but tug-of-war tournaments or exotic swiss beauty treatments and almost every school on the island was closed. This all translated into a nice day off that allowed me… time on Facebook! No, seriously, I spent the day in productive correspondence and planning…

Anyways, in addition to unexpected rain days (it’s like a snow day… only it’s humid and you can’t build a fort) we’re excited to announce that the Youth Group is going into it’s third week of existence on San Pedro. St. John Bosco, pray for us. Hard. Our kick-off went pretty well (and our room looked fabulous!) and now we’re in the process of transitioning from “lighthearted and fun” to “thought-provoking invitation to conversion”. And then the really fun news is that Franciscan is hoping to have a mission trip out here so pray HARD for that one!