June 18, 2014
Today,
we had an adventurous day. In the
morning, we woke up from our dormitories in the Mayan Center Village aka “The
Hub”. The day began with a great start
after our delicious breakfast including eggs, sausage, fruit, and succulent
watermelon juice. We then made our way
to the school (our worksite). As we
neared the school, we could hear the loud voices of learning and the cheerful
kids playing. Once we arrived, we split
up into two groups: a teaching and a building group.
Ford and I (Morgan) both started off in the
teaching group. Ford experienced an
end-of-term examination and was shocked to learn the casual style of teaching
in the class. I, along with Ben, spent
time getting to know the students by means of reading short stories and
poems. I was surprised to learn that the
kids had great reading skills as I did not have to assist them very much in
comprehending and pronouncing words from books such as Dr. Seuss. The worksite was
completely different. On the worksite,
we succeeded in finishing the roof of the cafeteria/kitchen while learning how
to work together as a group. The work
was, in fact, not very difficult as we found ourselves enjoying what we were
doing.
After
much fun and work at the school, we had another amazing lunch full of filling
food. It was time to get to the part we
were all really nervous about: we were about to meet our host families. After an in-depth introduction about our
homestays by Ernesto, the Mayan Center Village leader, we finally had the
opportunity to meet our host families.
To our surprise the host families were very welcoming. Soon after meeting our host families, we all
dispersed to our different households.
Ford, Kian, David, and I took a rope bridge across a river to reach our
houses. As it turns out, we were all
neighbors (I guess we got lucky). We had
a tour of our houses and quickly noticed the visible differences between our
normal living conditions and those of the Mayan people. Our showers were what some would consider
“primitive”, and our homes did not have running water. Nevertheless, Ford and I realized that if the
Mayan people could live their so could we.
With an
optimistic attitude, we ate dinner at our homestays. David and I had beans, fried chicken, and the
most delicious tortillas I have ever come across (I need that recipe). Ford and Kian, on the other hand, ate some
enchanting eggs and beans. After our
dinners, the night was still young, and we still had “party” in us.
Since
Ford, Kian, David, and I were all neighbors we all had the chance to play
football (soccer) with many of our Belizean neighbors. After, we met up at one single house. We were so surprised when we saw that we had
access to a keyboard, microphone, guitar, and two giant speakers. One of our Belizean neighbors and I had a
reggae jam session for an hour and a half and we set the roof on fire (not
literally, don’t worry mom). We had the
best time ever and we quickly forgot about the raging heat and puncturing
mosquito bites. We also played Uno and
other card games with our families and we got to bond with our families. It was so fun!!!! Hopefully, the rest of the week goes by this
well! Overall, I believe that we
immersed ourselves very well last night and we are beginning to become true
Belizeans. It’s unbelizable!!!!
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