And So It Begins

Well here I am in Belize on a Monday afternoon. The humidity is low, the breeze is actually blowing, and a hammock sounds like the most inviting thing in the world right now.

If only. Today was the technical first day of school, but it was just orientation for the 1st Formers (aka freshmen), so school only went until 11:45 and I only had my homeroom and one class for 15 minutes.

Oh yeah, I have a homeroom. You know, I'll just fill you in on all the little changes that have happened in these two weeks. When I arrived in Belize, I had all the 1st and 2nd Form music classes, 1st and 2nd Form girls PE, and I was going to be "helping out" with Campus Ministry, however much that means.

Now, however, I am still teaching the music classes, I have only 3 PE classes and may get another one taken from (say a prayer, that would be so wonderful!!!), I'm an equal partner in running Campus Ministry, I have my own homeroom and today I also found out I'm taking over one of the 2nd Form religion classes. TIB.

So tomorrow is when 2nd-4th Form returns and the real teaching begins. Today was ok, but it was all very quick and very...

At least on the inside. But my goal is to make it through this week and next week because I'm fully confident that I'll at least be starting to get my feet on the ground and not wander around pretending to know what's going on.

In other news, we made through orientation last week! It was a long time just sitting in those chairs, but now it's long behind us and we're focused on more pressing things aka the education of the students we're now responsible for. We also had a kicking birthday party Saturday night because today is Elisabeth's birthday but we had an early celebration due to the whole starting school thing. It was super great, it was nerd themed, and Joe, Kelley, and I made her a cake that Joe decorated to look like a bag of Takis. Oh Takis. They're such a delicious little snack that are way too available for my purchase, but like most other things here, they're dirt cheap. Anyway, Elisabeth loves them, so that was what her cake looked like. 

Well, that's all I got. I know it's a Monday, but my afternoon was unusually long and who knows what I'll be doing after school tomorrow. It'll probably be something along the lines of cleaning, planning, and trying to resist taking a nap. As for now, it's almost time for dinner, but time well spent cleaning and organizing the Campus Ministry office with Greg (the other Campus Minister) and Joana (because everything is more fun with a 6 year old) has dictated that a shower is a necessity.

Please please please continue to pray for our students, all the teachers, and for myself. It's going to be a busy year, but I know it will be abundantly blessed. But for real, I'm counting on you guys.

St. Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us.

Totus Tuus, Maria.

One Week

One week. It's a very interesting time to consider for us volunteers. I've only been down here for a week. This week will be busy with planning and more workshops. School starts in one week. 

One week.

And yet the weird time warp effect has also taken place and it feels like I couldn't possibly have lived in Benque for a week already. At the same time, it's hard to imagine that I was out at dinner with my family not too long ago. It's pretty easy to settle into life here. Then again, it's only been a week. 

I'll fill you in on last week though most of it was spent sitting in uncomfortable chairs doing teacher workshops that make you want to cry from boredom. We always finished around 4 though so we had some downtime before dinner and the rest of the evenings were completely free which really allowed for us to hang out and get to know each other a little bit more. Friday however was a great day. Our principal took us to visit the Mayan ruins which were about 15-20 minutes away from us at Xunantunich. I'm no historian and have no interest in being one, but allow me to share a little with you: what makes these ruins so distinct is that Xunantunich started flourishing when the rest of the Mayan civilizations were steadily declining. Intriguing, yes? It's at least worth pondering.

This is Kelley, my roommate, after we climbed up and back down the ruins. Did I mention it was raining the entire time we were climbing? Just to explain why we're a little...damp. It kept the temperature down though, and I had my trusty Chacos to ensure I didn't fall on my butt. It was beautiful though, especially at the top from which we could see our little town of Benque Viejo and right into Guatemala. It was a good morning to just explore the area and get out into Belize, and naturally it was concluded with lunch at a Chinese restaurant. Classic.

There's another part of Belizean life I find myself falling into quite easily: chocobananas. What's a chocobanana? I'm glad you asked. It's a frozen banana covered in chocolate covered with peanuts (if you want) all on a stick. They're sold all over town, but they are available right across the street from school. Danger. Sweet, sweet danger.

Michael, Joe, Jack, and Kelley all very happy to have their chocobananas

And just when life couldn't get any better, Saturday happened. That was the day (or the evening rather) when Katie and Elisabeth came back to Belize. Needless to say, Saturday night was spent hanging out, them catching up with everyone they had missed for the past 2 months, me mostly just staring at them in jubilant disbelief that we were all in Belize together. Seeing them here is a lot like being here in a way: it's so weird yet so natural. 

 

I've also managed to fall in love. A little 6 year old girl named Joana has stolen my heart. She loves the volunteers and always sits with us at meals and Mass and always calls out, "Miss Melissa! Hi!!" The best. And the worst. I'm already anticipating problems of my broken heart when I go back home. 

I think that's all I have to share in this little update. I will try to have another post before the week's end since we'll be up here everyday for our exhilarating workshops. And goodness knows that I will be swamped once I'm swimming in the chaos of school. 

Thank you for each little prayer that has been offered for us! I could never express my gratitude. The fact that we have a little tarantula that lives right outside our front door and I still use our front door is evidence is that big time graces are moving in my life.

And have no fear! It turns out the stores have a plentiful supply of hair gel.

Jesus wasn't messing around when he said, "Ask and you shall receive."

Just kidding. I didn't buy that giant tub. There was a little one already at our house, plus another volunteer has hair longer and curlier than mine. She's only staying until October and had a brand new bottle of non-crunchy gel, so she gave it to me. I know this was the most pressing question on all of your inquisitive minds since last Tuesday, so I figured I would put you all at rest. 

But for real now, it's been exciting, humbling, and every degree of the word interesting living here. More than anything though, a current of assurance runs underneath everything and for that I am truly grateful.

St. Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us.

Totus Tuus, Maria.

 

TIB

Here it is, the first post coming to you from Belize!

There are a couple of things I've noticed right away:
     1. Somewhere between Tampa and Houston, I lost my sunglasses. Oops.
     2. I forgot to pack some hair gel. Seems trivial, but let's just say the battle of Curly Hair vs. Humidity is officially underway 

It was pretty great coming in from Houston. There were 4 of us new volunteers on the flight and a religious sister who was returning for her 3rd year, so there was a lovely mix of reunions and introductions to pass the time before boarding. The flight itself was uneventful, at least I think it was since for my first 2, I was practically sleep walking, and the last flight was spent chatting with my friend Joe and occasionally going, "We're moving to Belize RIGHT NOW!"

Now I know I have next to no experience with Belize thus far, but I have to say that our arrival was absolutely perfect. We got through customs pretty quickly but still looked so ridiculous toting all of our stuff everywhere, looking for the driver who was waiting for us, stopping for some waters, and then starting the 2 hour drive to Benque. When we got here, we met some people, but of course I don't remember who I met because I met them all again 2 hours later after Mass. So after putting our stuff in our respective houses, we went back to the Church where Adoration was going on before Mass. It was so beautiful and appropriate and just the best way to be welcomed by my new home.

Oh yeah, Mass was in Spanish. So perfect.

After that, we were on a quest for some dinner. Yes, all our meals are cooked at the rectory for us, but word on the street says that about once a month, sometimes there just...isn't dinner. Yesterday was that day. But no fear, we ventured out in the (super safe) town and found a completely authentic Benque Chinese restaurant. 

Yes, Chinese food. It's a real thing here. The explanation I got was that Chinese are really good businessmen and Belizeans are not. Hence why there are Chinese restaurants and the Chinese run all the convenience stores. 

The night was just spent hanging out, unpacking, and totally ignoring the fact that I'm actually living here and not just visiting here. Now we're just hanging out at the school, contacting family, waiting for our orientation to officially start at 8. 

It's 9:00.

But that's just how it goes here. That's life. And it's going to be so exciting completely acclimating to my new life here. I'm sure there are about 20 million things I'm leaving out of this, but it's Tuesday after all and I wanted to give the smallest slice of insight into what's happened in the past 24 hours. I'm sure I'll have some time to be able to fill in the gaps more as the week progresses, but at the very least next Tuesday brings the promise of a full on updating-from-my-new-home kind of a post. 

In the meantime, here's what you can pray for:
- the kids we're preparing to teach
- all of us new teachers who are here (Joe, Kelley, Mike, and myself)
- Jack, a new teacher who was supposed to arrive here yesterday with us but had a flight delay and comes today
- the returning teachers who are coming back at the end of the week

Oh, one more thing: whenever something happens that is completely out of your control and may totally change your plans just because that's how life is here (like having no dinner and getting Chinese instead), you just say TIB: This Is Belize.

St. Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us.

Totus Tuus, Maria.

This is it!

This perfectly sums up how I'm feeling today. Except instead of a call to arms against the French government, I feel like my war is with the airlines. All the time. 

I realize it isn't Tuesday, but I'm hoping to find forgiveness since this Tuesday will only be my second day in my brand new foreign country home. And again, I can't stress enough how challenging this "regular updating" thing will be....I'm hoping for some brownie points with a Sunday Update.

My last week in the US has felt more like a two week span, with all the craziness and activity that's been packed into it tighter than my clothes in my suitcase. The first half was mostly spent wanting nothing more than to get the show on the road and just get down there already while the second half was of course spent in a frenzied anguish over everything that has to be done and the big life-altering move I'm making in the next day. So between phone calls to friends, pie making, and soaking up the guilty pleasure of sitcoms on Netflix, there were the bank runs, the all-day errands to pick up the various necessities (and yes, I really mean necessities. You really shouldn't go without a rain jacket!), and a lot of my family coming to visit. Now, we didn't have 20 people in town all at once, no we broke it up. However, it wasn't exactly an even break. I saw one set of grandparents briefly earlier in the week and over the weekend, a good chunk of my mom's family was in town. It was more like 2 people, then 12 people a few days later. With about 48 hours of mad chaos and panic in between. Now, to get a good idea of how these more populated family gatherings go, recall everything about Toula's family in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Now replace Greek with Italian. There you go.

Like I said: two weeks crammed into one.

But it really has been a good time and it's truly remarkable to me how in these past 7 days, I've really been able to find peace in everything. Of course these past 24 hours have consisted of me digging to the very depths of my being just to make sure that peace is still there because it's being overrun by nerves and doubts and packing, but I always find it. Almost always it takes someone being excited for me in order for me to remember to be excited for me. "Oh yeah, Self, this is actually a pretty sweet gig you managed to get."

So am I excited? Absolutely. Do I have enough nervous energy that I could run to Belize and get there before my flight is scheduled to land? You bet. But there's a lot of deep breathing and the promise of a movie night to keep me intact. 

Well, that's it for posts coming out of the US! When you read this, say a little prayer for all of us traveling. And one day I promise to explain the title of the blog (see what I did there? If you weren't curious before, you sure are now!)

St. Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us.

Totus Tuus, Maria.

The Final Countdown

Yes, cue the music.

The countdown is now 6 days which is ridiculous, overwhelming, and, at the end of the day, pretty dang awesome. A lot of people have been asking me how I'm feeling and I can honestly say it's a pretty even combination of those three. 

Mid-August really should be synonymous with moving in my mind since that's what I've done for the past 4 years, trekking back up to Ohio every year to start a new semester, and while the familiar feelings of living a nomad's life are surely returning, there is a profound difference in it all. You'd think that difference is the foreign country factor but if you've ever been to the Steubenville/Pittsburgh area, then you understand why it always surprises me even in the smallest way that I don't have passport stamps from crossing the Ohio River. When you've lived in central Florida for 20 years, everything about mills, hills, snow, and basements seems like it's from another world. But I digress. The point is that I don't think my mind would comprehend I'm moving out of the country were it not for 

a) people acting like I'm going into isolation from humanity until June; is there something the school didn't tell me?

b) the frenzy I feel to make every meal in the next 6 days so American that I might actually begin to prefer a diet largely subsisting of beans and rice.

It really is incredible though how the satisfaction of having an answer to "What are you up to these days/What's next for you?" never fades. I've had the incredible opportunity to attend 2 weddings for college friends this summer, one at the beginning and one just this past weekend. The first was at the end of May and a good number of my friends were there. It was also that terrible waiting time between applying for Belize and waiting to hear back, so the weekend was filled with what I like to call the post-graduate chorus: it starts with a gentle "So what are you doing now that you graduated?" and as this question circulates around the room, what echoed and hung over our heads as two of our good friends went full steam ahead with their new life was the general answer of "I'm sending out some resumes" or "I'm taking it easy this summer before jumping into the 9 to 5" or "I'm waiting to here back from some things." Thankfully the joy and beauty of the weekend overwhelmed any anxiety that a roomful of college graduates may be experiencing two weeks after graduating and actually planted those persistently pesky seeds of comfort and hope. 

Why does this matter? Because God is good. Because 2 months after so many of us had no idea what was going on with our lives, some of us got to get together again for another wedding a few days ago and another round of "Have you figured your life out yet?" But this time I got to see the pieces put into place and not just in my own life but in the lives of some of my friends too. People had moved, started jobs, set up their new classrooms, and another one of my friends was beginning a life with a new last name. Of course not all of us have something lined up and even I only have a gig until next June. But what made it all so incredible and beautiful is to see how it's all being worked out and that is the assurance I need to remember in these next 6 days. Sirach chapter 2 challenges the reader to look back to the past and see where faithful people have completely trusted in God and have been left standing on a street corner splattered in mud after God drove on by. This is a paraphrase of course, they didn't have cars in the Old Testament. The answer is also never; they were never abandoned. The last chapters of Sirach are dedicated to proving this.

But whether I look at human history or the ever entertaining mess of a journey that is my life, I simply can not deny that He doesn't work everything out. And not in some hodgepodge way, but in a really awesome, change your life, better than you could've hoped for kind of way (Jeremiah 29:11, Romans 8:28, etc.) And with each person whose face lit up when I told them about Belize and who really believed that the little weakness of a human being that is me could be an instrument of light and love, I felt the Divine. The confidence and encouragement was certainly coming from all their hearts, but I know it was the gentle assurance of the God calling me to something bigger and frankly better than myself. And boy, what a relief it is to know that nothing I do is of my own power and abilities. Do you know what a jumble I would be if that were the case? It is appropriate to shudder thinking about this terrible prospect.

This has been another explosion of my thoughts into the internet arena, but again I do believe this is due to the ample time that procrastination has given me. Out of courtesy to you, the reader, let's sum up what it is exactly I'm trying to convey:

1. In one week, I will have already spent a night in my new Belizean home. Whoa.
2. Anywhere north of the Mason-Dixon line is completely foreign to me. And west of the Mississippi. Really anywhere that doesn't know how to make grits and good pancakes.
3. I haven't begun to pack which means my stress levels have yet to reach their maximum.
4. I am a silly weak human who can't do anything for myself and relies heavily on God's grace and the prayers of Mary and anyone I can recruit as a pray-er to tap into that grace for me.
5. #4 is a sweet, sweet relief.

St. Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us.

Totus Tuus, Maria.