Countdowns

There are little countdown apps for iPhones that allow you to have several countdowns going for various events like birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, concerts, etc. I've come to the conclusion though that such a tool would be completely excessive for me because anything I would be counting down to is constantly rolling around in my brain. This week, two of my countdowns concluded: one was the CXC Awards ceremony (more on that below) and the other, which is the most freeing and exciting to me, is that yesterday I had my last retreat. I can not tell you how relieved I am. Because while I've loved these retreats (though not the planning!) and I've formed a lot of my relationships with the students through these retreats, yesterday was the 2nd Form girls and boy, they...they are quite the group. There's a lot of them for starters, and most of them have a lot of problems like home life issues that run deep. But it's useless to complain about the many things that made it a stressful day. It should be enough for me that there were girls who had a fruitful day. Oh! But the best part of it was that it was the first time in the past 4 retreats that I woke up and it wasn't raining! I can't even express to you how much of a miracle it was. It's the little mercies we receive throughout the day.

What else am I counting down to? It feels like so many things, I just can't turn it off!
1. 5 days til Thanksgiving. We're having a half day so that the school can give us volunteers a "Thanksgiving." Yeah, I'll let you know what that looks like...
2. 1 week until our basketball regional tournament. So pumped!
3. 1 week and a day until Advent
4. Only 2 weeks until the music classes have their Christmas concert (which also counts as their final)
5. Also 2 weeks until our staff Christmas party. This also means that Finals Week is right after that.
6. 3 weeks from today I go back to the States. SO. WEIRD. And bittersweet. Don't get me wrong, I am more than ready for the break, but you just don't understand how hard it is to leave these little babies! I definitely have some mixed feelings.

Ok so this past week was just crazy. Monday was pretty ordinary (for Belize standards anyway), Tuesday was our holiday, Wednesday was a normal hectic pre-retreat day. Then Thursday was my second field trip! So in Belize, at the end of your 4th Form year, you can take the CXC Exam which is a standardized test for the Caribbean. Well Thursday they had the awards ceremony for this past year and 2 of our graduates were receiving awards. Our school was also asked to prepare a 5 minute musical piece which is how I got roped into this. What this meant is that at 7:30 Thursday morning, I piled into a van with Monica, 5 students, our 2 students getting awards, one of their parents, our vice principal, our principal, and our front desk man to go to Belmopan. Basically, we (being the students who missed school for the day by the way, Monica, and myself) took an hour and a half drive for a 5 minute performance. TIB. It was fun though because I was with some of my favorite students which made the boredom from the ridiculously long ceremony much more enjoyable. Once it had hit noon and we still had about 6 more pages of names to call to receive awards, the kids were getting hungry. Who am I kidding, I was hungry. I knew we brought lunch with us, so I went to our vice principal to ask her if we could just go eat outside and she was like, "Oh yes, we brought some burgers, they're in the van." This is where my American mind set my expectations way too high because I was like wow, burgers, that's pretty fancy for just this trip. Well we get out to the van to get our lunches and as I open the paper bag, I remember that in Belize burger is synonymous with sandwich. So what we actually had was a hamburger bun with cheese, raw onions, and (get this) one slice of baloney. Barf. Monica and I still talk about the humorous and traumatizing experience that it was. But again, the day was a lot of fun. Here is a picture with my little ones (see it's funny because they're mostly 3rd Formers and only one isn't 16).

This cracks me up so much because you would never know that these kids actually smile. Weirdos.

Oh my goodness, I think I'm too exhausted to say anything else. I feel somewhat sleep deprived since our dumb dog has decided to bark at every living thing throughout the night. This means that I've woken up at 4:30 or 5:30 every morning as well as more than a few times throughout the night. Thank you, Belle. Well, there's always the next update to look forward to! I guess all that can be said in any sort of conclusion is that I love whenever I get to hangout with my students which is all I did Thursday and Friday. It's those kinds of days that make it seem impossible to imagine I would be anywhere else right now.

St. Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us.

Totus Tuus, Maria.