Homeward Bound

Sunset on the Southern Highway, Belize

As Michelle has already said in the post before this one, we are approaching the end of our service with Peace Corps Belize.  It has been a great 2 ½ years and both Michelle and I will truly miss Belize and all of our friends and family here.   Although, with the aid of the internet, we’ll be able to stay in touch with our friends in Belize via email, Facebook, and VOIP services (i.e.- Skype) and we’ll always come back for occasional visits throughout the years.

 

What We’ll Miss about Belize

 

There are too many things about Belize that we will miss to capture in a Blog post, but to name a few:  

•  our wonderful friends and family here that welcomed us with open arms
• how people enthusiastically greet one another in a proper fashion (most of the time) when passing by on the street (Good Morning, Good Afternoon, etc., or a slightly kinder way to greet someone you would say the salutation twice:  “Good Morning Good Morning!” )
• the always warm/hot climate
• the awesomely LOUD thunderstorms that Punta Gorda gets during the rainy season. 
• the interesting wildlife here:  Geckos chirping away while running up and down your walls and ceiling, the Jesus Lizards and Iguanas that inquisitively stare at you while every morning run across our tin roof sounding like small children pouncing and sliding, the scorpions, the numerous types of large spiders, and lastly the fire ants that pack such a painful bite/sting for such a tiny creature  
• the beautiful sunrises and sunsets
• the palm trees
• all of the fresh and interesting fruits and vegetables that most people have never heard of
• the beautiful historical landmarks and sites (i.e.- the Mayan temples and villages, the ATM caves, etc.)
• all of the fruits that were growing in our own backyard  (limes, avocados, bananas, coconuts, grapefruits)
• the overall kindness that Belizeans generally give to one another

Luckily all of the positives (as mentioned above) of this experience outweigh any of the tough or negative experiences.

Interactive Language Training is Making the News

On Wednesday, May 16^th at 6:30am (8:30am East Coast U.S. time), I will be on a Belize national TV show called “Open Your Eyes” with my friend and host mother Alice Noralez, to discuss and promote the Interactive Language Training (ILT) computer programs that I created for the country of Belize:  http://edition.channel5belize.com/OYE  (watch the live streaming of the program from this link).  “Open Your Eyes” is a morning talk show that discusses Belize current events, history, people, and basically anything that is newsworthy.

Before I came to Belize in March of 2010 as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I wanted to learn how to speak the basic greetings and vocabulary words of Garifuna, Q’eqchi, Mopan, and Kriol, all of which are the spoken languages of Belize, respectfully.  By being able to communicate the basic dialect of each of these languages, I hoped it would illustrate my level of respect for the languages, as well as the many people of Belize who I came to get to know and support in development capacity.   However, I soon realized that although there was limited information about these languages, there were actually no online resources available for individuals who wanted to learn how to speak these beautiful languages.  As a Peace Corps Volunteer serving two years in Belize, I made it my goal to develop free Interactive Language Training (ILT) Programs for individuals of all ages who are interested in learning Garifuna, Q’eqchi, Mopan, and Kriol.

As I began developing the ILT programs, I was pleasantly surprised by how many of my Belizean friends and acquaintances were in support of this project.  They shared with me their hopes and their fears.  They fear their native languages may disappear if the younger generations of Belizeans don’t take interest in speaking their native language.  They shared with me their hopes that these programs would encourage the younger Belizean population to become more active in their culture and language.  They believe, as do I, that these ILTs will create a fun environment for learning and serve as an introduction to the language so the youths can converse with each other and the elders in their community.

• Free downloads of all ILT programs:  http://pcbelize.com/ilt     

• View Interactive Language Training photos, interviews, and info on our Facebook page:   http://facebook.com/iltbelize
  
  

Thankful

 

A sailboat sailing off the shores of Punta Gorda Town, Belize

Michelle and I both feel honored to have worked alongside the great people of Belize and to have served our country in the U.S. Peace Corps.  As corny or cliché as this may sound, I really have a much greater appreciation and love for my country, the United States, more so now than ever.  I realize just how lucky we are to live in the U.S. and what a great country it truly is.  This isn’t to say that Belize is not a great country in its own right; it’s simply that absence (of the U.S.) makes the heart grow fonder. 

We would like to thank all of the Peace Corps Belize Staff who helped us during training as well as during our service to make our experience here in Belize go as smooth as humanly possible.  Also, thanks go out to our fellow PCVs who helped enrich our service and helped us grow individually and professionally.  Last but not least, a BIG THANKS to all our family and friends in the U.S. who supported us throughout our Peace Corps service, we couldn’t have done it without you.  We really look forward to catching up with everyone when we come home on May 27^th! 

This is it!!!!! We see the finish line....

Strange to think about it right?!   This is probably our last blog post in Belize.  I hope I can try to fill you in on the last few weeks here in Belize, as well as future endeavors.   First, Nate and I really must thank everyone who has been following our blogs for the last 27months.  Many of you sent emails and letters, even care packages.  Heck, some of you even visited.  Thank you for your love and support. 

What a journey!  The last few weeks have been crazy and chaotic….as you can imagine.  Nate and I got to do some last minute traveling in Belize.  We went to a Maya Temple that was beautiful and the Belize Zoo.  For such a small country, the sites and landmarks are incredible.  The Zoo is such an incredible story, with tons of amazing Belize animals.  Nate loved the gigantic eagle, I loved the puma.  But probably the most exciting thing that we were able to do was to go to the ATM caves.  They are Mayan Caves that you crawl and swim through.  You climb all through this underground cave and see ancient artifacts like bowl, tools, and a few skeletons.  Very cool!  

Besides our little adventure, Nate and I have been spending a great deal of time with our Belizean friends and family.  As you can imagine, it is pretty difficult to say good-bye to all of these amazing people.  We have been finding ways to honor them and our time together.  They made this experience for us.  They impacted our lives.  Changed our hearts.  We are different people now because of them.  It’s hard to honor them with small tokens of appreciation, but we are trying.  In the last two weeks, we have had tons of dinners together, pizza parties (with specialty pizzas!), and more recently, handing out cookies to everyone we know.  If anyone knows me, you must know that I do not bake.  Making chocolate chip cookies and oatmeal cookies have been interesting….haha!

Last week I finished my last week of school.  It was bitter sweet.  I finished all of my projects last week that were at the school.  The last minute painting and touch-ups of the school library walls are finished.  Electricity and the set-up of computers are officially done.  It was great to see the final product.  It was difficult however, to say good-bye to the children and teachers at the school.  They will be missed immensely.  Nate is on his last week of TCGA.  He is trying to finish last minute marketing tools for the organization.  We just had an amazing pizza party with the guys (and girls!) They were more than co-workers to both Nate and I.  They were our friends and our family.  They are a great bunch of people. Besides wrapping up work, Nate is still spending his last remaining weeks marketing his ILT.  It has been a big success here.  Nate was on the national radio station talking about it.  He has it on Facebook, given it out to the Embassy, Belizean organizations, school computer labs, community libraries, and pretty much any other person/organization who are interested in it.  Peace Corps staff are planning to use it for their upcoming trainings of new Peace Corps Volunteers and the ILT program was so successful that Nate and his initiative will be written about in Peace Corps World-Wide magazine.  We are very proud of him!

Speaking of how amazing Nate is, he was officially offered a job when we return!  The next few weeks consist of wrapping up and packing up our house.  We will be spending all of our time with the friends and family in our lives here.  We will be returning to the states at the end of the month!   Nate was offered a job as a Senior Web Designer for an online university in Northern Virginia.  We are extremely blessed to have this wonderful opportunity.  He starts work shortly after his return from Peace Corps.

We plan to visit our families as soon as we return.  We also plan to visit everyone along the way!  In the short time we return, we will also be looking for apartments too.  I have best friends who already live in the area that we are moving to, so Nate and I are relieve and happy to have a support community already established for us.  Now that we know where we are moving to, I have begun looking for Private and Government jobs related to counseling.  I will keep you all updated!  We will have a prepaid phone when we return and try to get a phone plan when we get settled in.  Please email us if you need to get a hold of us.  

Nate and I are looking forward to returning.  We appreciated the totality of this experience.  We had an incredible experience here.  When people ask…”would you do it again”, the answer is always yes, we would definitely do it again and we are already planning to return to Belize to visit everyone in the next few years.  We also have an appreciation for our friends, family, and our support system in the states.

We look forward to fun things again like washers and dryers and wi-fi everywhere.  We will miss so much here:  The people, PG town, the market, the culture, the beauty that is Belize and so much more.  We don’t really know what is ahead for us.  We have hopes and we have dreams.  We have our future.  We know we will have to readjust to living in the states, but we also know that as long as we have each other and our family/friends, then we will be straight!

Until the next time,

Michelle (and Nate)