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)
No comments:
Post a Comment