An Action Packed Week!

This week was so busy that I hardly had time to breath! Monday and Tuesday a volunteer group came to visit Holy Cross from YWAM (Youth with a Mission), a Christian organization that has a campus north of San Pedro. Eight 17-25 year olds came as a part of their outreach program. With Miss Francis and Mr. Vernon out of town, I was in charge of showing them around and finding activities to do with the students. Easier said than done. It's really hard to find ways to help for a couple hours and still have the volunteers feel like their are getting their time's worth. I ended up breaking them up into groups of 2 and assigning them to different classes. On top of that, the school had a weird schedule this week. Friday was Children's Cultural Day (more on that later) but the classes were preparing for that in the afternoon and having regular classes.

The students from YWAM invited me up to their campus Monday night, so I took the island ferry North to visit (there are no cars that can go North of school). I got a lovely tour of the place (a former resort) while the mosquitos were feasting all around. After a classic dinner of grilled cheese with tomato soup (yum), I took the ferry back to San Pedro. I don't know how those drivers can drive at night with no moon out. It was sort of scary, especially since 2 boats had collided the night before resulting in one death.

Wednesday was the big multiplication test for the Standard V class. Their hard work paid off! So far, everyone who has taken the test has scored higher than the 85% cutoff! There were so many 95+% scores that I could hardly keep a straight face walking back in with their tests after lunch! So Monday afternoon will be the infamous ice cream party.

Wednesday was Miss Francis' big 60 birthday! The students put on quite the celebration. Each class or division got a small gift for her and sang some sort of song to her! Miss Francis got everything from a Caribbean jewelry set to a light up Jesus picture to nail polish. Some songs were cute and others were tear jerkers. That night I had a wonderful dinner at a restaurant on the north part of the island with the Wilsons and others!

After dinner a few of us took the boat all the way back to Central Park to check out the Garifuna Settlement Day celebrations.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garifuna). There was supposed to be drumming all night leading up to the big day. There were a bunch of people in the park, but not so much in the way of dancing and drumming. Many people said that the celebrations were supposed to pick up later at night but as of 11pm is was still a lot of standing around. There was no school on Thursday for the holiday. I had a lazy morning and then went back to central park to see the celebrations. There was a band and people selling food, but it was still sort of a disappointment. I'm sure Dangriga has a bigger party.

Friday. Finally. Childrens Cultural Day. The classes broke up into four groups to each represent one of the main cultures in Belize: Creole, Mestizo, Maya and Garifuna. Each group spent all week preparing posters, food, and music to represent the each culture. Friday we had a fair where students all dressed up and took part in the different cultural activities. There was even a reenactment of the Garifuna landing in Belize!

This morning, Saturday, I was back at school to help out with an English as a Second Language class for about 10 students. Now, I patiently await my fathers arrival in San Pedro this afternoon...