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Birthday celebrations!

So---my birthday was a while ago, but I thought I’d give the update of the multitude of birthday celebrations!

One of my housemates had friends in town who took us out to dinner at a very nice restaurant on Wednesday night. It wasn’t exactly FOR my birthday, it just happened to be the night before, but hey, I’ll take it. The meal was FANTASTIC. It’s this Italian restaurant that is just awesome—the owner is from italy and goes back once a year and brings lots of ingredients that you just can’t get here in belize! Man, and my housemates’ friends went all out---we’re talking appetizers, salads, wine (GREAT wine—well, anything that’s not Belizean wine is great wine!), gelato (yuummmmy gelato), coffee….the works. It was such a treat. Honestly, I don’t know if you get the picture, but man it was good.

After that amazing dinner, I had a check in with one of my other housemates. We do check ins with two different housemates once a month. It’s just a good way for us to spend intentional time together—seeing how all is going in each other’s lives. So, chris and I went to the princess hotel and resort, which is the NICEST hotel in belize city. We wanted to go on the roof, but couldn’t figure out how, so we went on the top floor and found a veranda off a conference room. We sat out and talked and talked and talked. Some security people came in and told us we couldn’t be there because the conference room was supposed to be locked (it was around midnight at this point!) but offered us the option of going down by the pool! I told chris later that I was glad we didn’t get in trouble and he said we wouldn’t get in trouble—we’re white! Only white people stay there, so they just assumed that we were guests of the hotel! And go down to the pool we did. We sat down there for a while longer, enjoyed the breeze and the conversation, and then walked right out and biked home. It was fun.

Then Thursday was great because I didn’t have to go to work! My supervisor’s birthday was in September and he didn’t go to work on his birthday---so I threw it out there that I wasn’t going to work on my birthday. (good thing his birthday came first, huh!) I mostly was kidding, but as the time came closer to my birthday, my supervisor said, I hope you do nothing and relax all day. I was like, WAIT, really? I really don’t have to come in? so I didn’t! and it was lovely. I did relax and I did do nothing! I went to football practice in the afternoon and my roommates made a great dinner and cake! Fr. Dan always comes over with ice cream for someone’s birthday, so we can always bank on that!

Friday turned out to be great too! After work, I passed my coworker Miss Cherry’s house. I stopped in and met her kids and husband. I really like Mrs. Cherry and that was the first time I was able to meet her family. She is the cook at the center for the kids and she feeds me well two days a week! She loves that I have never tried half of the things she cooks! After seeing all of her family photo albums, I began the very long process of leaving. This isn’t always, but most of the time, it takes quite a while to actually exit someone’s house. You must begin long in advance of your next engagement or when you told someone you’d be home. I underestimated the powers of Miss Cherry and her husband and I ended up getting home way later than expected. However, the long wait was due to the fact that Miss Cherry was in the midst of making tortillas and was determined to send me home with about a billion---okay, maybe just a pound, but it felt like a billion. I looked at her youngest son Kyron at one point and said, do you always eat this great? His chubby face lit up and he nodded vigorously. So cute! After that we went to a farewell celebration for one of my coworkers. He is going back to the states after 3 years of being in Belize. The evening was wonderful and it turned into a Tuesday night dinner! Food and drinks and music ended with all of us sitting around with a guitar and some drums and some singing! Does it get any better?

Saturday was a lazy day for us. Football finals have been postponed two weeks in a row (there’s probably a reason, I just don’t know it) and so I literally loafed around all day. I went running with Monica in the late afternoon and then began thinking about the evening. We had a little party, just the 6 of us, and I got to pick the theme, which was ghetto fabulous. If I were better at the whole digital camera to computer thing, I could post some pics of us in our glory! Soon I’ll figure it out, I promise. That was a really fun night---just us, drinking some, hanging out, laughing---we went to bed so late! It was a miracle that we got up for church in the morning!

Now, perhaps it wasn’t so much a miracle as a rude awakening. The electricity went out at 6am. We all sleep with our fans directly on us and sleeping without fans is not so fun. I think Monica actually woke up when the current went out (everyone says “current gone, current gone” when saying that the electricity is out!), but thankfully I didn’t get up right at 6, but a bit later. Regardless of when we got up, we were all sweating a ton. Church was soooooo hot with so many people and no fans. We came home and whined about how we had no food and no current! Poor us! Little did we know that this was actually a scheduled thing---we have no TV and apparently we don’t listen to the radio because the rest of Belize knew and we didn’t! oh well. The electricity finally went back on around noon I think. That afternoon, my supervisor invited us all over to his house. His wife and I share the same birthday! We had a joint birthday party, but it was much more of a treat for us! The cake said ‘happy birthday Yvonne and maria’ and we both had to stand by the cake while everyone else sang. Carol, my supervisor’s oldest daughter, does this rhythm and sings while she bangs a spoon on a pot. Hard to imagine because I’m describing it so poorly, but it’s really neat. We all were EXHAUSTED from our many days of celebrating and left around 9ish and went STRAIGHT to bed.

I’ve been getting lots of cards from people and that has been so fun. Mail here is GOLD and each day I look forward to seeing if Chris brings home any mail for me. So, thank you to all for the cards!

What else---hmmm---it is raining raining raining today. So much so that the rest of my housemates did not have to go to work! Yep. Belize is at sea level (or below at some points) and floods so easily. Streets turn into lakes. I called my supervisor hoping that he would tell me to stay home, but alas, he told me he’d pick me up so I didn’t have to bike in the pouring rain. So now I’m stuck in the office with no bike to go out and do home visits, thinking of the rest of my roommates and how lucky they are to be at home relaxing. Whenever it rains, the bugs come inside---great, huh. Yesterday at the center, I was getting bit left and right by stupid sand flies. You can’t even see them so you don’t get the satisfaction of swatting them. Nope, you just feel the little bite and then if you’re super allergic, like me, you get a big red welt that itches like crazy. Man I love the rain.

I had a pretty good afternoon the other day. I felt like I could see that I was starting to make myself home here. I passed Miss Cherry’s house to borrow some dresses for the Hand in Hand fundraiser tomorrow night. I brought nothing fancy enough to wear—heck, I brought nothing fancy at all! Another volunteer with the Catholic medical mission likes to say that the volunteers sport the refugee look whenever we go somewhere nice with Belizeans! Belizeans go ALL OUT with dresses and shoes and the like and we all look like we just got off the boat! So sad! I knew I needed a little help with my wardrobe so I asked to borrow some things. After that I decided not to go to football practice because there was thunder and lightening and the rain was sure to follow, so I passed the Cayetano’s house. Gianne Cayetano is one of the girls on the football team—she wasn’t going to practice either! Mrs. Cayetano talked to me for 45 minutes about all her encounters with the Lord and I even tried to leave the requisite 20 minutes early, but to no avail. I was stuck there for a while. By the time I made it to my house, my roommates had already started dinner. The cooks for the night, being kate and chris, had made rice and beans (not to be confused with beans and rice) and stewed chicken—a nice Belizean meal. We had a guest—kate’s supervisor—and it was great. It was a nice evening because it allowed me to recognize the slow relationships I’m building. Sometimes I feel like I go to work and then come home, talk to my housemates and then do it all over again the next day. I like to see that I’m forming relationships here and making this a home.

Oh—big news—it’s starting to cool down! Everyone has been talking about the ‘cold front’ that is moving in. ha! That only means rain! But it does cool down a bit and everyone knows I love that. It has actually been a bit cooler the past week. So cool, in fact, that I put on sweats. Inside. By choice. More than once. Yep. And I loved it. I haven’t slept with a fan for the last two nights. All of this and guess what the cool temperature was---75 degrees. I’m not kidding. Sigh.

Well, I guess that’s it for this installment. As always, I hope this finds you all well.

Have a great day.