futball, chastity, eclipses and pepper oranges

Last night we had a wonderful view of the Lunar eclipse- I had to watch it because I assigned it as homework for my freshman science class.  I was actually watching it along with the world series.  Normally, I have no idea what goes on in the baseball world, but my roommate Anne is a huge Red Sox fan, so it was mandatory that we all go watch the game.  We watched it in an air-conditioned room, so it was fine by me.  This morning we had Jason Everett as a speaker.  He is going around the whole country this week giving Chastity talks to all the high school kids.  He was fantastic; the kids absolutely loved him.  Hopefully the message will hit home, because they so need it.  The talk was outside on the basketball court, because that is the only place where the whole school will fit.  During his talk, one of the local dogs wandered through the audience, which no one really payed any attention to, because dogs wander all around here.  Jason was kind of thrown off though, it was funny.  He should see how many dogs wander through when we have Mass there!  He's a fellow FUS grad, and was in CTL, so it was kind of neat for us steubie people.  Unfortunately we didn't get to talk to him much cause he had to rush off to another school. It is great timing for my lessons, though, cause I plan to start a HIV unit this coming week, and I know it will branch into chastity and sex questions. 

Another thing that is going on is a futball tournament- soccer for those who don't know.  The girl teachers, myself included, decided to get a team together.  Heaven knows why I decided to play, it was certainly a humbling experience today, and we didn't even play a game!  We were running around, warming up, and I went to kick the ball, tripped, and landed flat on my rear end.  Of course, all of my boys were watching, and found it absolutely hysterical.  My nickname, by the way, which I sometimes answer to, is Miss Hypothesis.  The boys all find it highly amusing to ask me to make hypotheses about all sorts of random questions.  Oh well, at least I've managed to teach them something!

Friday, October 22, 2004

Packages!
This is a HUGE thank you to Sarah Sheldom, hands down the coolest former MCHS teacher ever. Sarah sent a package, and it was like Christmas at the rectory cause she sent thoughtful little gifts to lots of people. One of the best things she sent was ANT TRAPS!!! Yep, I'm excited about ant traps. But in the past 2 weeks, we have had like 5 different infestations of ants- ants under our beds, ants in our kitchen, ants in our clothes, ants on our couch. They bite, too. It was really rainy, so we think the ants decided to come inside where it is nice and dry. The highlight of my ant experience so far was the day I turned on my computer, and ants started to stream out. That's right- my laptop got ants. I don't know why they would want to live in my computer, but they definately were living in massive quantities inside my computer. So I just left it on for a while, hoping the heat would drive them out, and then sprayed a little bug spray around it. It seemed to work, and the computer still works fine! The last couple of days have been sunny, and the ants have gone back to wherever they came from, but when they come back, they'll be sorry....

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

No snow days, just random holidays...
So yesterday, my boys kept bugging me, insisting that we had today (tuesday) off from school. I had heard nothing about it, and since my boys are always insisting we don't have school whenever I assign them a project or quiz, I assumed they were just fooling around. Just to make sure, I sent one of the boys to ask the secretary, and he came back saying she didn't know, which I took as his interpretation of "of course we have school tommorrow." I spent the last 5 or so minutes of class threatening the boys with death and/or failing grades if they did not show up to school the next day. This senario was repeated in my other two classes. Well, when I walked into the teacher's lounge after my last class, lo and behold, there on the board is a note saying there are no classes tomorrow! I later found out that it had been written on the board at the begining of 5th period (the last period of the day, which I was teaching and therefore not in the teacher's lounge). So I then had to chase down a few of my students, and tell them to spread it around that we didn't have school the next day. One of my students came up to another teacher, confused, and told her that my class was the only one that would be held the next day! Why weren't the teachers told? Cause this is Belize! And the occasion for the holiday? Apparently, a hundred years ago to the day, Benque was declared a town. Now, the centential celebration is nothing new, they have been celebrating it since I have been here with random parades and other events. But apparently this prestigous day merits no school! We were woken up around 7 am by the sound of drums from a parade, but otherwise the town looks mostly asleep- I think most of the partying was done last night. Alison says she doesn't really know what they are celebrating, as the town is probably exactally the same as it was 100 years ago, except for the addition of cable tv. I have to agree with her there :) But I'm enjoying my day off, and the fact that we have internet because it is a bright and sunny day. Yep, we just found out that the reason internet goes down so often is the weather. Apparently, the satelite can't transmit whatever it transmits through the clouds. The fact that we have only had 2 five-day weeks since we got here is definately nothing to complain about- I wasn't really looking forward to my first full week of teaching in months, and now it will be put off for a while!

Thursday, October 14, 2004

Pictures!!!
Internet is up again at school, sort of, so I'll put up some pictures!
First up, pictures from Benque

These are our across the street neighbors. Random horses roam the streets of Benque, like stray dogs. If you leave your gate open sometimes they will get into your yard. That happened one day to this neighbor. You can also see the little food stand where we get our chocobananas. Tons of houses operate little food stands out of their yard or front room.

This was my desk after I made the mistake of having all my students do poster projects, and having them all due on the same day.

These are some of the students, in Belize City when we went to the nutrition competition.
We went to Guatemala last weekend, to Flores, which is a cute little town on an island about two hours into Guatemala. Fist, some cute Guatemalan kids.

Flores is on a beautiful lake, and we stayed in a hotel with a fabulous view for $4 a night. We had hot water, too! It's kind of interesting that I have to go to Guatemal for hot water... Anyways, everything was really cheap, and the shopping was great! It was a nice, sanity- regaining weekend for us all. The last picture is kind of dark, but it is all of the teachers who went to Flores that weekend, with the lake in the background.

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

I had an interesting revelation while visiting my friend Abbie's web journal today-- I miss fall! Abbie wrote about pumpkin carving and hot apple cider, and as much as I thought I wouldn't miss cold weather, I do! Being stuck in a perpetual August gets a little old. On the other hand, I definitely have a nice tan which will be the envy of all in December!
We had a nice trip to Belize city last week for the nutrition competition. We placed 5th out of 8 teams, which I think is respectable. I'm thinking of designing a nutrition curriculum to be taught in PE, because the majority of the students have a terrible diet. It's actually mostly due to image and advertising, I think-- all the big named American junk food is really popular here. Kids drink pepsi for breakfast. This week is midterms, so I'm giving lots of tests, much to the students' despair. My strategy is to give as many grades as possible to give the kids lots of chances to bring up their grade. We'll see how well it works...
Monday was the feast of Saint Francis, so in true Franciscan spirit, my house hosted a coffeehouse. We asked each house of teachers (there are 5 houses) to prepare a skit, and surprisingly everyone did. It was a lot of fun. My house sung a song melody, where we took songs and rewrote the words. Here is one of them:

(To the tune of "My Favorite Things")
Girls in white blouses with long khaki skirts,
boys with their hair slicked and phobias of dirt,
classrooms and chalkboards and volleyball games,
these are a few of my favorite things.

Chocolate bananas and fresh-baked tortillas,
the Green Dragon in Cayo and
Belikin Beer,
Just some of the reasons why I am still here

When the dog barks,
when there's meatloaf,
when I'm feeling....Bad
I simply remember my favorite things
and then I don't feel so sad.