I feel as if I have just graduated to the next level of teacher--this week we held our first-ever (in my time) parent-teacher conferences. It was weird being the one on the other side of the desk; I have many memories of semi-nervously accompanying my parents to those events. It was definitely done Belizian style-- I had 29 parents all show up at once, some of whom did not speak English. (The day before I had asked what I was supposed to do about Spanish-speaking parents, since I don't speak Spanish. The answer: hmm, that's a good question. ) Even with those challenges, I think it went really well. It was great to meet the parents of my students, and even better because most of my girls are doing really well. It is just so nice to be able to tell parents that their daughter is a joy to have in class. I also had my first-ever teaching bureaucracy encounter. I'm planning a trip to the zoo, and had to fill out forms in triplicate and send them all over. Now, that might not seem like a big deal, but in past years teachers have been known to just hop on the public bus with their class and go. I'm planning on taking 70 kids and 7 teachers, it will be tons of fun!

Prayers for Belize

So we need some hard core prayers/sacrifices down here. First, it's looking like Hurrican Wilma might brush the coast of Belize. They're talking about evacuating the keys and Belize City, both of which have been leveled in the past by hurricanes.
Second, this weekend I was out to San Pedro visiting the FUS girls(Alison, Ali, Courtney, and Anne) doing mission work. They really need spiritual support, because it's a tough crowd out there and they don't have the support of a community like we do here. They are setting some great things in motion, though, and they are desperately needed on San Pedro.
Last, Mount Carmel and Benque is in the process of some great spiritual overhauling. This requires some background- we have mass at school every Friday, and normally lst year maybe 30 (out of 500) would come to Communion. Well, at the beginning of this year, Father Dan gave a tremendous homily on peer pressure, and since then over a hundred kids have received Communion at each mass (and a lot of our kids aren't Catholic, so that's really good). Two Fridays ago a visiting priest did a healing mass. Most of our kids went up and got prayed over after mass, which is HUGE- you can never gets these kids to do anything, normally. The priest held a mass each weeknight, and hundreds of townspeople showed up every night. So the regular priests have a lot of work to do to keep this movement alive.