Extreme heat slows down the brain

Apologies for the delayed update, but it's been hot here in Belize and I've been schvitzing quite a lot lately. The heat has also made it kind of difficult to write in both complete and competant sentences. Plus I've been trying hard to learn a difficult new language- Mopan Maya- which may also be contributing to my confusion when speaking/writing the English language. Anyway I guess its about time I should tell you what I've been up to for the past week so here goes...

I've been living with my host family, the Caal's in San Martin, which is, in the most basic sense of the word, a suburb of Belmopan. Mr. and Mrs. Caal have 7 children ages 3-14, and they've kept me occupied throughout most of my free time thus far. Most of the time they just walk around the house yelling "Donny...Donny...Donny!" Even when I go to sleep too- they look through the some of the small cracks and holes in the wall and call my name. Its pretty entertaining, but sometimes tough to ignore when attempting to sleep. Other highlights include taking bucket baths (which are surprisingly refreshing), using the latrine when I have to "wataken ta" or "wataken wish" (I trust that you can figure out what those phrases mean), and eating roughly 10-15 tortillas per day (both corn and flour). I've made a decent attempt to make some tortillas myself, but most of the time my host mom has to fix the shape before putting them on the comal. As for laundry I've successfully hand washed 6 of my shirts and a towel. Needless to say my life has changed quite drastically over the past few days, but I'm starting to get used to everything. Except for the heat. I keep hearing that we'll get used to it, but I'll believe that when it happens.

Yesterday they gave all of the people in my "healthy communities" group machete's (or "mascas" as they say in Mayan) so our homework was to sharpen our machetes. On sunday we'll be using them to build a garden in the community, but tomorrow afternoon our LCF (Language and Culture Facilitator), Margarito, is taking us out into the bush to gather some supplies for the garden. Hopefully I'll be able to test out the new knife then!

Aside from that everything has been going pretty well thus far. Training has been good for structure although sometimes the days are long. Hope all is well back home and enjoy the pictures. Tootles and Lets Go RANGERS!

-DL