I had NO idea a person could sweat this much!!

Hey Everyone,

Well it's day five in Mango Creek, and the last couple of days have been RIDICULOUSLY HOT!!! Thank goodness the rectory where I'm living stays semi-cool with the breeze from outside. Miss Lorna has lent me a fan which has been a huge blessing, and helps me to sleep better at night!!

I made my way back to IPS yesterday to spend the day with the same two classes as I did on Tuesday. I have one word for them.....CHAOS!!! But what fun!!! I spent my morning once again with Teacher Sharlene, I took the 8 performers outside under a tree to practice our song which has been turned into a poem with actions they aren't singing. For only learning it 2 days ago they are awesome!! We went back to the classroom where Teacher Sharlene asked me to help her teach the kids about Bar Graphs. They are such sweet children. I'm still getting used to the fact that the people in town here respect me a lot because I'm a Deacon and therefore have authority. They have no problem handing me their lesson plans and a piece of chalk and letting me teach the class while they try and settle children down. You wouldn't see that in Canada. Anyway I helped Teacher Sharlene out, which she appreciated. She has 38 children between the ages of 5 and 6 and they can be hard to handle at times. Yesterday a number of them were not listening very well, and while they were fooling around two children came up to me with their assignments for me to check them. I gave them a star on their page and then held up my hand for a high five. The two children smiled and smacked my hand. Some of the misbehaving children came up to try and get one, I told them I wouldn't give them a high five, unless they settled down and did their work. I had NO idea it would actually work. By the end of the morning it had caught on. Before any of them left for lunch at 11:30 I had 38 children lined up around the classroom waiting to show me their work so that they could get their high five. When I walked in again this morning I was greeted with little voices saying "Hello Miss. Chelsy," and wasn't allowed to sit down until I had made my high five rounds. It makes me laugh everytime I think about it.

Miss Lorna took me out to the Lagoon which is about a 15 minute walk from the rectory and possibly one of my favorite places in Belize. It looks out onto the village of Placencia. We took some lawn chairs out yesterday and sat beside the lagoon for over an hour and we sang our way through St. Michael's Hymn book to learn some Belizean hymns. It was a blessed moment.

I left the school early and am now over and Miss Lorna's house. The heat has really been taking a lot out of me. Miss Lorna can tell and she is making me take it easy. We just had a wonderful lunch with rice, and shrimp cooked in Cocunut Milk, and fried Bananas with cinnaman (sp). The heat is something that is going to take me a long time to get used to. I'm finding it hard to not have much to do, but at the same time am realizing it's okay. I need to get out of my busy life routine and into a laid back Belizean routine where.....sounds easy....but it's not!! I'll keep you updated as to how it goes!!

Other than that, that's life in a nutshell. My internet connection has been a bit iffy over the last couple of days, but I'm hoping to have access to it daily if possible to update everyone!! Hope you are well. Talk to you soon!!