Hard Times

So, today I've been here now 2 weeks. In a way, they've absolutely blown by, while in another I've been surprised that it's only been 2 weeks. I almost feel like I've been here forever and am a part of Belize now. I no longer walk around with that tourist look in my eyes, but rather see the tourists come through and feel like they're visiting my home town. This is just such a welcoming place and I absolutely love it here.

I've been introduced to something fantastic: Hard Times. Hard times are the unofficial national cookie of Belize. They are, as their name suggests, rather hard (perfect milk cookies) like an extra-hard cross-breed of shortbread and sugar cookie. They are perfectly medium in their sweetness level and deliciously addicting. The best part of the story: You can get an enormous bag of 50, like the one pictured below, for $1.50 Belize (that's just 75 cents US!)

Giant bag of hard times!

So, this morning we made lots more progress on the orphanage. The walls are about 9 ft high now, and the windows have their places held by some tires that we put some dirt-brick-bags around in keystone arch fashion today. (For a description of the unique construction process for these buildings, search under the click on the "orphanage" tag at the bottom of this post and it will show you all my posts describing the orphanage project).

 The walls are getting higher!

Building keystone arches around the windows

So, the architect of these unique buildings, Jaime, told us we should finish the bagging part of the construction this Friday, though I'm a little skeptical of that claim. My own estimate is Monday, but Friday would be cool. I'm excited to see the next step of this process. Besides, we're all getting REALLY tired of this phase. It was cool at first, but now it's just tiring hard labor out in the sun with no shade getting dirt all over ourselves. At least it's a worthwhile cause!

After getting back from the orphanage project (and showering to get the sweat and dirt off) and eating lunch it was time for computer class again! Maren was still in Belmopan on another project, so I took Katie with me instead to teach. We had another 2 new students including a nice older man who is missing 2 fingers on his left hand. Katie was showing him how to place your hands on the keyboard and he held up his hand and showed her the missing index and middle fingers. She was stunned for a second and then said, "Well, you can just type however you want to!" I don't think we'll be using Mavis Beacon for him. However, he did make good progress on the skills we learned today. The class is formatted so that the first half they practice their typing and then the second half we learn a new computer skill. Today we began teaching about Microsoft Word. It was very fun to watch them learn about the amazing world of word processing for the first time ever. After explaining the purpose and navigation of the program and the page we started showing them how to do basic formatting changes. At first they nodded their heads as we showed them how to make words bold. Eagerness grew as we showed them italics. Downright excitement emerged with underlining. Before long they could change color, size, font, and alignment and make both numbered or bullet-point lists. Watching their eyes get wider and wider was so fulfilling as a whole new world of possibilities opened up to them! We had so much fun and look forward to picking things up again on Monday. 

After computer class I did some Succotz stuff on my computer for the rest of the working day. At five I went with Katie to the track so she could run her 5 miles for the day while I read a book. We came back for dinner and then all did our own thing throughout the evening. It's been a pretty good and fulfilling day. Tomorrow is looking to be exciting and full as well, like usual. Tune in then, same Ken-time, same Ken-channel!

P.S. I'll bet you all thought this would be a depressing post based on the title. Ha! Fooled you! Hard times are just tasty cookies! :)