Mexico

Last Friday Erica and I went to Mexico with our church for a football game against another church. The border is less than 11 miles away, so it is a quick trip. Once you get to the border you have to go through customs on the Belizean side (Non Belizean citizens get the privilege of paying a border fee) and then on the Mexican side as well. We went to the football game, which we lost, and then went with the church to the expo fair. It was almost 11pm when we reached the fair, yet all our Belizean church friends were still rearing to go- even the women with little children. The fair was great, and we rode rides, played games and wandered through the maze of booths, vendors and screaming auctioneers. It was around 12:30 am when we finally left the fair. Erica and I had decided to spend the night in Mexico and take the public bus back to Belize the next day. So the church dropped us off at our hotel, and we crashed. Our room had shutters to keep out the early morning sun, and Erica and I slept until 10:30am. That hadn’t happened since I had moved here, and it was much needed! We wandered around the town of Chetumal all day Saturday, enjoying the market and then going to the so called “mall.” It has been three months since I have been inside any store of substantial size as nothing like Wal-Mart exists in Belize. However, in Mexico there is a Sam’s Club, a Wal-Mart extension, a movie theater… and I could go on and on. Erica and I seriously just wandered around open mouthed. It was the weirdest thing to see after being away from anything like that for awhile. As nice as it is though, I really don’t miss it that much. Simplicity in life has actually become a bit more comfortable.
Sunday we went with our church to the town of Orange Walk to march in the parade of churches. All of the churches from Belize come together to march for about three hours. The churches create their own floats or dances and parade together throughout the town. It was a bit cooler than normal in the morning when we started marching but by mid day we were all roasting, and I had a nice shirt tan. It was neat to see all the churches join together though, and the whole weekend was a great opportunity for Erica and I to spend more time with people from our church and get to know them better. It is neat to see these relationships growing and them open up more and more to us.
After the weekend’s busy activities it was hard to get ourselves back into the school mindset for Monday. I started feeling pretty sick Sunday night and by Tuesday afternoon I had a nice cold and sinus headache and had lost my voice. My kids were so cute and were continually making fun of me for my deep raspy voice. They kept saying- “Miss! You sound like a man!” They were as cooperative as kids can be though and worked to listen extra hard as I whispered for all my classes. I was out of school Wednesday, but by Thursday I had regained enough voice to teach again. So I am on the mend from that thanks to Erica who, being the great room mate that she is, made me chicken soup and hot tea and took great care of me!