K'ekchi Lanuage Training and San Miguel

Last week I traveled to Blue Creek Village to Tumul K'in Center for Learning. It is a secondary school (high school) where children learn to preserve their culture as well as other basic subjects. http://www.tumulkinbelize.org/program.html I went there to participate in K'ekchi language training. I was very worried going with the other volunteers, because all of them learned K'ekchi in training during our first few months here, whereas I learned Kriol. Also most of them are living in villages using K'ekchi every day. I am exposed to the language while working with the ladies at Fajina. I have this huge desire to actually be able to communicate with them in their language, I want to immerse myself in the culture as much as I can while here.  I feel that will not only benefit them but me also. I will say that K'ekchi is NOT EASY. There are a lot of difficult words, but I think the hardest part is the pronunciation, many stops in the middle of words. I gave it my best shot and hope to continue learning it. It was also a nice time to spend with the other volunteers, there were 14 of us. 

We went picking up different volunteers from their villages. While picking up Ed and Emma in Santa Anna we came across this adorable little house (those are flowers and butterfly's on the side).

I wish I was able to upload the video I have of this, but these pigs were HUGE and LOUD. 

Early one morning I was able to capture the beautiful fog over the village, so breathtaking. 

This is the creek, running through Blue Creek Village, can you guess why the village has that name?!?!? :)

On Monday I went to San Miguel Village where Tracy Hodson a PCV is posted. She wanted help to conduct dental screening in the primary school there. Healing the Children is coming at the end of February with a group of Dentists to give free dental work to the children. In preparation for that Tracy wanted to see exactly how many children have decay and hand out notes about the clinic. We both were astonished with the amount of decay in the school of almost 200. I am working on the numbers now but it is safe to say that this country needs some help in the dental department. 

The cute children playing football during their break. 

After checking their mouths I asked them to pose for a picture showing off their teeth and these are the pictures I received. They really are adorable. 

I am always looking for a chuckle and had one after reading this. On the side of the San Miguel Computer Lab building it says "Get in touch with the...World"

:)