yes i did.

yes. i did get to pet baby tigers. we went to the circus on friday night and thanks to michelle and her awesome spanish speaking skills she was able to talk to the tiger owner and get us a behind the scenes tour with the tigers.  they were adorable.  three 8-month-old tigers and a 15-day-old baby. precious. 

on saturday we did the atm tour. belize is the only place in the world that you can do this.  it was a bumpy half-hour[ish] drive out to the jungle.  dont' worry, i did in fact get very car sick. then we hiked about 45 minutes to the gorgeous enterance of the cave.

then the adventure began.  we swam through freezing cold water and then hiked over, through, between, above, below, and around rocks and boulders seeing lots of gorgeous formations along the way.  our tour guide was so great.  he knew so much and was incredibly passionate about everything.  he had us turn off our headlamps at times and just sit in the pitch blackness in silence or while he told us about the bloodletting rituals (okay, so that part was kind of creepy).  near the end of the 3-ish hours we were hiking through the cave you start to see ancient mayan pots and skulls/bones. artifacts that have never been allowed to be taken out of these caves.  it was incredible.

the hike ends with this...

full skeleton from a sacrificed mayan girl. either paralyzed with an axe or stabbed in the stomach and left in the pitch black to die...yeah.

don't worry...we have actually been working too, not just playing. promise.  our main project right now: we've been working on a square foot garden for sacred heart high school.  they've developed a lunch program for kids who can't afford food.  they help in the garden and get a discount on their lunch.  so we've been buliding the garden. when i thought of square foot gardening i pictured...weeding, watering, planting seeds. boy was i mistaken. what have we been doing?...hauling dirt and waiting for wood so that we can build the beds for the garden. some of the kids are in a community service class so they come out and help during the day in shifts. some of those little boys are hard workers. in 45 minutes they get done what it would take us 2 hours to do.

other things we've been up to:
1. dani, kayla, and i taught a group of police officers a nutrition lesson on being overweight and hypertension. awkward.

2. went to the belize zoo. saw a crocodile, puma, jaguar, and got stared down by an evil eagle.

3. built a church....well, started to. i actually stacked cinder blocks and cemented them together. my father would be so proud.

4. painted and sanded closets for a new house.

5. got our justin bieber on at mulanie's bar and grill. karaoke night. (although we may have appeared to be drunk i assure you that no alcohol was consumed)

so that's belize so far...in a nutshell.

top ten ways my life has changed...

top 10 ways my life has changed since moving to belize: 

1. while walking down the street when a car whizzes by missing me by less than an inch I don’t bat an eyelash

2. when said car is full of belizean men that honk and yell some of the greatest pickup lines of all time at us we just wave, smile, and say hello.

        

             *best pick-up lines of belize so far...* 

• i give you my heart…will you take it? 
• d***! you have pretty eye’s white girl. 
• i'm fine girl...so are you! 
• i will marry any of you!
• so this is why solomon had 7 wives...i can have all of you!
  

[living here really boosts the self-esteem. you can’t walk more than a block without being told you are beautiful and having men offer to marry you on the  spot.  i may have a hard time adjusting to the lack of attention back in the states]

3.  along with number 2…finally my pasty skin is being appreciated.  at least someone digs the whiteness. 

4. i was actually told i, andrea ovard, am good at basketball the other night when dani and i were playing two on two with some of the boys. yeah, you never thought that day would come did you? me either.

5. fresh fruit has become a staple in my daily diet and makes up about 50% of my daily food intake. 

6.  ice cream has also become a staple…and probably would qualify as one of my new food groups.

7.  seeing a gecko on my wall, a roach in my kitchen, a spider on the counter, or a mouse in the corner doesn’t even phase me. 

8. the thought of wearing a seat belt makes me laugh.  Being on the road with the way everyone drives here makes me want to cry.

[I’ve yet to see a stoplight or traffic sign anywhere-every man for himself]

9.  walking 15+ miles a day and sweating 50+ gallons a day is the usual.

10.  daily schedule often involves waking up to the sun at 5:00 am and heading out to go…build a house. no big deal.

 

devon and other happenings

first things first...

devon, wil-em, and rambo too us out for ice cream one day after work at the hospital...

 i   we all may or may not be in love with devon (front, left). it's possible that much of this infatuation comes from the fact that for the first week we worked with him at the hospital we thought his name was devon only to discover that it's actually dally (short for dale ernhardt-yes, that really is his first name...we still call him devon anyways, it just fits) but even after finding this out i'd still seriously consider staying in belize just for him.

other happenings.

we went to placencia this weekend.  a resort town and just laid on t beach...and fried.  me being the natural tanner that i am decided i couldn't lay out on the beach all day and apparently didn't put on enough sunscreen, but at least i'm not alone we are all facing the aftermath of our decision today.  it was a fun weekend though we laid on the beach, bought lots of drinks (virgin of course!), played in the water, and read lots and lots of books.  that night we went to dinner and got ice cream and just checked out the local scene before going home to our lovely beach house...filled with bugs...in our beds. now, i've been able to overcome my fear of insects for the most part here.  i mean we have a mouse living behind our oven, geckos in our house, and frogs hopping all over the street, not to mention the crazy (and terrifying) dogs always barking at us but bugs in my bed, sorry. i'm not okay with that. but eventually dani and i gave in and fell asleep. together. in a twin bed.

today we're all in pain but it's back to work.  we have lots to do with planning the nutrition classes for the police station, schools, and church groups and getting started on planning our two-week long summer camp for one of the primary schools called succotz. that one should be a lot of fun and i think the kids will love it. we are having a culture day because the camp starts on the forth of july and we basically were willing to find any excuse to still celebrate...so, we're teaching the kids about other cultures including the good ol' "states".  we have a nutrition class that we're teaching this saturday to devon's church youth group. he asked us if we would be able to teach a class to them this saturday. saturday is our day off. we said yes without a second though. anything for you devon. anything for you.

 

football

i don't know what it is with us and dogs...even during dinner.

love the tipsy tuna

pictures

so i don't want to bore all of the three people who read my blog with my long stories so this is just a quick update of what we've been up to in beautiful belize. in picture form that is...

dani, kayla, me: mayan ruins. we were obviously amazed.

the hike up this thing was no small task, but totally worth it because....

we freaking saw monkeys in the trees. yes i know, you can't tell but i promise that is what the black randomness is.

tamarina...little girl we met at the market who taught us all about our fruits and veggies.

at flava's...best food of my life. seriously though.

foot bridge over the river. p.s. there were giant iguanas about 20 feet from us at that very moment.

this one to be exact. (by they way...it's much bigger than this picture portrays)

manual labor all day at the hospital. BEFORE...and...

AFTER!...this is our new bff ignacio.

that was a lot of hard work my friends. a lot of hard work but we loved every minute of it.

our friends/football competition, lemer and robarto. we learned that soda in a bag is much cooler than soda in a can.

this is prettymuch the attitude in belize in a nutshell. and this is why i love it here.

in other news i'm currently learning creole. um my favorite phrase so far..."fo' true?" (aka "for real?"). i'm bringing that one back to the states with me. basically it's just supper slurred gangsta talk. i'm getting pretty good.

doesn't get much better than this.

so far, so good. so i’ll try not to bore you with too many details but in a nutshell thursday we just kind of got settled in and wandered the town figuring out where everything was. we met some great people and are starting to figure things out a little more.

friday was awesome. we had a project set up: working in the jungle. yes, the real jungle. when we first got there we went on a tour. our group's guide was willy.

he told me i could only put this picture up if I told everyone that he is the tallest man in belize. he was hilarious and we assured him that he was the best guide ever.  we went to lunch at a little restaurant where we enjoyed…well beans and rice of course.  then it was time for them to put us to work. matt, angela, and i volunteered to work with john making mulch using the wood chipper.  summary:

john gave us work goggles, gloves, and earplugs. told us to watch out for snakes under the big logs (great, just what i wanted to hear. i love snakes…not) and then we carried logs in the sweltering hot sun for an hour until the chipper clogged and we had to find a new job re-potting plants. it was pretty cool though. i knew my dad would be proud and i kinda felt like I should be wearing plaid except for the fact that i was sweating my face off. angela and i had to take pictures to prove that we really did it.

how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood...i don't even want to know. it's hard work.

that night we met some little (about 13 years old +/- a few years) boys playing on the basketball courts. they were precious. they wanted to teach us spanish…we have a lesson next tuesday night. they were so much fun and so cute. 

we finished off the night with night #2 of the best ice cream. ever. (not in any way an exaggeration). the meninites have a soy ice cream shop. sounds weird right. it is seriously the most amazing ice cream i’ve ever tasted. there is a good possibility i will be eating there every day (my professors would be so proud). i feel justified in the fact that the walk up there is about 1/3 of a mile uphill. so it all evens out in the end. 

today we went to the xunantunich mayan ruins. they were phenominal. we were able to climb to the very top and the view was great. we were right next to guatemala and we could see the road that marks the border. on our way down someone pointed out the monkeys in the tress. um...awesome. then we came back and got some amazing chinese food. i don't know how, but the chinese food here is way better and went to the market. saturday is the big market day and they have so many great things to buy and so many cool people.

can’t wait to start working on projects and really get going. These are a few pictures of our first few days in belize. 

first ride in our ghetto van with our official taxi driver, tim.

first belizean fruit stand experience. my life will never be the same. ever.

view from our porch. um yes, be jealous. 

soy ice cream from cayo twist. best ever.

most of the group at the river with our new friend tracy's adorable kids.