The Trio River 
Me and my friend Ilberso on our hike down the Trio River
Look in the middle--one of the many toucans we saw
A little bit fo the jungle we hiked through
Trio River
Bird
Trying to climb the spikes on this tree
Trio River: Beautiful
The tree on the hill beside Trio that looks just like a hummingbird. I look at this everyday from my back porch
Me and my former host brother Douglas on our trip to the Snake Cayes
A couple of my new friends from the Ya'axche Conservation Trust. Lee and Ekat (and some students, teachers, and boat drivers in the back). I've really enjoyed getting to know them and they have even visited me in my village a couple times! I help organize a trip with them and some students from the Trio School to see some of the islands, go snorkeling, and learn a bit about the coral reef protection.
Snorkling!
Students
My neighbor buddies Mateo (left) and Humberto
Some of the fruit that I've gotten from my friends in the village. Bananas I can just go to the huge banana farm and pick up off the ground (they cut the ones that are too small or don't look as nice and let them rot!)
Me with my buds, Malory, Matt, and Dan
Greg, Matt, Me, and Joel after making bread, cake and pumkin pie for our Thanksgiving celebration.
One of the maps my parents just sent me!
Jessica, Omar, and Ersilia (my wonderful next door neighbors)
Students on Culture Day waiting to start singing La Bamba
The latrines we are building (they are now up to my head)
Before we cleaned out the holes for the latrines. Dirty!
After me and a couple other guys threw everything out of the the holes
Some of my village friends working on the latrine project. Cesario (blue shirt) has been leading the building project.Merry Christmas Everyone!
Hope you're all doing great! Due to the holiday season and some helpful reminders by my friends and family, I wanted to send a greeting and give you all a little update for the Christmas time.
Its a bit hard to believe that Christmas is upon us here in Belize. I feel like I'm stuck in an endless summer. The other day I was watching the news about snow storms in Northern California and England, etc. and I it made me shiver just to look at. It's actually gotten "chilly" hear at night with the temperature reaching down to the 50's! My village friends laugh with me because I tell them that I feel cold here sometimes--they wonder how I could possibly live in a place where it is freezing and then come here and be cold. I guess I've grown accostomed to the warm weather.
It's amazing how time is flying. I arrived in Belize just about 9 months ago and I've been in my village almost 7 months. Things have never been bad for me in the village, but they are continually getting better and better as I grow closer with the people in the village and get involved in more projects. Lately, I've been running around working with the Ministry of Health and Vector Control. We're trying to get a hold on the high number of Malaria cases in the village so I've inputed GPS coordinates of all the Malaria cases and have been taking blood samples for those with malaria and their families. I've also been really enjoying the pen pal project I'm working with with the standard 6 (8th grade) class in Trio and Mrs. Carol Yeagley's 7th grade social studies class at Mount Nittany. It's awesome to see the students here learn more about the students their age in the US and to be able to share some of the culture and life here with the students at Mount Nittany. Another big thing we've been working on here is to try to make a proposal for grant support to build a Community Center/Health Post/Hurrican Shelter/etc. The community I live in has a lot of needs and our hope is to address as many of them in one building project as possible.
Some of the fun things I've involved in here recently:
-Singing: I've been able to lead a number of singing groups for events like Culture Day and the School Christmas Party. For the culture day here I lead a group in singing and dancing to the song "La Bamba" (Para bailar la bamba se necesita una poca de gracia...). Needless to say it was a lot of fun! For the Christmas party, one of the groups I led sang the song "12 Days of Christmas." This group was a bit of trial to coordinate/control because of their age and English speaking abilities, but they came together for their performance (in front of about 200 people) and sang a heart warming version of the song.
Hiking: although I live right next to the jungle and have woken up to howler monkeys and thousands of other nature sounds in my village, I don't usually have alot of time to go hiking. However, about a week and a half ago I got to go exploring with one of my neighbors into the jungle that is behind the village. We hiked for several hours crossing the Trio River and following it down river. Although we didn't reach the Mayan Ruins that we were hoping to arrive at, we did see a number of toucans, 2 scarlet macaws, and lots of other birds. We also so the tracks of lots of wild animals and found several piles of feathers were birds had either been killed by animals or hunters. We are planning to go again and spend the night in the jungle so that we can explore the ruins that are in the vicinity of Trio.
Another fun thing I did recently was to borrow a projector from the health clinic in Independence. I was able to use this to show some videos at our school Christmas Party and also to show the Mask of Zorro, projected on a bed sheet behind my house for a bunch of my neighbors. I'm hoping to be able to borrow the projector again so to do some more community events.
As I mentioned before, its been a little hard to feel in the Christmas mood because of the drastic temperature difference from every other Christmas I've spent in my whole life. However, I've been doing my best to get myself in the mood by listening to Christmas music and watching movies like Elf. Christmas is celebrated in Trio by making tons of tomales, so I'm gonna be ready to feel sick of those by the end of the day. Well, I can't write more now, but I will try to update you all again soon. Thanks so much for the encouragement I've recieved from so many of you. Please keep in touch and please pardon my slow responses. Lots of love and Merry Christmas,
Owen
