what's for dinner? oh! rice & beans!

Ok, so I'm finally taking the time (since I have internet right now!!) to write a REAL blog update!!  It's been less than a week & I already feel like I've been in Belize for months!! It's fantastic!

So Thursday we left Dallas for the airport.... which, as most things in my life are, was an interesting blog-telling experience! Our staging trainers abandoned us on a charter and left us to fend for ourselves in the airport, which none of us expected! So after that random abandonment, our bus driver gets HIT by a terminal shuttle at the airport! And instead of dropping us off and reporting the accident, she decides to pursue the other bus in a high-speed chase circling the Dallas-Fort Worth airport numerous times!! It was an insane start to this adventure! After she calmed down and let us off the Speed 3 minus Keanu Reeves experience, Paul Blart the Segway airport cop finished the chase.... AMAZING! hahahahaha!

We had about four hours to kill in the airport, which was enough time to have our last American meal..... the worst sushi of my life. Note to all: don't eat airport sushi! But once we boarded, it was a pretty straightforward 3 hour flight! except they played "everybody's fine" which is the most depressing robert deniro movie where everybody is clearly NOT FINE & it was the worst thing to play with 40 ppl aboard who just left their families for 27 months!!!! lol.

As we flew into Belize, it was a beautiful aerial view! You could see the coast and the rainforest and it was so amazing!! Once we pulled into the airport, the captain gave the PC volunteers a shout out on the plane & everyone cheered for us! It was the coolest thing! Then as we got off the plane, all the older volunteers came from their different villages to cheer for us as we arrived.... it was so sweet and made everyone feel so important and great!!!! It made the whole first experience in Belize great! After all the cheering and picture taking, we all headed on buses over to a restaurant for dinner.... We had an AMAZING meal: rice, beans, chicken, & "salad" & then some kind of bread dessert. It was amazing, until we ate that for every other meal following! hahaha! Dinner lasted a few hours before we checked into our hotel. (Let me describe a hotel: there is no lobby, no locks to secure the hotel entrance, our beds are split between box springs and mattresses- so if you're lucky your room has a real mattress, but we have AC, cable, and hot showers! (for thsi week!) We leave for our 5 weeks in our host families on Thursday! )  Once we settled in our first night, all older PCVs came and had a party on the top floor of the hotel... It was great! We drank some Belikin beer (the only beer you can get in Belize) & got to know about a million people!! haha. After it got later in the evening, we all headed to one of the guy's house, which since we are in Belmopan, is relatively nice & large! He even has a makeshift washer type thing! (Since I'm in Healthy Communities, I will be more rural, so my hopes are not high!)  After a long and amazing first day, a bunch of us walked home before our first day of training......

to be continued.