Happy Holidays

So where to begin? Firstly, I apologize to my faithful readers that it has been so long, life has been crazy. I think I’ll start with my job, since I guess that is what I’m really here for. As stated in the last post, I am working Monday-Thursday at the school in my village working with the special ed kids there and then on Fridays I go into town to work at the special ed center at our sister school. I have similar duties at both. In the mornings I work with some of the more severely disabled children and in the afternoon I have been doing remedial reading lessons for the Standard 5 and 6 (equivalent grade 7 and 8) students. I have been having a really good time at work and it is going well.

Other than school all day during the day I have been staying busy in the evenings and doing such things as celebrating the holidays over the last few months. One of these holidays is of course Halloween. On Halloween night all the kids in my village dressed up in a costume and we went trick-or-treating throughout the village. If the kids did not have a costume, we had face paint to give them one. After we went to all the houses we took the children to the community center and divided up the candy, had supper, and then the kids danced for a while. The next weekend I also had a Halloween party with some kids from town at Hillside Clinic (a nursing clinic that houses two full-time nurses and then med school students come in a work for a month at a time) with their volunteers and we did such things as carve watermelons. This was not my idea but I wish I would’ve thought of it earlier because I really wanted to carve pumpkins with kids in my village but there are no orange pumpkins here, only green delicious ones. Oh well, next year I guess.

 Can you guess what I am?

...I was a cereal killer (haha, get it?)

The next big holiday that just passed, Thanksgiving, is one of my favorites and I therefore took the opportunity to do something that I like to think I am the first person in all of Toledo if not the whole country to ever do: make a local (kind of) turducken (or any turducken for that matter). As family members know and maybe all of you do every year for as long as I can remember my wonderful Uncle Dave cooks our family a turducken. Following in my Uncle’s footsteps and trying to bring a little of America to Belize, my friends and I decided we would undergo the task of trying to cook one ourselves. Our first roadblock came in the form of a duck, mainly that you cannot buy frozen duck here in Toledo, only live duck. Luckily, living in this country for 9 months now has taught me (although as you will read shortly apparently poorly) certain skills. We talked about getting a live turkey too but that fell through and we ended up just buying a frozen turkey Wednesday evening, and therefore it was only kind of local turducken. Anyway, my friend bought the duck Wednesday morning and brought it to school all day Wednesday. After school we took the duck to my next friend’s house in order to kill and prepare the turducken. Naturally, my friends made me kill the duck, which turned out to be a mess. They wanted me to hold it by the neck, lift it high over my head, and then bring it down in a jerking motion in order to snap its neck. This did not work very well. Therefore, I tried to resort to snapping its neck how I did the chicken (see previous blog). This also did not work very well. Finally, we just took my knife and cut its head off. Next we had to pluck its feathers. Just like they are apparently much harder to kill than chickens, plucking their feathers is also a lot more of a pain because they have a lot more smaller feathers. I will say I’ve never really handle duck feathers right off of its back and they are incredibly soft. After plucking the feathers we de-boned the duck and the turkey (I had already de-boned the chicken earlier in the day) and took it all back to my house to season. The next morning I woke up early to make the stuffing and put the turducken together. The duck turned out to be mahga mahga (skinny) so I had to put the duck inside of the chicken. I then put it in the oven and when the Packer game came on ran back and forth from my house to my host Mom’s house so I could watch the game. After 8 long hours it was time to take it out of the oven and taste it. It was amazing. I feel confident saying that it is by far the best tasting thing I have ever made in my life, and I like to think I’m a decent cook (you all should try my PB&J sandwiches sometime… the key is to cut it in triangles). Seriously though, it was really good, and my two friends and I ate almost the whole duck while we were cutting it up. After it was cut up we went and delivered it to a bunch of family and friends. It was really fun and I felt more than a little like Santa Clause.

P.S. Local here means that you killed it yourself and cooked it. So if you go and buy a live chicken and kill, cook, and eat it it is considered local chicken, whereas the stuff you buy in the store is just chicken.   

 The beautiful duck.

Us with our 17.5 lbs turkey. I think this is a sweet picture.

 Seasoning it.

 Finished product.

Other than celebrating holidays we also had Special Olympics recently. We first had regionals at Dangriga and then Nationals last Saturday in Belize City. The kids had a lot of and we got second as a region. I also like to brag that the girls my friend and I coached are the 2011 Special Olympic Girl’s Football Champions, although really it was just basically one pick-up game that we won 2-0. However, the girls did get gold medals, so I feel like it’s legit. Anyway, I think pictures will tell the story better.

 These three pictures are from Regionals.

 She cleaned up at Nationals, 5 gold, 1 silver (in the relay).

 Your 2011 Girls Special Olympic Football Champions.

 The rest of the pics are from Nationals.

We also had National Disability Week the other week so we just had fun all week, I’ll put more pictures for your viewing pleasure.

 These two pictures were taken at a picnic we had.

 These were from Sports Day.

 A nice day at the "beach." (We don't really have beaches in PG, just rocks.)

Jellyfish. Apparently these burn a lot when you get stung by them.

The only other really new thing is that my puppy was born the other day, which is exciting to me at least.  

 Lala, the very tired mama about 15 hours after giving birth.

The pups. See how only the one has a tail (third from right), the rest were born without. I haven't decided which one I want yet.

 Tigre, one of the dads. This dog is crazy. Period. He also has the biggest head I have ever seen on a dog.

Bubbles. She has nothing to do with this litter but is another one of my friend's dogs and is an awesome dog. I like see her ears and am thinking of docking my dogs ears. Any opinions?

That is all for now. I have some more to write about my village, some of our customs, and all the wonderful food I am eating but will save that for later.