Hello! We're near a computer today so I will try to update. Sorry for the long lag between messages. Darren and I are doing well. We're in Placencia for the day working on some grant proposals. We came over with one of the tour guides from the village. He picks up tourists in the morning in Placencia takes them back to the village for a tour then will return this afternoon to drop them off and we'll ride back with him. We've had good weather lately, but it's been HOT. I'm not sure if we'll ever get used to the heat. We are getting less and less rain now as the dry season approaches. This is good and bad. The water system in the village is still not working, so come dry season it will be a big problem. For now, the villagers collect rainwater, but when there's little rain we'll be out of luck. We've been trying to stay busy. I'm still working at the preschool. It's going well, though they're still making me exhausted every day. I will soon be going to 2-3 days a week, hopefully parttime with a Belizean working the other days-- so that when I leave the program will contitnue. This will be a nice break for me and will give me the opportunity to spend much needed time on other projects. Darren's been working a lot with the tour guides and we've been working on several grant proposals for solar power for the tour guide association, and for a garbage dump site for the community- currently they just burn their trash next to their homes. We'll be moving into our "new" home after November 18. We'll be working on figuring that out and doing some improvements on it. It will be nice to cook for ourselves. We have been eating well at our homestay, but not the healthiest. Otherwise, we read lots of books and spend a lot of time on the deck feeling the breeze. We are still getting to know everyone, and the villagers are looking forward to the upcoming tourist season. We just ran into some fellow volunteers visiting from Punta Gorda. A welcome surpise. Hope all is well on the homefront. Marianne and Darren Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail.

Hello all,

Darren and I have enjoyed our time in Monkey River Village so far. This weekend we took a short trip to Placencia to get away, use the internet, and watch TV! We've been doing our best to stay busy. We've been in the village nearly a month now. I'm teacing preschool. Not sure how that happened, but I teach 3 year olds every morning. They're not very good, but I hope that they'll learn to sit down soon. They're very cute though and now I hear Teecha Marianne all the time as I walk through the village. Darren's been helping me out a little bit too. He's also been working with the Tour Guide Association. They're completing the renovation of their building, slowly but surely. Once it's finished we'll be able to do a lot more work there- helping with tourism in the village and it will have computers also for the village's use. Darren's been out with the fisherman lobstering, and he said it's very hard work, and good reason that the price is so high. Luckily because lots of the villagers are fisherman, we get to eat lots of lobster! Our homestay is good. We're living with a couple that own the shop in the village. Their very nice and Miss Anna is a wonderful cook. I will be going to Belize City for a week at the end of the month for an HIV/AIDS workshop. I'll be bringing a lady from the village with me, and then we will hold a workshop in the village. I'll have a chance to use a computer again then, so I'll write again and post some pictures.

Love and miss,

Marianne and Darren

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Hi all, We're nearing the end of our training. We're in Belize City until next Thursday. On Wednesday we have a swearing in ceremony with government officials, etc. and then we'll move to Monkey River on Thursday. We've had a good past few weeks. We had about a week of techical training. Darren and I were in different groups, and we got a chance to see more of the country. Darren's included hosting an environmental camp for kids and mine consisted of facilitating workshops and then a market research trip with group of local artisans. Then we met back up and traveled to Punta Gorda (PG) to stay with a couple of current volunteers for a few days. Punta Gorda is very nice coastal down way south. It's a nice slow pace of life there and has all the necessities for shopping. Then we finally got to go visit Monkey River. We rode on the bus north from PG to the Monkey RIver Village cut off. From there our host father picked us up for the 12 mile drive down an incredibly bumpy dirt road. At the end of the road you meet Monkey River, where you get in a boat to cross. Monkey River is a picturesque little village- and little it is. There are no cars in the village due to its location on the river and the sea. The "roads" are small footpaths. They held a community meeting for us and everyone was very welcoming and friendly to us. The people speak Kriol, and it's really hard to understand- much thicker than the way people spoke in San Ignacio. We'll be in a homestay for the first 3 months with a couple that owns the local shop. In the picture it's the two story wooden house- shop downstairs and living quarters upstairs. They're very nice and laugh a lot. It'll be very tight quarters, but I think we'll get along well. We were also shown an empty house that we can live in after our homestay- it's pretty big and has a nice big yard. We hope that we can grow a vegetable garden. From what we saw there are no fruits or vegetables in Monkey River, which is interesting as there are banana and orange trees lining the road into the village. We did have lobster for our first dinner though!! So it will be great to get a lot of seafood. There's no computer in the village yet, so we will only get to email when we get to a bigger town. We should have access fairly regularly though. Overall, we're really enjoying our time here. We've each been sick- me with e.coli and amoebas and Darren with a parasite. We're better now and trying to eat lots of nutritious food while we're in the city. We're excited to get started on our projects, and I think that we'll have plenty to do in our village. We do have a new address: Marianne &/or Darren Semones, PCV Monkey River via Independence Post Office Stann Creek District Belize, Central America We'll probably be doing a lot of letter writing and we'd love to hear from you. Hope everyone is doing well and getting a break from the heat. Love and miss, Marianne and Darren Do you Yahoo!?
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Hello! OK, so I know that I'm still not technically capable to post pictures which are way more fun,but I wanted to give and update on our lives "down south." Yesterday was a big day for us as we were give our site assignments for the next two years. Da da da dum....we will be living in Monkey River Town.

So, where the heck is that? It's in southern Belize in the Toledo District on the coast. It's south of Placencia, which is easy to find on any map because it's a tourist destination. It has a population of 180, has one primary school- 50 students and one teacher, two shops, two restaurants, and one telephone. It has electricity for 5 hours a day(5pm to 10pm I think) and has a well system- though we're not quite sure yet if that means the water comes into your home or you go to the well to get it. Ethnically it's a Creole village with some Garifuna(the African descendents). So we will continue to speak Kriol and hope to also learn some Garifuna. Our literature states that there is a road that goes almost to the village. Then we will take a boat the rest of the way. It is a tourist destination for day trips from Placencia. People come to see the howler monkeys.

I think that we will have plenty of work to do there. It's the first time for a volunteer to live in this village, which I think is a wonderful opportunity. So we have had many groups already request our help. Some of them are infrastucture related. I think the major problem there is erosion. They have lost nearly 20 yards of the beachfront due to erosion, including two of its residential streets. They would also like to have 24 hour electricity, a better water system, and a waste disposal system(they currently don't have one)- oh, the simple things in life. We'll be working with an organization called Friends of Nature in Placencia once a month on environmental education outreach projects. We'll also be helping with tourism- in marketing and training. The Village Council(village governing system) and the Water Board need organizational skills, computer training, grant writing, accounting and reporting systems, etc. etc. The school wants to initiate a music program, a library, computer training(yet they don't have a computer??), set up a garden for the school and community, and a dozen other things. There's more, but probably not too interesting to you all.

We're very excited to get there soon and really see this place. All of the houses are on stilts which will be fun, and we're excited to live by the sea for the first time. So, we're looking forward to lots of visitors. If you're thinking of coming, check out Placencia- I've heard it's very nice and is sort of the hot place to go right now. And it'll be close for us to get too and live in luxury for a few days. Of course, you are all welcome to come stay with us too in our home, whatever that may be.

We'll be about 12 miles from a sizable town, Independence. Granted you can't get there from A to B, but we get money to buy bikes, and I think it'll be about 20 miles that way. So, we should be able to get there periodically for internet, etc. And we have a phone number! It's 709-2069- so if you ever call, be prepared to be patient while someone comes to find us. I'm pretty sure that our address will be our names, Monkey River Town, Belize- but I'll clarify that later. We won't actually be there to live until mid-August.

So, that's been our excitement the last couple of days. You can check out some info. about Monkey River at www.southernbelize.com if you have any interest. Next week we'll start our techical training. Darren and I will be going to two different locations for that- both in the northern half of the country.

Today is Darren's birthday, so we're supposed to go out to karaoke later. Our host mom made a cake, and tomorrow we're going to have a big bbq here. Darren's also playing in a soccer game tonight against the locals, at a lit field, with refs and everything.

That's all for now. Hope you are are doing well and enjoying your A/C. I promise I'll get on the picture thing.

love and miss,

Marianne and Darren

Hello everyone,

We are alive and well in Belize. Sorry we've not posted until now, but we haven't had much free time as of yet. We've been here about a week and a half now and are enjoying a beautiful country. We are staying in San Ignacio which is in the west of the country, very near to the Guatamalan border. It's very green and lush, with many palm trees and fruit trees. Last week we stayed at a retreat center and then on Friday we moved in with host family's for three weeks. Our family is very nice, with three generations in the house. There's the parents, a daughther,a son, his wife, son(9) and daughter(4 months). The daughter that lives here is getting ready to leave to get her master's in Trinidad and Tobago. They have another daughter that's studying in Cuba, and a son somewhere else in this country. So, needless to say they're well educated. The father was a principal. He's retired, but has gone back to teach woodworking at the local high school. They're very kind to us and we've had great food. So far our days have consisted mostly of sitting in a classroom. It feels a bit like school, but we are learning a lot. We've begun our Kriol language classes, which we're quickly learning that is much easier to understand than to speak. We have 40 volunteers in our training class- much larger than we thought it would be! It's a good mix of people and we're not the oldest ones! We are the only married couple though. There's a handful of kids right out of college, many in they're mid-twenties, several around our age, then a few from late 40s to 60s. It's nice to have so much diversity. So we spend everyday from 8-5 with each other. Most of the guys play soccer in the evening- they've been challenged to a match with the local guys this Sunday. It's already been advertised on the radio here. We're in a "big" town, but it's still quite small. Downtown consists of a few shops and bars, two banks, and some small markets. The Taiwanese run all of the markets here, and the Mennonites supply most of the country with chicken, eggs, and dairy products- strange huh.

Last week we had our first village experience. We were broken into groups of 5 and sent to rural villages to do a needs assessment. It was very interesting- we were all a bit nervous at first, but it ended up being a great time. I spent the day in a Mayan village and Darren spend his day in a Spanish-Kriol village. Then yesterday we went to a village nearby here to learn about Mayan culture. We had some presentations, ate Mayan food, and then visited a Mayan ruin- Xuantinich (OK, so I'm sure that's not spelled right). It was really amazing- the first ruin we've ever seen. It was huge- we climbed to the top and then of course I got scared on the way down. Then last night we all went out to celebrate the 4th.

So we have classes for 2 1/2 more weeks in this town. After that we will go for our technical training for our specific jobs for two weeks. Following that we will go to Belize City for 5 days or so, have our swearing in, and then we'll move to our sites. We will find out on July 19 where we will be placed, and of course we are all trying to figure out where that may be. We're pretty sure that we'll be in the Toledo district in the south of Belize. If so, we will be tutored in one of the Mayan languages.

Well, enough rambling for now. We hope that you all are well. We plan on updating this much more often now, and we'll post some pictures soon.

Take care,

Marianne and Darren

Hi!! Darren and I are getting excited about going to Belize. We will be leaving on June 13, so I'm hoping to figure out this blog thing by then.