things are going to get weird now, aren't they?

one morning i woke up and put my shoes on and there was a toad in my shoe. i wondered... 'what could this mean? what sort of omen is this, or is it?' then after that things got wierder.



the moon got strange...


and then, while we were on a hike last week todd was clearing the trail with a machete and cut a vine snake right in half thinking it was a vine. it was hanging right above his head, and the bloody tail swung down into his face to his alarm. the sad snake slowly looked at his wound and fell off the branch. it was very sad. enlarge the picture for a better view.


and some other wierd stuff happened... but i wondered if all the 'roots' were branching out from the toad in my shoe.

Mr. Poots, the Titman

i have named this blog after a cement plant box outside of the dangriga garifuna museum. on the huge cement plant boxes outside of the building they are thanking donars, and apparently this is one of them. if ANYONE has ANY information on who Mr. Poots the Titman is, please, please comment immediately. i'll post a picture if i get one.


this is in hopkins. the little village to the south of ours. pay close attention to the writing on the wall...


the prize goes to the person who can think of the best watermelon pun. the only one i could come up with was...i can't decide which melon is more full of crap...help me.


OUR ROOMMATES!!!!!!!!!! here they are! little dillan, brian, and jazzy jr. RASHIDA! first week of school!


well, i had a very "beachy" birthday! thanks to everyone for the wishes! i missed you all dearly!


At last! We as "great americans" finally have the warm blessing of the presidency. This is at swearing in. They only sent their sincerest best and their regrets that they couldn't be there in person.

Well, i thought i would take a brief moment to fill everyone in on a few facts and fun of our new home. first off things are beginning to roll. todd is working hard as ever at the park, and i have started working at the schools. all the kids wear uniforms and they are so cute! there isn't really any separation of church and school which is fun and amusing. one of my schools is named the "Holy Ghost Primary School" and is right on the beach. in the morning they draw pictures of the beautiful things God has created for them. i'm working in 4 schools. one in our village and 3 in dangriga town. dangriga is the kind of town that you don't want to walk around eating an icecream cone, because you are afraid of what might get in it. but we like it.

SHOPPING: most of the clothes that you can buy in dangriga look like the 'bedazzler' gone wrong. not that the bedazzler was ever okay, but you know what i mean. i needed a new pair of jeans and couldn't find any in town, so the whole neighborhood colaborated b/c i "just couldn't go to the pageant dressed like that." i picked the most conservative of the 3 pairs they collected for me and still ended up looking like Shakira.."oh baby when you talk like that..."

EATING OUT: pretty much anything that you can get at anyone's house in all of belize is what most restaurants sell. Rice and beans. so if people want to go out, it's not because they are sick of what they eat, but simply sick of making it. we have found an awesome pizza place in hopkins that we limit to once a week.

well, i have more, but i'm already embarrassed by how long this is. but just one last thing... the joke's on who??? after reading the comments from the last blog, i am beginning to wonder who's laughing. could we take a tally of those who thought i actually was in a beauty contest??

haad tymz.

well, this is me and mr. peck. i was trying my hand at the machete. mr. peck was teaching me the trick of the trade... always cut out. we have become his young, moldable apprentices.

well, i did it!! due to a number of requests on the blog i entered a beauty contest! miss belizean dream! this is swim wear!! actually this is at our beach party after swearing in as volunteers. everyone thought it would be real funny to see me in high heels. sorry everyone, but i couldn't bring myself to wear a swimsuit.


well, we decided to make the bike trek to cockscom jaguar preserve. it ended up being quite the ordeal. we rode our bikes about a total of almost 30 miles, 12 of which were on a rocky, hilly dirt road with snakes and stuff on it on our beach cruisers. we ended up having to throw our bikes into the back of someones truck at about 10:30 that night. but it was fun. Todd wouldn't stop on his bike for anything, except for the sound of a bird. so this is nerd picture of the year. he saw a hawk.


and here is the beautiful jaguar preserve. all to ourselves. we will have a rude awakening when tourist season begins.


our first boa encounter. it's weird to live in a place where you can say... 'i think i will sit here until i see a snake,' or 'i think i will look over this ledge until i see a crocadile' and then it really happens

another pictureless blog..

sorry everyone. once again i can't put pictures on at the moment, but i will work on it...but as alina so eloquently put "real bloggers don't need pictures..only many many many words to paint pictures.."or something like that.

well things have been wild and crazy around here. in the past 2 weeks we have consolidated twice with all of peace corps for hurricanes. but all is well. it has been flooding like crazy. roads and shops have been flowing like rivers, but the great thing is, is that a little flooding doesn't stop anyone around here. they will just keep on shopping in 2 feet of water and continue to sit and watch people go by on table tops while the water runs beneath them. the flood has also brought out some great road kill. there are frogs, crabs, and turtles lying about all dried out like worms all over the place.

so between hitch hiking and going to todd's park we have also found some GREAT entertainment. apparently, beauty pageants are a BIG hit here. they are all over the place almost every weekend. however, unlike at home, they don't bother to disguise the fact that it's a "beauty" pageant with words like 'scholarship'. they are just blatant about it. the one we went to was called, "miss bamboo." there were a whopping 4 contestents. it was everything we hoped it wouldn't be. and in the middle of this uplifting family event there was a beer drinking contest. classy. it was great.

we are slowly getting into our jobs, which is about as fast as it can go here. at the park they pretty much just boss todd around and he spends most of his time there clearing trails with is machete. everytime he suggests something, mr. ramon just says, "that's right, that's right." and goes on whistling and ignores him and does what he wants. i'm trying to bring a "woman's touch" to the visitor center. just kidding. actually i just sweep it out and reorganize it and stuff. so are the lives we lead.. oh and we got beach cruisers! so we are trying to feel more normal by riding bikes around and making cookies whenever possible. we miss you all! hope you are doing great! keep posting and don't let life "blog" you down! just kidding.

Hey everyone... just real quick i wanted to send you our address and our most reachable current phone number:

Silk Grass Village
Stann Creek District
Belize, Central America

011-501-669-2929 or you can try our unreliable cell phone: 011-501-669-8059. Hope you are all doing well! We miss you all! oh, and i'm being kicked off my email, so from now on you can send emails to todds:
toadmckay@yahoo.com.

AND WE OFFICIALLY SWORE IN AS VOLUNTEERS!! at the U.S. embassy. We'll post pictures soon. LOVE YOU ALL!
Ashli ..and Todd

Butte called...

So it's been a while. We have officially gone to our new site. Perhaps the title will give you an idea of what it's like. You never know what your past expierences will be leading up to..But just like Butte, it is right in the middle of a lot of sweet places. We have been in Belmopan for the past few days. We had to do a hurricane lock down of sorts, but all is well. If you youtube peace corps, you will see what it was like being stuck in a hotel with 64 volunteers. And so with that, here are some picture updates...


Well, here it is. Todd's "office" for the next 2 years. Well that was really bad humor, but you know what I'm saying.


This one is a little out of order... but we were part of a youth rally in Orange Walk. It was quite the event. Todd blended right in.


This is the road on the way to the Mayflower National Park just a coulple of miles outside our village.


And here is proof...Todd and the infamous Mr. Peck himself. Just quite literally cutting out todd's work for the next while with his machete.


This is a waterfall inside the park...


We got to go on this awesome boatride up a river to some Mayan Ruins. There is a huge lagoon when you get there. On the way up the river todd saw a fellow volunteer pop up out of the water holding a rack of fish he had just speared. Small world i guess.


The weekend before we went to our site we stayed in San Ingasio. It was awesome and we visited a meninite town while we were there. You have to cross a river on a ferry to get there.. so todd took the initive and asked if he could take over the manpowered crank and get it across. unfortunately, his arm wasn't as beefy as the workers and he is still recovering. There are only 2 guys that work there and they both do 12 hour shifts everyday... so you can imagine.


We went up to Pine Ridge while we were there and went to a cave and swam in the waterfalls. it was sweet.


Last but not least... My friend Ang was in town!(like it's normal..) and to illustrate what a small country belize is... first i met up with her in Belmopan--on purpose in the middle of country. Then we randomly ran into her a week later in Orange walk which is in the north part of the country. Then the very next day she yelled to us out the window of a bus in Cayo on her way to Guatamala located clear over on the west part of the country. So it goes. It was great.

Silk Grass Here we come

Today we just got our site assignment, we are headed to a village called Silk Grass, it is just outside of Dangriga, the district town of Stann Creek, it is just off the southern highway, right in the middle of the country. I will be working with Mayflower Bociwina National Park, and ash will be working with Junior Achievements, which is a youth program working on computer, business and pretty everything a youth program would do. Im not exactly sure what i will be doing, probably just working with the park in every aspect from marketing, signs, bring people in, working with the nonprofit that supports the the park and everything i can imagine, we are really excited, to see the site and meet the people there. It is right on the edge of the maya mtns and it should be pretty nice area, we are also rather close to the jaguar preserve, it is a town of about 1000 people with about 60% mestizo, 20% and garifuna and mayan. So it should be interesting, also ash wants everyones home address, so if you could post your addresses on the comment section, we love you all, we will post pictures when we can
todd ash