Bye Orange Walk!!

We can’t believe we are halfway done our journey as peer educators. It has been amazing making bonds with the students and seeing them get more comfortable with us by the end of the three weeks. We had lots of fun with the students on the last day as we played many games and organized fun activities for them. We have learned so much throughout the last three weeks. The students and teachers were so welcoming to us and made us feel comfortable while teaching. It was amazing to see the impact that we had in both the classroom and on their lives. It was definitely very hard to say goodbye to all the smiling faces at all of our schools.Our week was filled with smiles, laughs and lots of rice and beans. We are definitely going to miss the Orange Walk community, our host, Ricky and all of our students. At the end of the week we got to meet up with Secondary in Belize City. It was great to exchange stories about the past three weeks and see how they’ve been. Since it was a holiday weekend, we adventured out to the capital of Belize, Belmopan to explore more of the beautiful country of Belize. We had the opportunity to go cave tubing and swim in St. Herman’s Blue Hole. It was awesome to learn more about the history and see more of this beautiful country.We are sad to say goodbye to all our memories in Orange Walk, but are very excited to see what Belize City has in store for us.Ali and EmmaWe have loved our last week of teaching in Orange Walk! The kids have warmed up to us, learned to trust us and have absolutely stolen our hearts. Our puberty and sexual responsibility lessons were a huge hit with lots of laughs and teaching! Despite missing our bus one day we have loved teaching everyday in the classroom. Watching kids of all ages come together at lunch to play with our “football” (soccer ball) has been one of the best parts teaching in Carmelita. We decided to buy a soccer ball for each of the classes we taught in hopes they continue to be so active and play so inclusively together. Saying goodbye to the students was one of the hardest days, we can’t believe how fast time has flown by here. We cannot wait to start in our new schools in Belize city and take all of the lessons learned in Carmelita and bring them into our new schools!Vivian and SiobhanThis week we finished off at San Pablo government school by teaching Goals/Decision Making, Puberty and Sexual Responsibility to the St.4-6’s combined. Parents were invited, and the students enjoyed playing Puberty Jeopardy at the end of the lesson! On our last day, our students surprised us with a presentation, making it extremely hard to say goodbye.This week at San Jose we taught Goals/Decision Making and Puberty. It was wonderful getting to talk to our students and see the amazing goals they had set for themselves. On Thursday, San Jose had their open/exhibition day which consisted of cultural presentations, and projects the students had been working on for the past year. It was the perfect way to end off the three weeks at the school.Britt and JoshThe past three weeks have flown bye! The students were all ready to learn about mental health, self-esteem, goal setting and group violence. They had lots of fun playing the activities we planned for them. They got very competitive playing a trivia game on mental health and loved playing black magic on the last day. During the last day with our standard 6’s, one of our classes had a cultural food day. We were so happy to have the opportunity to taste a variety of Belizean foods made by the students and watched them present their recipes to the class. We are so sad to say goodbye to the students and teachers at Trial Farm. We loved getting to know the students over the last three weeks.