day one of work

I spent my morning in PG (Punta Gorda) at the mental health clinic. Kriol a hodge-podge version of English is very hard to understand. You would think that we would be able to get it but no. Anyway, the hospital reminded me of hospitals in rural India, small, many patients to one room, and not in the best condition. Then we had an afternoon of orientation where we learned about the history of Belize, which I won't go into. Spent the afternoon trying to figure out why my wireless connection won't connect. I can see the network but it won't connect and cannot figure out why. Luckily the Ethernet input works. Any I wish my brother Dan was around to work his magic on my laptop.

I played with Ian, one of the staff members sons this afternoon. I brought out the trusty frisbee and we tossed around. He got pretty good after awhile. Perhaps I will convince him that ultimate is a better sport than soccer or I should say football is. :) Jimmy keeps emailing me about our trip to Peru which is making me excited to go. It is going to be fabulous.

There are tons of the birds around our "treehouse" at Hillside. I am making it my goal to learn what they are or at least the common ones. I realized that knowing the common birds back home help connect me to a sense of place.

One of the biggest things I have thought about recently is how trying to be environmentally friendly in the developing world, especially as a traveler is extremely hard. Plastic is everywhere and they definitely do not have recycling capabilities. Appliances are old and tend to use lots of energy. I find myself wondering how I would deal with it long-term basis if I moved here. And yet there are some things that they do better than us. A lot of the medical equipment that we throw away are re-used here. But I don't think that would be the case if money was not an issue. This reminds me of a story I read on how plastic jugs has replaced clay pots in India, creating a huge amount of waste as plastic does not degrade but clay pots do... I know I am off on an environmental rant. But such has been my thoughts as of late.

Tomorrow we head off to one of the villages.