Well the first two weeks of school went great! Very busy but great. Dale is in a bit of a state of shock at the behavior of the students here. No one swears at him, they call him sir! They stand respectfully and willingly for prayer, they get excited about ideas he gives them for fundraising and run with it, they are quiet and do their work when you send them to the library, etc!! WOW. They are a nice group of kids. Our church family is really nice. They are a mixture of cultures, Spanish, Ketchi, and Creole. There are quite afew children and the girls are enjoying it also. The people here in the Valley come from: El Salvador, and parts of Belize, but everyone here is from somewhere else as this land was set aside about 20 some years ago by the Belizian gov. for refugees. Besides teaching Dale has been busy with building. There were so many things needed like shelves, cupboards, tables, computer desks and so on. Then there is the grass to keep mowed which is a big job. I keep very busy with homeschooling the girls, cleaning the church, cooking, cleaning, laundry and helping out at the school. I bet you thought there'd be no domestic chores here, HA! The electricity goes out every once and a while and the water does too. But God always turns both back on. The scorpions and tarantulas have not been around as much as at first because I don't think they like to be where we are really, they'd rather have their own space. I can live with that! Actually the tarantulas don't bother you, you just catch them in some container and move them out away from the school and that's it. The scorpions I'm not so fond of I tend to anialate them when I see them! We had a great big (6foot) snake climbing up the wall of one of our buildings the other day and we didn't know if it was poisonous so another lady and I thought it should be killed and she did get it down and wacked it with a machete. Later we found out that it was a good snake as it eats rats, mice, and other poisonous snakes. Now we know. We went to the Belize Zoo today to see exactly which snakes are what. It was wonderful. I'll try to post some of the animal pictures. Belize is a beautiful country with lots to see. It is fairly expensive for us to do any tourist things but we try to do some. Our trooper is running well now that Dale did some tuneup stuff. What a blessing a vehicle is! Alot of the men and boys here bike to Belmopan every day. That is 10 miles each way and it is not an easy ride. The road is terrible. These people are in incredible shape! We have one 85 year old church member who walks a couple miles to come to church each week. Most people don't have vehicles so bikes or feet are the most common. Also gas is about $1.60 a liter here so that makes it hard or impossible for people too. Well gotta go I'll write more later. Take care and God bless.

The school has a beautiful view of the valley and the mountains in the distance. Our living area is good size and then we have a large kitchen area that we share with Rhonda, a wonderful lady that was here when we got here. She has been here for a year and was able to help us settle in. We've seen some beautiful places like the blue hole, we also went for a couple days to Caye Caulker which is an island off the coast of Belize City. There we were able to do some snorkling which we all very much enjoyed. The girls took to snorkling great! We saw a baby octopus, lots of wonderful colored fish, we also swam with nurse sharks and rays. When we got back to the school it was full steam ahead getting ready for school to start. The days were just a whirlwind of activity as there was so much building, cleaning, sorting books, setting up classrooms, setting up the library, and setting up our living area. Then we had to start planning the schools inaguration ceremony. Learning to get to Belmopan on the bus was interesting, it leaves here in the valley at 6:30 or 7:00 am and it gets to Belmopan at about 8:00. Then you have to navigate the markets, stores and find a bathroom along the way, all before 10:00 when you have to carry all your bags onto the bus and hope you don't have to stand all the way home. The buses here get very full!!! The one morning we got onto the bus and just got on our way when we got stuck in the biggest pothole I've ever seen. The bus was in the hole so deep that the step into it was right level with the ground. It took another bus to pull it out backwards. Then Dale noticed that one of the duel tires on one side was shredding. He said to the driver " do you think that tire is going to make it?" The driver laughed and assured him that it would but just before we got to town it disintigrated. Nothing happened as the other tires were somewhat ok but it was a good thing that we were close to town.

Mexico was beautiful in parts. Especially the mountain areas.

Our trip began in mid June when we said goodby to our place in northern Saskatchewan and headed out to make some visits to family and friends before leaving Canada. Once into the USA we entered the HEAT ZONE!! The mid west was baking in 100 degree weather and we were very thankful for our air conditioning. Spot (our dog) was extremely happy about the ac too! We were able to enjoy some wonderful places in the States on our way also. We then made a stop with friends in Houston and had a much needed break from driving for a week. On to the Mexican border. We left early incase it would take along time and we were happy that it only took 2 hours to get through the border. They aren't very organized so that's what took the time, but we didn't have any trouble at all getting across. They didn't even care that we had Spot. We showed them the list of belongings we had so they just looked in and said fine.
The first part through Matamoros and on for about an hour and a half was great road, but then we turned off the main road towards Tampico and there was considerably less road!! At the start it was a very arid landscape but as we continued on it became considerabley more lush. In Veracruz we stopped for pizza and as we were waiting a couple and their little boy came in. Dale said ola to the man and he said hi back and told Dale that he likes to practise his english whenever he can. During the conversation we found out that he is an adventist colporteur working in that area and once a month they go to eat there for a special treat. We had a wonderful visit with this family and they brightened our day. It's really neat to see who God will put in your path. The mountain roads were absolutely spectacular, as was the road along the ocean. One thing that was hard while driving was the fact that the drivers in Mexico pass wherever and whenever they feel like it!! The one day we were delayed getting on our way and were abit frustrated until we came upon a horrific accident between a bus and a big truck. There were many people killed and the ditches were littered with debris. We waited 3 hours before the road was cleared enough to pass. The vehicles were lined up for 2 kms infront of us. Needless to say we thanked the Lord for delaying us and keeping us out of that accident. Speaking of the roads in Mexico, there are also many many tolls to pay, and the price keeps going up as you go! Another thing that there are many of is speed bumps, however a more acurate name would be speed mountains!! They are huge!!! If you are going any speed but crawl, you'll bottom out. We had quite a time through Mexico because neither Dale nor I can speak Spanish. We were going to brush up on it but we got so busy before we left that we never did. Dale used to know quite abit but when you don't use it... anyway God always seemed to put someone who could speak some english into our path. We only had real frustration two times, once at a hotel and once at a gas station. We managed to get understood both times at long length!! Getting to the Mexico / Belize border we thought we were home free, think again! We went through the Mexican border side and didn't see anywhere to stop and get checked out of the country and so on we went over a bridge assuming that it would be on the other side. Never assume!!! Suddenly we are going into the Belize border whoa! We turned around and went back to the other side of the bridge, however, how do we now prove that we are not coming from Belize? The Mexicans didn't believe us about what had happened mostly because they didn't speak any english!! Finally we found one official who could speak english somewhat and we explained what happened. he was great about it but the guys he explained to didn't beleive it very easily. Finally they let us through and we needed to get money back for our van, as we had to pay a fee to come into the country in a vehicle. Well you guessed it, by the time we got all that straightened out we found that the boarder cash office we needed was closed and we would have to spend another night in Mexico but this time with the added benifit of being illegal. We would have to get stamped in the morning! Fun hey? We thought that no border could be more unorganized. Then we got to the Belize boarder the next morning and guess what?... At least these folks were very friendly, while being totally unorganized! It took about another 2 hours and a large wack of money before we got across that one. About 4o mins down the road Dale said... " I don't remember them stamping our passports." Well whadaya know, illegal again! Back to the border we go hoping that we don't get stopped on the way. We get back and the same friendly folks very non chalontly tell us " Oh yeah you have to go up to that other building to stamp your passports" And I ask, why couldn't they have told us that before? That done we were now legally in Belize and we continued on our way. Belize is english speaking so we could relax. We found it to be cleaner than Mexico. About 3 hours later we arrived at Belmopan and began to ask how to get to the Valley of peace? We got the general direction and headed out. At the corner that we thought we should turn we saw a lady waiting and asked her if she knew where it was, we found that she was waiting for the bus to go to the Valley so we offered her a ride and she showed us the way. What a road!!!!!!!! I actually think it's just a pretend road, they just tell you it's a real road. It is horendous. Our poor van didn't do very well and we did end up selling it and getting a trooper instead which can handle it much better. I'll write more later. God bless