Busy week

We're now in possession of a great vehicle (Toyota truck with really big tires)! The Word at Work purchased it this week and we'll be using while we're here. Valley of Peace is about 15 miles from the highway, accessible by a dirt road that's pretty rough and almost impassible after lots of rain, so this is a huge perk and will make shopping much easier (no more trips into town on the bus with ice chest in tow). Speaking of shopping . . .


. . . thought this was funny! Josh Tam is here visiting/working with us for a while, and he took this picture of Ginger during a trip to the grocery store this week.


Belize Independence Day was Thurs, September 21. They are celebrating 25 years of being an independent country! This is a picture from the school parade in Valley of Peace, held on Wednesday. It's a Standard 1 class from the Catholic School (one of the classes Ginger works with often). Thursday was a holiday, so Tim, Josh and Ginger travelled into the town of San Ignacio that day to see their big parade--quite the experience!


On Friday afternoon, we took 14 girls from the children's home in Belmopan to shop for shoes in Belize City. It was quite a trip! The girls had such a fun time picking out and trying on their shoes, and afterwards we all went for ice cream. The children's home (called the King's Home) is where Tim and Josh will be working this coming week--they'll be building some new kitchen cabinets. Tim with one of the girls at the King's Home:


Other momentous event of the week: Ginger held a bug! It's some type of huge grasshopper/leafy-looking thing.


And, finally, we found our first real tarantella in the house this week (turns out those other huge spiders were not tarantellas)! We must credit our Canadian friends with the picture . . . ours didn't turn out so well, but we knew many of you wanted to see one of our eight-legged friends.


Phew!