Saturday, July 10, 2010

Life these days...

Greetings from Central America!
Well I have been here almost exactly a month now...hard to Belize, huh?  :)  I'm located on an island called Ambergris Caye, which is a bit to the east of the mainland of Belize.  It's tiny slice of paradise in the Caribbean, which has (so-far) been clear of any hurricanes and overly dangerous tropical storms.  Look it up on a map sometime and start making plans to come visit me!  :)
I arrived on June 8th and spent that week settling in and getting reacquainted with life on the base.  I'm sharing a room with two other girls on staff, Alyssa and Louise.  The April school is already in week 11 of their lecture phase, so one more week and they'll be taking off for their outreach to Guatemala!  It's been really fun getting to know the new students and do life with them for the past few weeks.  Last week, I said goodbye to Kristin, or K2 as we called her, who became a very dear friend to me.  Kristin recently graduated with her masters in accounting from UT and was here for just a month volunteering at the base.  We hit it off almost instantly and had a blast hanging out.  I was sad to see her go.  :(
Now that I'm back on base as an intern, my official title is "Communications Coordinator." Basically I am involved in anything that someone may hear, read, or see regarding Destination Paradise.  Right now I'm working on a marketing plan, which involves a lot of research and strategy.  I'm having a lot of fun with it though and learning a ton of new stuff about social networking and marketing strategy.  A lot of people have asked what a typical day looks like, so....here you go!  6:30 get up, 7:00 breakfast, 7:30 read, 8:00 worship and devos, 9:00 work on marketing stuff, 1:00 lunch, 2:00 work on marketing stuff or other projects, 4:30 workout, 6:30 dinner, after dinner hang out/read/watch movies/whatever and then bed.  Pretty typical schedule for a weekday, and then on the weekends I'll often go into town which is about 15 minutes away, or do something like ride bikes, kayak, relax by the pool, etc.  

This past Wednesday was my 26th birthday (thanks to everyone who sent me some love on FB!).  It was a great day.  I woke up to a sweet birthday poem and flowers from my lovely roommate, Louise.  My other roommate, Alyssa made me dirt pudding (YUM!)  and then at night we had a bonfire.  So fun!  It was a wonderful celebration of a wonderful 26 years!  Woo hoo!
I am definitely living the island life here, where things are a lot sloooower and I have much less of the daily grind I became accustomed to living in Chicago.  I'm actually still getting used to the pace of things here and the flexibility of my work and life right now.  For the first few weeks I was feeling stir crazy and anxious/antsy being here.  But it's starting to become more normal to me, even though I've had to very purposefully allow myself to take things down a notch or two.  I'm learning to enjoy the quiet, the solitude and simplicity of my life, and embrace the time to just be with God and in fellowship with other people.  
I don't want to make this too long but, I do want to send out a prayer request for my director Chris.    As many of you know already, Chris was involved in a horseback riding accident about 3 weeks ago.  He was thrown from the horse and suffered instantaneous head injuries causing his brain to swell and bleed.  He spent 2 1/2 weeks in the ICU in Belize City, and part of that time he was in a medically-induced coma.  Fortunately he was released from the hospital on Sunday after CAT scans came back normal, however he still has a long way to go in the recovery phase.  He still experiences confusion and agitation from time to time and is very restricted in his daily activities.  We are very much praising God for how well Chris is doing, especially since all the doctors that treated him said this should have been a fatal accident.  However he still has a ways to go and could definitely use prayers for a full and speedy recovery.  Also please keep his wife, Lynn, in your prayers as this has been an incredibly stressful and draining couple of weeks.  
Well...that's all I have for now.  I'm sure you noticed I changed the look of my blog, so I hope you like it.  I'd love to hear your comments, so let me know what you think!  Also, notice that there are now seperate pages for things like photos and stuff, which will all be coming soon!  Fancy, fancy, huh! :)
I love you all, and so appreciate your friendship and support!
-Brittany

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