Finally in Belize - WITH our BAGS!

Hey There! So it is Wednesday afternoon and our bags have FINALLY arrived. For those of you that didn't hear, we left Cristina's house at 4:30am on Monday morning for Dulles. We get there, check in, wait for our flight. 6:45am rolls around and they tell us the flight is delayed for engine problems. Our connection time in Charlotte was only an hour so they put us on a flight to Dallas on American instead of USAir and PROMISE us our bags will get there. After a long lay over in Dallas, we arrived into Belize City at 3pm (2 hours behind east coast time because they don't use daylight savings here). Our shuttle that was supposed to pick us up earlier in the morning was obviously not there but we see a guy holding a sign that says CORNERSTONE which is the place we are volunteering. So we wait with this guy and out comes a group of 12 undergrads from the University of Memphis who are coming to cornerstone for a week to do a natural healing course. We all manage to pile about 15 people into a small van - thank goodness Jim and I didn't have our luggage because it would not have fit. Jim and I both sat on the hot wheel hubs. These girls packed like they were going away for 3 months!
So a two hour not so comfy ride later, we arrive outside of San Ignacio. It is about 6pm there and the office of where we are supposed to go is closed. We are able to convince the driver to take us to the house we are supposed to be staying at. The place is actually pretty cute. It is a SMALL two bedroom house that we share with a great couple from Rhode Island, Jackie and Colin. They are a bit younger than us, 24, but are really cool. Most of the volunteers here are between 19 - 25. There are two other 28 year olds though! That first night, Colin and Jackie took us on a tour of the town and over to meet the other volunteers at "The Greenhouse" (the place they live). We got lucky at our place compared to theirs! We share our bathroom with just the four of us and we have our own washer and dryer. Our backyard looks out onto the Makal river which is really nice. We are renting the house from a lady that is in Canada for the summer and does some work with Cornerstone. We are even taking care of her 5 year old dog, Killer. The dog's name is a misnomer though - she is pretty timid actually! I feel pretty safe with her there though. We haven't seen many insects in the house except these tiny ants and a few small spiders. Apparently in the greenhouse the girls have seen 2 tarantulas so I feel pretty lucky!
Tuesday we spent in orientations with Cornerstone and getting to know the town. They are holding a huge conference in Belize City on Thursday with UNICEF for helping orphaned children with AIDS so everyone is pretty busy working on that. Jim and I have tried to get involved but people seem too busy right now. We spent the rest of the days swimming in the river with Jackie, Colin, Anna Mellia (a 19 year old quaker girl) and Jen (a college aged girl from Canada) talking about ideas for projects we would like to work on.
Wednesday the 18th, we just waited around at the house in the morning for our bags to FINALLY arrive. Jim had been wearing all of Colins clothes and I think my shirt was starting to mold to me. We just had lunch at Cornerstone, where we have it every weekday. Rice and beans with fried bananas and a tomato and cucumber salad. Fruit is everywhere here which is great. I think we are planning to head to Caye Cauker on the caribean this weekend with Colin and Jackie since it's a long weekend (some sort of holiday on Monday!).
Hope everyone is well in the States and we miss you all. We will try and write more about the people we are meeting etc. Just trying to catch up now on things!