Why I Just Started Doing This

Lately, I have been very disappointed with myself for not doing a great job of keeping in touch with people at home and not describing to them (to you actually) about what life is like in Belize. Most people have an idea of where I work and what I've been doing but still don't have a sense of what JVI is, what Belize is like, and the details of the past seven months. This is because:

1) After the first month of being in Belize everything started to feel normal and routine like. So I didn't think anything that I was doing was that unusual or crazy. However, after reading a couple of other JV blogs I realized that there is nothing normal about living in a country no one has really heard of and that the best, the worst, the funniest, and the most eye-opening aspects of being a Jesuit Volunteer, teaching at Sadie Vernon High School, and living in Belize come across in the everyday events that could be easily dismissed as unimportant or normal.

2) I don't have access to a computer that often. That is still the case but I have forced myself to either go to an internet cafe (they're not cafes but are just places to access the internet. I don't know what else you’d call them) or ask one of my roommates who has internet at work to let me use their computer.

3 and most importantly.....) Writing a letters by hand and receiving real mail are a lot more gratifying and fulfilling than doing so virtually. In email everything is as equally near as it is far. There is a lack of presence of the distance between the sender and the receiver that is evident in a piece of mail with a foreign stamp that took several weeks to deliver than it is with an email that can be typed quickly and delivered instantaneously. The distance from home and living in a different culture is an fundamental part of these two years in Belize. The old school method helps me appreciate that fact more fully.

However, I convinced myself to stop becoming old crank who reminisces about the way it was done in the past before my time and that the disappointment of returning home without my family and friends knowing anything about the past two years other than general details trumps my dissatisfaction of using a computer. So this will be ONE way for ME to keep in touch with you not for YOU to keep in touch with me. I still expect handwritten letters addressed to:

Danny Macri
St. Martin DePorres
P.O. Box 489 (not 789, the number I've been using for my return address for the past 6 months)
Belize City, Belize
Central America

after any entry that stirs you (along with care packages). Thanks!