Happy New Year!

We've survived our South American Christmas travels--traveling by trail, river, road, and air in Guyana, Brazil, Bolivia and Peru. We even managed to find quite a few pizzarias and some snow over near Machu Picchu. We head back to Orealla this weekend. The second term starts on Tuesday morning and we have our World Teach Field Director coming to check out our site the following week. We'll probably be back to Corriverton to check email during our spring break in April (maybe sooner depending on the boat schedule). Hope you enjoy the pictures and have an excellent New Year's!
Carrie and Thomas

PS As always, a more detailed picture album is available on our flickr webpage. Feel free to check it out (you don't have to be a member to view the pics.)

Our First Leg of the Journey Was 15+ hrs On This Bus Across Muddy Roads (it's the rainy season right now)


Boats Docked In Manaus, Brazil (ready to head into the rainforest)


Our Cabin On Our Amazon Boat Trip (5 days on the boat!)


If We Hadn't Ordered a Cabin, We Would Have Spent 5 Days Swinging on the Second Deck in Hammocks! (Not so good for a girl who gets seasick!)


Copocabana, Brazil (a beautiful town on Lake Titicaca--the largest, highest lake in the world)


The Upper Deck of The Boat (w/one of main rainstorms in the background)


Motorcycle Taxi at the Bolivia Border


Train Ride in Peru


La Paz, Elevation 12,000+ feet (delightfully chilly!)


Incan Ruins of Machu Piccu, Peru

It's Christmas Break!

Merry Christmas from Guyana. Christmas break has started here already (kinda sweet, our vacation is over three weeks long!) so we're doing some traveling around South America. Since we're back within internet range, we thought we'd post some of our latest pictures from Orealla; for a more complete set, check out our flicker album.

God's blesssings during the holiday season and for the new year!

Thomas & Carrie


End of Term 8th Grade Form Class Christmas Party (chicken chosen & weighed live by Miss Carrie herself!)

Cutlassing our Christmas Tree :)

Agriculture Science Students Preparing The Ground For Our Garden

Thomas and His Girls

A Girl's Best Friend (our favorite dog in Orealla)

Our Newly Constructed Flower Bed

Saturday Morning Ritual: Laundry By Hand On the Back Porch

The Only Way To Get To Orealla; Hammocks Are Essential For Comfort on the 2-8 hour (50 mile) Boat Ride

Carrie In The Middle of Our 14-mile hike/run To Siparuta (a neighboring Amerindian community)

Mid-term Update

Well, we're officially halfway through the first school term (there are three). A computer conference on the coast has brought us within internet range again, so we thought we'd post a few pics to go along with the emailed stories. Our complete picture album as well as more detailed explanations can be found on our flicker account.

Overall life is good. We're finding new things to adjust to daily, but also little pleasures (like the student who delivers fresh bread at 5:30 in the morning). We're starting to settle into the school system and are really enjoying the students and many of the staff. Thomas is teaching IT and math. Carrie is teaching English and science. We're a bit more remote than we thought, so it looks like our next update might be Christmas.

Thanks for your support! Enjoy the pics!

A view from the cliffs (after climbing the 100 ft hill on the way to school)


The village chief (on right) and a minister from Amerindian affairs

Orealla School

Carrie with some of her students

Our New House (from the outside)


Our New House (from the inside)

Gregory's Stelling Shop; if he doesn't have it, then you can't find it in Orealla!

The labaria we killed with a machete in our closet! It was 3-4 feet long and is one of the deadliest snakes in the Amazon. (An Amerindian died about a month ago from a bite from this snake).

Downtown Orealla

Life is pretty relaxed around here! Here's what the stelling looks like on a typical afternoon.

Getting to know Orealla

Hi all... we're having troubles getting all the pics we wanted to load online, but this will at least give you a flavor of what our town and the tarantulas inside our house look like. :)

We're heading into the rainforest!

Hi all! Our orientation is complete and now we're headed to our site. We're still not sure what house we're living in, so our address remains: Orealla Village, Guyana, South America. :) We'll update the blog/newsletters whenever we get internet access again (maybe a month?) If you're curious, head over to http://www.flickr.com/photos/54808715@N00/ to check out a photo collection! Enjoy the rest of your summer!

We have an address!

Hi All!
We've arrived in Guyana! The pics above give you a snapshot of the past few days... our moving truck across country, the types of boats around here, and a few of the students we've met. (We start practice teaching this week!)

We still have some unknowns about where exactly we will be living but if you mail stuff to our village, it will get to us. Our address is as follows:

Thomas Brand/Carrie Vander Zwaag
Orealla Village
Corentyne River, Region 6
Guyana, South America

We are currently writing this from a small town called Bartica, and we arrived here as a group a few days ago via a crazy ferry ride. It was completely packed and we had to haul luggage up over the side and then scramble up the side of the boat as it was starting to move away. There was essentially no room to stand or sit, and some of us had to sit on top of luggage with feet hanging over the side of the ferry. Did I mention it was 5 and a half hours long?? :) We made it anyway and now we are relaxing a bit. We spent the last week at a college dorm in Georgetown (the capital of Guyana) where even there the electricity was sporadic and the water even more so. Bucket "showers" were quite common. The humidity is quite extreme and we are all constantly sweating. That being said, it is more mild than most midwest or east coast summers (just no airconditioning).

It has been quite an experience so far. The food has tasted great (although portions are small), and our accomodations have actually been much better than we thought they would be. However, our ultimate location of Orealla will be quite different. These first three weeks are primarily training for our teaching positions that will start on Sept. 4. We have heard many speeches from various officials from the Ministry of Education as well as from security officials, the U.S. Embassy, as well as others. Bartica will start to give us a glimpse of what it will be like in the interior. Bartica is known as "the gateway to the interior" though it still has somewhat of a "city" or town feel. Hey, they have internet!! (sort of--doesn't work so well, but hopefully you all get this).

We are staying healthy aside from numerous bug bites and a bit of heat rash. Don't worry, we are taking our malaria medication and sleeping under mosquito nets!

We should have access to e-mail for the next two weeks, but when we get to Orealla, we have been informed that we have no internet, no phone, and can only communicate with the Field Director in Georgetown via radio. We will be 4 to 8 hours (by boat) to the nearest town with better communication facilities. There may be a speed boat that can do it in 2 hours, but we will need to look into that. We will try to send another update (at least one) before we head out to our site in the interior. For map buffs, Orealla is on the eastern border of Guyana with Suriname and about 50 miles south of the coast, but it doesn't show up on most maps. Google search is probably best.

Take care, and we will keep in touch as best we can!

The Decision Has Been Made! :)

Dear Friends,

As many of you know, we’ve felt God nudging us to do something different next year. Thank you for the prayer support that so many of you provided as we explored many different missions and humanitarian relief organizations. After much prayer and discussion, we feel led to begin work in Guyana (South America) in August.

What We’ll Be Doing
We'll be working with an organization called WorldTeach, which for the past 20 years has placed teachers in struggling public schools of developing countries around the world. We feel called to Guyana for several reasons, some of which include: the official language is English, there are openings in math and science (areas that we have experience in), we’ll be able to interact with native students in a rural setting, and WorldTeach provides training to teach in a manner consistent with the culture of the country. Guyana desperately needs teachers; locals who get trained as teachers rarely return to their native towns, leaving for the Caribbean or the US (where pay is higher). The average Gayanese high school freshman is performing at a level equivalent to 6th grade in the States.

What is World Teach?
World Teach is not missions-based; it is a non-profit, non-governmental organization affiliated with the Center for International Development at Harvard University. However, World Teach has made it clear that getting involved in a community spiritually is an excellent way to become better connected with the community’s students and families. We plan to bring our instruments and contribute musically to the church as well as provide support in other areas. If we are able to raise more than the $10,000 needed to cover living and classroom necessities, we hope to contribute to local church programs and community development projects such as water treatment, etc.

Ways to Stay in Touch
Internet & telephone accessibility varies greatly throughout Guyana. That being said, email is still the fastest way to communicate with us (although it may take us up to a month to be get to a spot with internet access. We do not have an established mailing address yet, so the safest bet is to send “snail” mail through Thomas’ parents: 11409 Quincy St.
Holland, MI 49424.

Prayer Support
For those of you who have asked about prayer support, thanks so much! Here are our current prayer requests:
-That we'll be placed in a community where we can witness to others and expand the reach of an existing church
-For good health and wise decisions on which vaccines and meds to take (malaria is present throughout Guyana)
-For safety as we move our "stuff" across the country and proceed to New York for an August 1 departure
-For staff relations at the school that we’ll be teaching; from what we’ve read, it sounds like tensions can run high

Also, if you would like to make a tax-deductible financial contribution to this project, you can make a check out to Rosewood Church (with Guyana: Thomas & Carrie in the memo line). The Church's address is: Rosewood Church, 10115 Rose Street
Bellflower, CA 90706.

Future Plans
Our current tentative plan is to switch from WorldTeach to Interserve next summer. This missions organization places engineers on community development projects in some of the larger cities of Middle Eastern and Asian countries. Carrie would likely be teaching missionary kids or ex-pats at an international school. From there, we'll take it a step at a time.

Thank you all in advance for your support and prayers and we look forward to what God has in store. Though we do not yet know the reliability or availability of e-mail or telephones, we will try to keep you updated as much as possible throughout the year.

Yours in Christ,

Thomas Brand & Carrie VanderZwaag