Monday

We met at the airport at 4:15 am on Saturday morning to begin our adventure!  After a stop in Houston to catch up with our teammates from San Francisco and Seattle, we were on our way to Belize!  June must be a big month for groups traveling to Belize, we have never seen the airport so crowded.  Our bags all arrived promptly, and, as usual, Ann charmed the Customs folks into only charging us $15 total for the 23 bags we brought into the country,

We made a stop at Amigos Restaurant on our way down to Punta Gorda, and despite hitting some pretty heavy rain, still made it to the Nazareth Retreat Center in just about five hours.  Since most of the drive was in daylight, we were able to enjoy the beautiful countryside.

 

On Sunday morning we headed to Mass at St Joseph church in the village of Jacintoville. Father Frank Schmidt said Mass, he is originally from Washington, MO.  Most of the prayers and songs were in the Mayan language of Kekchi.  The gospel was the story of St John the Baptist, and Father Schmidt's advice to us ws to go out and make a difference! Perfect words to start the week.  After Mass, one of the men from Jacintoville invited all 13 of us home with him to share dinner.  We hope that he asked his wife first since she was making chicken caldo and homemade tortillas.  The dinner was delicious. We then headed up to the Lodge at Big Falls to check it out for future trips. The little cabanas are hidden back in the forest and it would be a great place to stay.  Our next stop was back in Punta Gorda at the graduation ceremony for the University of Belize.  Donnisio Sho, an assistant to Dorla Bowman at Socio-economic Outreach was getting his Associate Degree in Agriculture. Some of us have worked with Donnision various projects.  The ceremony was nice and we were happy to share in Donnisio's big day. He will be continuing his education in Taiwan! He earned a scholarship to pursue his education.

 

First thing Monday morning we headed into town to pick up some paint for the school in Santa Teresa.  In typical Belize fashion, this involved stopping at three hardware stores, two of which were not yet open, and then winding up back at the first store!  We hit the road for Santa Teresa and were thrilled to discover that a large part of the road had been paved since the last time most of us were here.  The men of the village were working hard, along with the older students, to get all of the walls scrubbed and ready for paint.  Children are the same everywhere, kids, water, what  mess! 

We broke out the hand puppets and led the children in a rousing rendition of Old McDonald had a Farm!  For some reason, Farmer McDonald has a frog on his farm, but the kids didn't seem to question that.  Kathy and Judy helped the little kids make their own sock puppets, complete with bow ties and flower accents.  The bigger kids made beaded crosses, despite a few false starts (by the adults, the kids did great!)  At lunch time, we were invited to lunch at the home of Ofelia Sam.  Ofelia is one of our scholarship students and has just completed her third year of high school.  She showed us her report card and was proud to report that she is ranked fourth in a class of 20 students. Her mother cooked us a delicious lunch of chicken caldo and tortillas. 

Meanwhile the guys made a trip back into PG to get more paint and some wood to repair the outer doors of the school.  In the afternoon all of the students in Santa Teresa had their health and hygiene lessons and practiced their tooth brushing.  Sam, Donna and Ann went down to San Lucas and spent the afternoon playing badminton, volleyball and soccer with the kids.  They caught a ride with Mauricio and while they were getting ready to go, a woman was walking up the road carrying a tiny little baby and asking for a ride to the doctor. We came to discover that the baby was only a week old (delivered by C Section!) and she had walked over five miles to the health clinic only to find out that the doctor was not available. Talk about one tough lady!

All in all, a fabulous and exhausting day!  It is HOT and humid, but we are happy and having a ball. More tomorrow!