Friday

Another busy day in Belize.
We headed out to the three villages to wrap up construction projects and visit the schools. We played a lot of classic games like Barrel of Monkeys, Uno, dominoes, ring toss and checkers (on a giant outdoor checkerboard.) We also did some face painting and finished up some other projects.

The entire team went to Pueblo Viejo for a beautiful presentation by the students and staff. They performed traditional dances including the Cacao dance and a modern interpretive dance. The students sang their national anthem (all five verses) and the principal presented small thank you gifts to everyone who helped in the village.
After the presentations, we were treated to lunch in the school dining area. The chicken soup was delicious and we even got carrot cake for dessert.

Tessa and Barb had to leave from Pueblo Viejo to catch a ride to the Punta Gorda airport. Our woodworking friend, Pedro, was kind enough to offer to pick them up. He was a little late which leads to the first quote of the day: Just call an Uber!

From there we drive back to Santa Cruz for another lovely thank you celebration, and, you guessed it, ANOTHER LUNCH! This time it was chicken caldo, tortillas and a cacao drink. Ann was presented with a Mayan blouse made by a woman in the village. The seamstress must have been measuring her in a sneaky way because she got the size just tight.

The next stop was Santa Elena for a third thank you ceremony, but thankfully not another lunch!

We stopped at a waterfall on the way home and took some nice pictures. There was a lot of thunder as we headed back to the car, but the rain held off until after we were all tucked in for the night.

Dinner was at a restaurant right on the water, the perfect ending to a great week.

A coupe funny quotes today. The first was from Dawn. She noticed that Abbe had a bunch of mosquito bites and said, "If you don't get malaria, no one will!" (FYI- we are all taking anti-malaria meds).

Chris and Barb were painting picnic tables with a really bad paintbrush and one of them said, "that's not a paintbrush, it's a hairbrush!"