What is a "barbecue"?

If you've been keeping up with the blog, then hopefully the title today makes sense. Otherwise, you'll get it later. :)

Anyway, I'm not a big fan of having to cover 2 days worth of work in one night, yet I keep putting myself in that situation a lot as of the last few days and am about to do so again the next few as well! I'm going to try to make it kind of brief since I have lots of other things to get done tonight, but we'll see.

So, let's start with yesterday, shall we? In the morning, Ashley and I headed to Succotz to fill in cracks in information after mining through all the data gathered in the first phase of the revenue project there. We also had another very important and productive meeting with the village council there and talked about a lot of important details of the project and the next phase which we intend to begin next week--street sign installation! The morning was overall very productive and good for our legs as we did lots of walking around Succotz visiting different businesses to ask different questions. The particulars may seem strange to blog about, but I'll show you a few pictures I took while we walked through the village:

The first time I saw this unusual sight last week, I thought it was an unfinished or destroyed house. It is not. It is the village park. That structure is the play-place. It has rusty nails and rebar sticking out of it. It is boring and not fun for children in any way imaginable. It is covered in trash. With the new revenue flow to the village council resulting from our project, funds will now be available for them to do things like fix this disaster of a playground disguised as an injury factory. On a more meaningful level, the project long-term will give funds that will ultimately subsidize education and public health.

The park also featured this fantastic sign urging us to not litter or bring pigs to the park. Uncertain whether they mentioned the pig part because they are worried for the park or the pigs. Given the park's condition as described above, I pick the latter. Either way, it is a wonderful and absurd sign!

A great view of the village nestled on the hillside, taken from a road near the park.

Can you find the iguana?

We were just walking along the western highway which runs along the river and suddenly Ashley points to the grass 2 feet from me where we saw this beautiful 5-foot male, already turning orange for the mating season. I guess we startled him and he started running off. It wasn't long before one of the many stray dogs saw him and started chasing but he was fast and got to the river where he lunged in and swam out of sight!

So, after Succotz Ashley and I met up with Jorge and Shamira to go get supplies for the Rainforest Haven resort (part of a consulting job project I'm working on) so we could have our team outing there/photo shoot for the website, as will be described later. Along the way, we had to stop off at Shamira's grandmother's house. Her grandmother has a tree in the backyard with 6 iguanas! I couldn't ever get all of them in a single shot, but I have a few pics you can find them in:

Can you find the iguanas?

If you click to zoom in and look closely, you can see 2 iguanas swimming in the river in the background.

Anyway, after the errands we got back just in time for me to go teach computer class. Unfortunately, the Cornerstone Foundation where we hold the class was for some reason locked when we got there. Luckily I had my laptop with me and we just taught our little handful of students out on the porch. It was not very ideal since they couldn't all follow along and do the actions themselves on their individual computers, but at least it got the job done. Hopefully that won't happen again!

After computer classes, I did some work on my computer and also got things ready to go for an evening at the resort! The whole team came out so we could do a big photo shoot in the various rooms and on the grounds for the website. Read my former posts on Rainforest Haven for more details on this project. Ironically, even though it was a photoshoot I don't have many pictures to show you since we did most of the picture-taking on a few of the nicer cameras some of our team members have. I did take a couple, but none with any people; really only shots of the beautiful grounds, like these:

We made a little camp fire at dark and roasted some marshmallows and had a fantastic time together. It was great fun at the end of a productive work day, but also productive in and of itself! I did learn some interesting things while staying there. First and foremost is that domesticating parrots is a really good idea. Why? Because wild parrots are the most annoying creature known to man! Several flocks of parrots live around the property and they make the most annoying squawking noise I've ever heard in my life. They are super loud and all squawk together as they fly in little groups of 7-15; for any other type of bird I'm sure you'd need at least 50 to make that much noise! They are especially annoying at 4:00 in the morning. I also discovered that they are rather violent birds in the wild and like to fight each other. In fact, I witnessed such a battle, as two parrots in one of the flocks got in a fight in midair and wrestled each other in free fall until they hit the ground about 10 yards away from me, whereupon they looked up startled and flew off. 

So, after our beautiful resort excursion I worked most of today on the Succotz project again, most of my time on the computer. Then, in the evening I learned yet another area-based definition of the word "barbecue." Let me explain the history of my experience with this word. I grew up believing that "Barbecue" meant meat, like hamburgers or hotdogs, grilled on a barbecue grill, and possibly served with barbecue sauce. However, when my family moved to Wisconsin when I was 9 I was introduced to an alternative definition of the word, as it was there used to describe sloppy joes. Yet again, later while living in Florida, it seemed to refer specifically to pulled pork. Well, I have another even more unique definition to add to the list. 

You see, last week the branch of the Church here in San Ignacio invited us to have a "barbecue" with them in our honor this evening. We've grown very close to the members in both the San Ignacio and Santa Elena branches, even though we aren't here specifically as Church members doing Church things. We still become very attached to these branches as we offer our services on Sundays at Church and often in the evenings with activities, etc. Furthermore, several of the church members have helped us out a ton on our projects and even given us great leads on places to help out. We were touched and honored to be invited by Pres. Lemos, the branch pres in San Ignacio, to this special barbecue in our honor, to be held Thursday night. So, Megan and Kyle told our cook, Mama Kay, to take the night off since we'd have a barbecue. However, when we got there they had set up a great big branch dance party with some snacks but no actual substantive food. This is when we discovered that in Belize, "Barbecue" means "Get-together" or "social" and doesn't necessarily entail food. After having a good laugh, Megan and I went and got some food for the team so they didn't starve to death while dancing. 

In the middle of the party, Pres. Lemos stopped the music and called everyone together for a bit to bring things down and make a presentation for us. He talked about his love for Belize and how touched he was that we would leave the comforts of our own country to help make his a better place. He bore the sweetest and most touching testimony of service and being where God wants us to be and we were all in tears. He then gave each one of us a beautiful and personalized magnet in the shape of Belize each with various unique pictures painted on along with our names that the branch members had made for all of us. It is a simple gift, but perhaps one of the most meaningful I have ever received in my entire life.

This is my magnet handmade by the branch members in San Ignacio. I was particularly glad to see that mine featured the ruins of Xunantunich as they are the major attraction attached to Succotz village where most of my work has centered and the ruins serve an important role in the revenue stream of that village. Truly the gesture of the gift itself as well as the images it depicts will forever remind me of my experiences here in Belize.

After the gifts and a few more remarks, a much larger portion of the branch showed up to turn the party on! Belizeans absolutely love music and dancing. The branches out here have dance parties (or "barbecues") all the time, and dance parties often just break out at people's homes (like Jose Luis' house in Succotz a few weeks back if you remember). The music is a fun blend of American dance music hits (often slightly remixed) and the native Belizean hits that are in English, Spanish, Kriol, or even a mix of the three! (I haven't yet heard any in Mayan, but that is primarily only spoken down in the southernmost areas of Belize) Do you remember how last summer every other song on the radio was "Hey, Soul Sister"? Well, the current mega-hit in Belize is a song called "The Tornado Song" that is a really silly dance song with a very simple dance associated with it that every man, woman, and child in the country can do. The song tells the listener to "shake your tornado" and some times has bouts of "slow tornado" followed by "faster, faster tornado." YouTube it, as you probably won't hear it on an American radio any time soon. :)

Belizean dance party! Yay!

I have a FANTASTIC video as well that I took, but photos take long enough to load on this internet connection that I don't think I'm going to try a video. I'll just put it on my YouTube channel, probably when I'm back in the states. If sooner, I'll let you know. It was another unique interruption to the dance party that can only be seen and not described. 

Anyway, I guess this post wasn't very short after all! I have to warn you again that I'm going to probably be internet-less again, this time until Sunday! You see, my wonderful team member have planned a birthday getaway surprise trip for me to the Carribean islands that are part of Belize off of the mainland coast. During our time down here, we get weekends off and as you've probably read we've had some great adventures on the weekends. We also get 2 additional "vacation days" and I'm taking one of them tomorrow for this birthday trip with the team. So, it will be a 3-day weekend without internet till we get back on Sunday after Church in San Pedro. Talk to you then!