Just around the river bend

Okay, I've officially decided that taking a night off from the blog is an absolutely retarded idea because it's hard enough to try and describe just one day here in Belize in a blog post let alone two! But, here goes:

Yesterday began with the skit I mentioned on Thursday. In case you missed that post, three of our team members (Katie, Jake, and I) helped give a skit on Self-Esteem to a bunch of kids at a summer camp, in connection with the Cornerstone foundation--another organization we often team with for various projects. Here's the audience for which we gave the performance of our lives:

Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of us actually performing the skit (which was REALLY cheesy--but don't blame us; we didn't write it), but I do have this picture of Katie hold the "Self Esteem Shield" (Exciting, huh?)

My part was easy. Mostly, I just pointed and laughed at Katie while throwing things at her.

Afterwards, we met up with the others at the orphanage we're building. For a very detailed description of our construction methods, see Monday's post. Meanwhile, in that post I promised to give you a better picture of the buildings the next time we're there. Well, I've kept my promise and have both inside and outside pictures for you. Now you'll know what I meant when I said they remind me of the Flintstones:

The one on the right will house 3-4 teenage girls. The bathroom & shower facilities are in the one on the left, which is designed to catch and recycle rain water (it's like a giant bowl).

The buildings in the first picture are a vast improvement over these flimsy and rotting buildings currently being used. Can you imagine having to live in a building like that? We are currently using this one to store our shovels and other tools when we aren't there, and that's about all it's good for. The new living arrangements should be quite a lot more comfortable! Here's a look at the interior of the new buildings:

 Going through the doors...

 ...you are immediately greeted by a living room area with some comfortable couches and a staircase which leads to...

...a little bedroom upstairs!

So, this is the building we're currently working on. The guy to the right with the backwards hat is Yan. He's from Holland and came out on Thursday with a British non-profit and heard about the orphanage project so he came to help us out that day. He's a pretty cool guy who has done humanitarian work in at least 3 other 3rd-world countries. He's octo-lingual (he speaks 8 languages, all fluently)!!!

 Katie, Pete, and Emily take a moment to smile for the camera.

 When completed, this smaller building will house the caretaker who lives on sight.

Sarah and Jake pack a bag with our special moist dirt concoction. Once again, for a more detailed explanation of the crazy construction process used to make these buildings, see my Monday post.

Emily has a dirt-funnel on her head. Does this make anyone else think of that song from "The Jungle Book," where the girls says, "I must go and fetch the water, til the day that I am grown..." :)

Well, after our time building the orphanage, Kyle and Megan decided to let our weekend start early in honor of the productive week we've had and even more so in honor of our team member MacKenzie's birthday! So, we headed to my favorite little village--Succotz!--and river tubed along the Mopan river! It was great fun. I don't actually have any river tubing pictures myself since I didn't really want to risk getting my camera wet, but Katie had a waterproof camera and tomorrow I'll get some pictures from her to show you all. 

After the tubing , be headed to the house of Jose Luis, one of the village council members I've been working with on the Succotz Revenue project, where we had a Belizean chicken barbecue in his backyard and played with his two adorable kids, like little Calvin here, who loved my hat:

The evening turned into a dance party, having fun dancing to the Belizean music, which is always an interesting techno-reggae driven mix of English, Spanish, and Kriol songs. As you know from yesterday's lame and short post, when we got back home I was actually tired (a rarity) and went to bed without blogging. Deepest apologies.

As for today, it started out on a somewhat frustrating note. Even though Saturday is typically our day off, this morning the Succotz village council was invited to a special meeting at the University of Belize for all village councils, but they were also going to have a special one-on-one sit down with the Belize Board of Tourism and the National Institute of Culture and History to discuss their current improvement initiatives and petition for funds with a proposal I spent hours this week writing with them and perfecting. They invited me to come along for the meeting and I was very excited to get an in-depth look into how the Belizean government works. Unfortunately, they stood us up! The big meeting for all village councils was cancelled and they forgot to contact a few of the councils to tell of the cancellation, so a small handful of councils were waiting there with nothing to do after paying to get all the way there and setting a good portion of their days aside for the event. Anyway, we were of course quite frustrated, but we used the time to have another small meeting amongst ourselves to discuss our game plan from hereon out. Then we headed west, I to San Ignacio and the council a little further to Succotz. Anyway, it was frustrating but we still feel very good about our proposal for the BTB and NICH; hopefully it will happen next week.

However, the rest of my day has been an absolute blast! After returning to San Ignacio, eight of us headed on a Saturday adventure (so, of course I wore my Orange Adventure Pants!). We went with our fun and knowledgeable guide Feliz on a jungle hike and cave tubing adventure. The jungle hike was the most gorgeous hike I've ever been on in my entire life, hands down. The rock ledges and exotic plants, the beautiful flowers, the smells--everything was amazing. Unfortunately, like yesterday, I didn't always have my camera with me since most of the hike I was in my swimsuit as we headed to the river where we would cave tube. However, once again Katie did have her camera with her and I'll get some pictures soon. I did take a few gorgeous jungle shots though, as shown below:

That braided vine actually grows that way! Crazy, huh? 

 It may look gorgeous, but it's a noxious weed.

 Not a weed, just gorgeous.

 Leaf-cutter ants! My favorites! A much better picture that I've managed to get in my previous posts on this subject. Be sure to click the picture and zoom in to get a good look at these crazy buggers!

Left to right: Katie, Jonathon, Kyle, Lindsay, Ashley, and Maren all prepare for our jungle adventure!

Okay, so tomorrow I will post a lot more about my Friday and Saturday adventures when I have more pictures to show you. It's really hard to describe how amazing the jungle and the cave tubing were. The caves are enormous. The Mayas used them anciently to send sacrificial victims to Xibalba (hell). Cheery, huh? Some of the caves still have Mayan artifacts in them you can see, though we went to a less expensive cave. :) It was still phenomenally impressive though, as you'll see tomorrow.

After the cave tubing and jungle adventure, after eating some dinner and going to the track with Katie (I'll describe that more in depth at a future date) the team got a karaoke bar almost entirely to ourselves and rocked the night away. It was such a blast with these amazing people I work hard with all week and then can have such fun times with on the weekend. I'll leave you this evening with some karaoke pictures:

Crowded into the van on the way there (you can't see the other 8 people also in the van!) Left to right: Pete, Megan, Katie, Jake, Maren