Succotz Revenue Generation Project Phase One: DONE!

Sorry for no post yesterday. At the end of the day I just had lots and lots of little loose ends to tie up for things related to school and my business back in the states and I just never found the time to blog. However, yesterday is pretty easy to summarize. In the morning, 7 of us went to Succotz to finish up the business tracting project there, and finish we did! My companion for this third round was Maren. Overall during the three days we went to Succotz, we collectively gathered information profiling 67 businesses or notable public buildings/organizations in Succotz. That was a very exciting accomplishment! (See my previous posts on Succotz to get more information about this project if you're just joining the blog--it is my personal lead project and the flagship project of my entire experience in Belize).

However, in writing most of my day yesterday and much of today seems rather boring. Besides a break in the afternoon for computer classes at 3 (wherein the students continued to learn about Microsoft Word, specifically how to add and use objects like shapes and pictures), I spent most the time yesterday pouring through the 24 hand-written pages of collected information and entering it into an Access database with corresponding symbols of various kinds filling up a computer copy of the map I created, plotting where each business is located. Pretty boring from the outside, but as the project lead it was very exciting to see some of the fascinating discoveries and trends unfold as I sorted through all the information. This continued into today, interrupted at one point by a shorter-than-usual shift at the orphanage construction project, which I'll talk about a little later in this post. By 6:00 this evening I was finally done compiling all the information. For a taste of the madness of this project, let me show you a screen clipping of the map which has all my annotation symbols on it marking the locations of these various businesses by their types.

Besides the orphanage trip, the other trip I made beyond my computer today was to do some brief research on street sign prices. Rin and I went out to get some price quotes and although we managed to get information from the San Ignacio mayor's office about where they had the nice signs like the one below made for the streets of San Ignacio, we were unsuccessful at contacting the man they referred.

A loverly street sign in San Ignacio. Not sure what the origin of this street's name is, but it sounds awfully familiar...

Speaking of street signs and names, allow me to address that topic once more in relation to Succotz. As you may remember, I worked with the village council to come up with names for the streets in Succotz. The street names in the map I showed you above are mostly accurate, but a couple have changed and a handful have just been traded around. A final map will definitely be given later and tomorrow morning all street names should be final and we will send in our order for the street signs. If you examine the names on the map above closely, you'll find a blend of names with local significance (like Jose Luis St) or traditional association (like "Good Shepherd lane, which leads to the Good Shepherd clinic or Church St. which runs by the large Catholic Church at the center of the village); you'll find names from Mayan mythology (like Itzamna and Kukulkan); you'll find names of native Belizean animals (like Jaguar and Tapir); you'll find Belizean national figures and leaders (like George Price, Manuel Esquivel, and even Queen Elizabeth). You'll also find a couple surprises. I will not comment on or explain these surprises at present, but will showcase them in a later post. 

Now, as I mentioned, we worked a little bit today at the orphanage we are building as well (you may want to see previous posts for a description of this construction project). We had to start late due to rain and finish early because we all still had other afternoon projects to attend to. However, it is coming along nicely and hopefully should be done just in time before we leave Belize! Because it has been raining so much the last couple days, everything was super muddy today and we all came back pretty caked. The muddiest, of course, was our increasingly dwindling dirt pile, where our dirt crater became a lake we had to work around as we shoveled out the number of buckets of dirt we needed for another row of bags:

In the background you see Sarah and MacKenzie leaning over some worms that were found, as we are also still trying to acquire more worms for the soilet project.

Anyway, that's all I've got for today. Tomorrow should bring the beginning of Phase Two of the Succotz project, more computer classes, and an overnight visit to the Resort with the entire team for the Rainforest Haven project! That reminds me--I'm forewarning you that there will most likely not be a post tomorrow night because I won't have internet access. If I DO post, it will be because the weather is still too bad to make the resort trip worth it and I am thus still at home in San Ignacio. So, let's cross our fingers for good weather and I'll write again on Thursday! :)

Coding and Cartography

Probably won't be a very long post this evening because although my day was incredibly productive, it was really quite boring once you try explaining it to others. Most of my day was spent inside on my computer doing work that is vitally important to the projects I'm working on, but not very exciting.

The first part of the day, I created a home page for the resort I'm doing business counseling for, "Rainforest Haven." So, maybe I say this every time I create a new website, but I feel like this is my greatest work yet. While I'm not ready to show you the entire front page, as excited as I am about it, I will give you a slight preview of the top introduction bar to the home page:

I actually took and Photoshopped the picture of the large frond-leaf myself from a large potted plant in our living room! The background pic is actually from the resort. I am excited to show you all the rest of the home page, which turned out just beautiful! Hopefully the entire site will be ready in 2-3 weeks. So, while I was excited about the results today, the means to get there largely consisted of typing HTML code into Notepad (because REAL nerds never use editing programs! We code in the raw!!!) :-P

Later I did a little bit of shopping with about the half team, came home, and made lunch but not before first getting a Choco-banana from the vendor near our house (as mentioned in last Saturday's post)! Delicious! 

Eating a choco-banana while wearing my lucky shirt! 

Disneyland price: $4.00

Belizean Vendor: One Shilling (about 12.5 cents American)

We also ran into a man named Francisco on our way home who Lindsay is leading a social media project to get a wheelchair for. He has several severe physical disabilities and it takes him an hour to walk 3 blocks with a cane! We also filmed a segment for the YouTube fundraising video Lindsay is making for him. Here he is with Jake and Lindsay:

By the way, some of you may remember him from the fundraising video I made a few months ago. Watch it again and see if you can find him!

While out and about town we also distributed some flyers for our computer class, which we will begin again with a set curriculum on Monday. After that, we headed back home, as I mentioned before, and I was back at the computer again, this time doing more research for the Succotz revenue project I've been telling you all about. We made some VERY exciting progress and brainstormed some great ideas to help solve the revenue stream problem of that poor impoverished village. I also used satellite imagery from Bing Maps (see Monday's post) to start creating a map that will be very important in our plan. We are going to compile information on all restaurants and attractions in the village and put them on this map as a guide for tourists to draw them into the village more when they come through to visit the Xunantunich ruins. The reverse of the map will feature advertising space for some of those locations, the revenue of which will go to the village council to help make further improvements that will infuse additional capital into the village. This is just one part of plan to increase revenue in Succotz. Of course, for the map to be useful, we're going to need to coordinate with the village council to name all of the streets since most of them are currently nameless! We also will probably be installing street signs with the selected names in a few weeks. Take a look at my preliminary map (don't worry... it will be a lot prettier when it's done!):

I am, admittedly, not trained in professional cartography, but I must admit that making maps is really fun! It's also much easier when enabled by modern satellite technology. :)

Later in the evening we had our dinner from Sister Kay: heart-shaped waffles, sausage, Belize-style scrambled eggs (don't know what she did to them, but they were incredible!), and tossed fruit. Having "family dinner" together as a team is always one of the highlights of the day. We all get along so well and have such good times:

From left to right: Sarah, Emily, MacKenzie, Pete, Jake, Megan, Rin, and the hands of Ashley

Well, I told you from the start today that it would probably be a shorter, more boring post, and I seem to have delivered on that promise. But, of course, I have one last picture before I sign off for the night:

Can you find the iguana?

(Special thanks to Megan Swan for today's iguana pic since I was holed up on my computer all day!)