So...

So, have any of you noticed how often I begin my posts or even multiple paragraphs within one post with the word "so"? I've started to notice this unacceptable abuse of an unnecessary word, and will try my best to reform.

I have 2 weeks left in Belize to finish up the projects I'm leading while helping others finish up their own projects. It is crazy to think how little time is left and yet how much we have planned to make happen in those 2 weeks! Yesterday and today have been full of lots of little details and meetings with partners to make sure all the pieces are in place for these last 2 weeks to run smoothly and sufficiently to accomplish all necessary tasks. I'll get into some more detail, but first I have to rewind a bit and go back to Friday morning BEFORE the adventure to San Pedro and share 2 more birthday details. First is the happy birthday sign over the staircase:

This poster has been through a lot of birthdays! (I resisted a serious urge to start that sentence with "So,") It was put up originally over a month before I came for a team member from last wave named Shelbi for her 20th birthday. A few weeks later it was Sarah's birthday and the sign was still hanging, so they just put another piece of paper over the "helbi" in Shelbi and wrote "arah" over it to make it say "Sarah," who was also turning 20. That's what it looked like when I got to Belize. A week or two after I arrive, if you remember from an earlier post, it was MacKenzie's 20th birthday, so they put more paper over the name "Sarah" that said "MacKenzie." Finally, as it was still hanging for my birthday, they changed the "0th" in 20th to a "3rd", as shown above, and simply covered up the "Mac" and the "zie" in MacKenzie with yet more paper to make the resultant "Ken" shown above! To my knowledge, mine is the last birthday.

I also had one present to open in the morning before we left. There is quite a story to this. The week before last Lindsay's brother Jonathan came to visit for a week. He did a lot of adventuring around Belize, including a jungle trek for which he bought the standard instrument of choice of Belizeans: the Machete! He didn't intend to bring it back to the states with him as he had no room in his luggage and we joked about him giving it to one of us. He heard it would be my birthday 5 days after his departure, so the day he left I found this package on my bed:

 In case you can't read it, the note on this conspicuously machete-shaped gift says, "To: Ken It's a surprise! Don't open until your birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!"

Birthday morning came and revealed this bad boy!

Hmm. Now that I'm conscientiously trying not to start each paragraph with "So," I'm now having to resist the urge to replace every instance with "Anyway". Without using an unnecessary word, let's move on to yesterday and today!

Yesterday in the morning I finalized a street sign template for the street names in Succotz. We also went on a price hunt to different sign makers to get various quotes and find the best price on the job (as well as for printing the map brochures). It was a productive morning and really helped lay out the time frame for the rest of this project.

In the afternoon I did additional computer work, but also taught the computer class. One student, Orlando (the one I mentioned previously who only has 8 fingers) is progressing amazingly. Obviously he doesn't work much on typing, but when it comes to the other computer skills we're focusing on, he's doing really well. We learned a lot more about Excel and were able to focus on not only learning basic things it does, but especially how to apply those functions to basic problem solving in business scenarios. We made up a fictional company and entered in hypothetical transportation costs data and used functions in Excel to help us organize and use the data to make hypothetical business solutions. That way, he not only learns what a spreadsheet is and how to enter things, but thinks about ways to use its powers to solve a problem and help out a business.

After computer class, Kyle, Lindsay, and I went to Succotz to scope out every street corner to see how many already had poles infrastructure in place for the signs. We were delighted to discover that most of the street corners already have places to hang signs on the power poles (very common street sign place in Belize) and that will save us a LOT on costs! 

Rainbow: a good omen shines over the village of San Jose Succotz!

After scoping out the street intersections, we returned to San Ignacio for dinner just as the remaining vacationers from the team arrived from San Pedro. Our wonderful cook, Mama Kay, is out of town in El Salvador this week (I believe she went to go see the temple open house) so we are eating out each night, paid for by the team funds that we'd usually pay Mama Kay with. We ate last night at a really nice and fun Kriol-themed tourist restaurant in downtown San Ignacio called "Flayva's". I'd eaten there one other time. The staff knows all of us and is very friendly. After dinner we finished the night off with our usual Monday night planning meeting.

Today began with more work in Succotz on 2 different projects. I primarily went around recontacting some of the businesses we tracted out, soliciting for some of the larger businesses to advertise on the tourist brochure. The advertising is projected to be immensely effective based on the distribution plan of the brochures and comparison to the virtual lack of advertising structure currently in place. Furthermore, the funds generated from the advertising will be invested back into the village by providing the village council with more money to subsidize the cleanliness initiative, education, and public health. 

We also revisited some locations of a former project: the adobe stoves project. I haven't written much about this project as it was primarily the work of the former waves. This was a great project that gave better cooking facilities to various poor families in Succotz. They formerly would cook in enclosed buildings over little pit fires--i.e., lung cancer waiting to happen. The adobe stoves provide the user with a self-venting system which can cook much more than a pit fire at a time and more efficiently while getting the smoke completely out of the house and away from vulnerable lungs. We built 5 such stoves in Succotz this summer and some of them simply needed some revisiting to finish a few loose ends and improve their efficiency. Meanwhile, the sustainability of the project is already in full swing as various individuals in the community are teaching others how to build the stove and so now at least 2 more stoves are being built even without HELP International's involvement! I only helped a little at the end of the morning today as I was doing business contacting around the village, but I helped a little at the end.

 Here is Jake, doing some repairs on Natalie's adobe stove.

Here is an all-new adobe stove in the making, completely begun by the people of the village themselves at a new location! This is the real fruits of such a project--to know that we haven't just built 5 adobe stoves to benefit 5 families, but that we've taught members of a community something new that will spread after we leave to bless many more families than that!

My business contacting had some good results, as well as some interesting discussion in general about the Succotz Revenue Generation project and its potential effects as well as pitfalls. Considering potential weaknesses was especially important for two reasons. First of all, if we recognize weak spots, we can try to prevent some of them in advance. Second, as not all weaknesses are preventable, it gives valuable insight into the nature of development work. It can give insight into how a project might be improved upon when implemented elsewhere. Furthermore, it reminds us to be humble and remember that there is no "silver bullet" for development work. I am hardly the first person to attempt to reverse the tide of poverty in a village--even this particular village--and should not expect this project to solve every possible problem there! Knowing this helps us remember to remain specific in the goals we want to see come to pass and focus on key areas where our particular skill sets can make the greatest impact that could perhaps win a battle even if not the whole war. I would love to see poverty eradicated from San Jose Succotz, but this one project alone will not do that. However, I do expect it to make a difference. Ultimately, the results I specifically see coming from my project are as follows:

1. Increased revenue to the village council, enabling them to:

    a) Make improvements to village infrastructure and trash collection system in the short term

    b) Subsidize education and public health in the long run

2. Increase the tourist-based revenue flow to private businesses in Succotz, thus helping those willing to work who currently struggle despite their best efforts to provide for their families.

3. Create a platform for further development projects especially via the increased link to the tourist industry, relevant national government agencies, and other partner non-profit organizations.

Not everyone will see a major business increase, but some definitely will. Not every child's education will be improved or decreased in costs, but some will. The public health system will not be completely perfected, but it will be improved. Ultimately, I believe that the impact will be very real, even if there will still be more to do for a very long time. 

After the morning in Succotz and a quick bite to eat, the whole team headed to the national capital of Belmopan to spend the afternoon at an orphanage, where we dropped of a number of care packages sent from the states with supplies such as toothpaste and brushes, clothes, hygiene items, etc. This is not a long-term or continuing project, but rather something we focused on just this afternoon. There were about 30 children there, all very eager for attention and most of them extremely bright. Once again, we are not in a long-term partner arrangement with this orphanage this year but were last year and the team last year recorded that they were not a good partner organization at all. We saw that for ourselves today. Our focus is on sustainable projects with continuing impact. There are literally scores of organizations who come to countries like Belize, do some sightseeing, visit orphanages and take pictures, then go back victoriously in the name of development work. Certainly visiting orphans is nice, and today was wonderful, but to come for a day or two and then leave does not make much lasting impact on the conditions of the lives of those therein, hence why today's visit was a one-time thing since we had care packages to deliver anyway. We quite enjoyed it, but it made me want to cry to see the poor conditions that these children grow up in. To change the orphanage would come down to somehow changing the hearts, minds, and methods of the rather irresponsible caretakers there. From all our observations today and in a needs assessment visit some team members made last week, the caretakers mainly just talk in the kitchen all day while the kids run around wild all day with absolutely no structure to their lives. They desperately need parental CARE but indications reveal very little available to them. Fortunately, other organizations do exist which focus specifically and entirely on orphanage reform around the world and I hope someday they visit the orphanage we visited today and focus on making long-term lasting changes there.

On a positive note, not all orphanages in Belize are like that. In fact, you may have been following the orphanage construction project we are working on I've written about several times before. That orphanage, where we are building additional small single and double room housing units, is a very trusted operation which provides a much better atmosphere for the kids living there than the one we visited in Belmopan today. I've focused a lot in this post on the sustainability of the projects we are involved in as it is very important to me that non-profits focus on making real change in the communities where they work. Too many international groups promote "volun-tourism" where people just visit sights and orphans, as described earlier. To be blunt, I believe this is largely a waste of the funds of those who invest in such organizations. There is already too little by way of funding for work like this to use it ineffectively! I know that may sound somewhat harsh, but I strongly believe that significant reforms are needed in the NPO/NGO world if the goals we all desire for humanity are to become a reality.

I'll get off my soap box now and conclude with some pictures from our orphanage visit. Once again, though not a long-term focus, it was an enjoyable afternoon and eye-opening to additional problems which still plague this struggling country. The kids were all great.

Ashley and Maren (not pictured here) led this mini-project and before our visit put together a small activity to help the kids focus on life goals and plans. In this way, even though we were only able to visit this one time, our visit was able to hopefully at least do a little bit of good for the kids beyond the supply drop-off. It was a great success, as you can see here the kids eagerly participating.

Sarah gives some one-on-one attention to an adorable 3-year-old named Jamesey.

 The kid in blue is Edgar. As part of the activity, we asked the kids what they wanted to be when they grew up. After he told me he wanted to be a police officer, I told him I wanted to be a ninja when I grew up. He looked and me and said, "You're already grown up. It's too late now. You can never be a ninja!"

So, (sorry--old habits die hard!) overall yesterday and today have been particularly thought-provoking. I have been so grateful for the chance to help here, despite the limits that exist to development work. I am grateful to have been raised in a loving home and not an under-cared for orphanage. I hope with time we will someday see problems like that disappear forever as well all pool together to make one small difference at a time, specifically differences that are long-lasting and life changing!

San Pedro

So, this last weekend was one of the coolest weekends and birthdays of my life! Long before I was born my mother used to live in the Cayman Islands, and frankly I can't understand why she ever left! The Caribbean is a particularly addicting type of heaven on earth and I loved every minute I spent on the Belizean island of San Pedro. The trip was part of a birthday getaway that the team here planned for me since Friday was my birthday. During our 6 weeks in country, we get weekends off from our work as well as two additional vacation days to be used whenever we'd like and as projects permit. Friday was the first (and perhaps only) of those extra vacation days for me. Frankly, I love the projects I'm working on so if I don't have another extra vacation day, I'm totally cool with that. Besides, we have tons of fun on Saturdays anyway, so I already feel like I've had a lot of vacation here in Belize! Nonetheless, whether or not I take another vacation day, I'm glad I took one on Friday for my birthday in San Pedro.

Let me begin by giving you a little bit of background information. Belize as a country is a unique crossroads between the Caribbean and Central America. When looking at a map, the mainland area in Central America is immediately apparent. If you look closer, however, you'll notice that there are lots of little islands coming off the coast connecting Belize with the Caribbean. As a result, these 2 distinct cultures are blended throughout the whole nation, though the Caribbean side of that culture is particularly emphasized on the islands, just as the Central American/Latino culture sees more emphasis on the mainland. Nonetheless, both are pretty prevalent all over along with some other ethnic groups including the sizable Dutch Mennonite population, the Mayan native tribal population, and even a smattering of European holdovers from the British colonial period. Of the islands that are part of Belize, known as Cayes (pronounced "keys" like the similar islands off of Florida's coast), two in particular have noteworthy populations: Caye Caulker and Ambergris Caye. San Pedro is one of the largest towns in Belize and is located on Ambergris Caye. It is a major tourist location and a completely different side of Belize. While I wouldn't say that everyone in San Pedro is rolling in cash, there is definitely much less poverty than out here in the Cayo district where I live and work. The tourism industry is thriving in San Pedro and bringing in lots of revenue for those living there and it's not hard to see why: Ambergris Caye is one of the most gorgeous places I've ever been and there's lots to do! I'm not going to be able to detail everything, but I'll try to give you the best highlights of my weekend there:

Our journey to San Pedro began...

...on this 2-hour express bus from San Ignacio to Belize City. From the bus terminal...

...we all crowded into a couple of taxis that took us to...

 ...the seaport! We bought our water taxi tickets and...

...loaded on the boat for a 90-minute ride to Ambergris Caye! On the boat...

...Pete sat next to his clone! Unfortunately, the clone never looked this way when I tried to get a picture, but they he, like Pete, was wearing very similar shades and had the exact same amount of facial stubbery, besides the white shirt, shorts, and hair apparent in this picture. Megan and I dubbed them "Pete and RePete." :) Anyway, we finally arrived in San Pedro and peered across the piers:

Then, we walked down the boat dock to the shore, where the first building we saw was...

...The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! Like the Santa Elena Branch, the San Pedro Branch has converted another building into a chapel until they can get a real chapel some day. More about this building and some experiences had there later on in this post. :) For now, let's continue our journey. After walking ashore...

...we began the gorgeous 15-minute walk down the beach to the Corona Del Mar Hotel where we had a reservation. By the way, can you find the iguana?

We had selected the Corona Del Mar hotel because it was an affordable choice that didn't seem like a grungy hole in the wall. We expected some standard run-of-the mill medium-low-end hotel accommodations. Sure enough, the hotel was pretty standard--a lot like a Motel 6 in the U.S., just on a beautiful beach! However, we were in for the biggest surprise of the entire trip when we went to check in and the staff told us that due to the size of our group, it was easiest just to put us up in the hotel's Penthouse at the very top without charging us the usual additional costs of that upgrade. So, let me introduce you in picture format to the amazing Corona Del Mar Penthouse:

Here is the Penthouse, sitting at the very top of the hotel. I was the last of the 11 members of our team who went to enter it and consequently got to feel my anticipation rise as I heard 10 consecutive exclamations of "Oh my Gosh!" before entering for myself and saying the same thing.

Here is the main living area, bar, and kitchen. 

Same, viewed from the other direction. 

Bedroom #1 had this cute little towel puppy.

Meanwhile, the other had these swans. Here's Megan Swan with swans!

 Nice kitchen

Nice Bathrooms (including toilet paper folded into roses)

 Towel ducks in the bathtubs

Decorative pottery on the coffee table

View of the pool and the beach from the living room window

Anyway, I could go on but you get the point. We paid US$25 per night per person to stay there, as that was the original price of the rooms we thought we'd be getting, but got much better! Now, I've stayed in some fancy Marriott suites in my day, and this was very similar to those, but how many of those have you seen with a price point like that? (Of course, as mentioned earlier, I actually didn't pay at all since my amazing team members paid for me as a birthday gift!) Needless to say, we were all super excited about our hotel arrangement. I should actually note that we did also still require one smaller room and we 3 men stayed in that smaller normal room at night, but we spent any other time at the hotel with the girls of the group in the Penthouse! :) So, now that I've detailed the journey to San Pedro and our fantastic hotel arrangement, let me introduce you to some of the rest of my San Pedro adventure. I note here that although up to this point I was taking pictures like a fiend, the rest of the weekend I took far fewer pictures than I usually do. I did take a few, but many more are on other people's cameras and I'll have to get them later. Anyway, I'm going to break with the narrative style now and just put pictures up with captions to finish detailing Friday:

 The docks are so photogenic! You practically can't go wrong taking pictures at the beach. Amazing!

 Pete and Jake just chillin'.

 The team, taking a swim in the Atlantic! (Don't worry, I joined them too!)

 Sarah and Emily in the pool.

 Jake and I with a palm tree.

 Emily, Rin, and MacKenzie work on cooking up...

...a delicious spaghetti birthday dinner with garlic bread and watermelon!

I wish I didn't look so creepy in this picture.

By the way, aren't those enormous rum goblets awesome? Obviously, we only filled them with water! :)

So, that was my fantastic Friday birthday--travels, a sweet penthouse, swimming, chilling out, enjoying scenery, and then a birthday dinner! A major festival was going on in San Pedro this last weekend (basically like the Ms. Central America Pageant), largely sponsored by Heineken beer, so we decided it was best to stay in the penthouse and hang out together at night rather than be outside among all the drunk partiers from all over Central America. So, after dinner I taught the team one of my favorite games--the Progressive Pictionary game--and we had an absolute blast! We also ate homemade Oreo cake-batter cookies instead of a cake since I love them just as much and nobody could find any birthday candles anyway! :)

So, onto Saturday:

Most of the team went Scuba diving or snorkeling on Saturday, but Katie and I, for reasons of frugality to put it softly, refrained and stayed back on the island and hung out together all day. Rather than mere pictures, I can show you a much more vivid detailing of our day as we created a music video together (one of may favorite past-times) at each of the various locations across the island that we explored! See for yourself:

As you can probably tell, it was a particularly enjoyable day! :) Let me share a few other pictures from Saturday:

 Can you find the lion fish?

 Can you find the sea horse?

 One of the locals told us that this is the most photographed tree on the island, and I believe it! I also got to know this tree pretty well as I climbed it to the top to try picking a coconut, but there were no good or ripe ones left. I climbed it in local fashion, where you hug the tree and then push away with your feet to kind of walk-shimmy up the tree. They have absolutely no hand or footholds, so they are rather hard to climb! One local lady walked by as I was climbing and said, "that man is a true Belizean!" That was pretty awesome! :) Katie got a picture of me at the top, but I haven't gotten it from her camera yet. I'll post it once I do!

 This building was perfect for Katie as she is a dual citizen of the US and Canada and is currently in Belize--a perfect set of 3 flags, not to mention a funny looking scuba tiki!

Can you find the crab?

On Sunday we attended Church in the San Pedro branch, in the little building we saw when we first got off the dock on Friday. It was a wonderful experience! The ward is bilingual, so one of the missionaries (who is also a counselor in the branch presidency) translated all of the testimonies either from English to Spanish or vice versa depending on the speaker. It was a smaller branch than either Santa Elena or San Ignacio, but everyone there still carried that marvelous spirit of faith and conversion with them. The missionaries there are truly the glue holding things together and often run the whole show on Sunday. They didn't have a teacher for the youth Sunday School class that week so I volunteered and taught a wonderful lesson on the conversion of Paul to 4 young women and 1 young man. They were so attentive and interested and it was an absolute delight to teach them! Sunday School was followed by a wonderful Elder's Quorum discussion on one of Pres. Monson's talks from this last conference. There were 9 men there, including the missionaries, Jake, and myself, but that little quorum had one of the most relevant, on-track, uplifting discussions I've ever had in a priesthood quorum. One of the men shared how when he joined the Church he realized that his business, which sold Alcohol, needed to change. He himself had quit drinking to get baptized, but realized that if God didn't want him to drink, he shouldn't "peddle that poison to others", to use his own words. He gave up his business entirely on faith and switched to selling arts and crafts items. He hasn't necessarily done as well since, but has always gotten by and been provided for and is much happier because of the choice he made. Overall, the San Pedro Branch may have been one of the most uplifting Church experiences of my life.

The rest of my Sunday was mainly travel. Some of the team would be using one additional vacation day the next day, but some of us had projects we couldn't wait on to get back to. So, a few of us packed up a couple hours after Church and began the long journey back to San Ignacio, arriving there in the evening. It was hard to leave that paradise, despite my deep love for the Cayo district on the mainland, and I definitely could enjoy returning some day! Meanwhile, this is Kenneth Kenworthy signing off from this detailed report on my brief by fantastic visit to that wonderful piece of heaven we mortals have borrowed and named San Pedro.

P.S. I will write about my Monday work tomorrow night. Lots of great stuff with the Succotz project today!

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!

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! :)