Just Another Week in Belize

Adventure of the week: Cave Tubing...

Highlights of this adventure were spotting hundreds of butterflies (my new obsession), eating termites (they taste like minty carrots), discovering a bat cave with thousands of bats, floating through pitch black caves, and cliff jumping off some rocks into crystal blue water within a cavern littered with Mayan pottery.

My BBF (Belize Best Friend) Maren!

One of our service projects is to help a nearby village called Succotz attract more tourists. The people there live in extreme poverty and yet they are located right next to the 2nd largest tourist attraction in Belize, the Xunantunich Mayan Ruins. Our team is helping them by creating an online tourist information page full of info about all the little businesses in Succotz and the neat little things they do. We've been going door-to-door finding little shops like the one below, collecting information on them, and putting them into a database. One of the perks is that we've gotten to name some streets for them! (My suggestion was Palm Tree Lane, so we'll see if I can persuade them to use that one).

Other service projects that I worked on this week included: continuing construction on the orphanage (it's coming along so well!), tutoring locals on how to use a computer so that they can find jobs, helping with construction in a local hospital laboratory, and starring in a skit about self-esteem in front of a hundred children!I also got to help at the Belize Botanical Gardens by making educational games to give to little children who go there for field trips.

The gardens were full of thousands of beautiful native plants from all across Belize

The Black Orchid: Belize's national flower

Our country director's brother John came for a visit, so he decided to help us out for the day.

For our team member McKenzie's birthday we worked hard all morning and afternoon and then went tubing down a river, swung off of a fun rope swing, and had a delicious BBQ at a local's house before ending the night with dancing and cake!

We found a crazy bat-moth in the bathroom that sent all of us girls screaming for our lives!

In honor of the new Harry Potter movie I decided to post a picture of the shrieking shack that we walk past every day on our way to go running at the park.

And you can't forget its guard dog...Lord Voldemort himself!!!!

(It's actually a girl so we nicknamed her Voldemama).

Between my running schedule, 40 hr working weeks, and living with a house full of adventuresome party animals, I can honestly say that I pack more into a week in Belize than many people would pack into an entire month! And I'm loving every second of it!