It’s UnBelizeable!

Here is the low down on Day 2 of our trip. We woke up around 6 to get ready for the day and have breakfast at 7. Darlene fixed fried Jack. It’s a triangular shaped pastry that is puffed up and kind of hollow in the middle. She also fixed eggs and bacon. It’s really good to cut the top off and stuff the eggs and bacon inside it :). Add some syrup on top (or maybe not for those who don’t like really sweet stuff). We were slow to get going but while we waited, W pumped up some soccer balls for the kids. We left the camp around 11.

We got to spend a little time at Gregorio and Flora’s house. Their home is very nice for Belize standards. I didn’t get a picture of their house but it’s made out of concrete. People look at them like they’re rich compared to the homes they live in. Here are some examples:

Those were taken as we were driving so they’re not great. But you can see that their homes are tiny. Their beds, kitchen and everything are all in the one room. Typically, their bathrooms are outside but some were inside. So Gregorio’s house is 4 bedroom and 2 bath (inside). Very nice.

I was able to get on Facebook at their house. My mom happened to be on (didn’t expect that) and I was able to check on the kiddos. Lacey was teething while I was gone so she wasn’t sleeping well and a bit fussy.

Also while we were there, W tried to open a coconut, unsuccessfully. Elsie’s son Micah was trying to tell him how and I don’t think it was coming across the right way.

Elsie came out to see what we were doing and saw he wasn’t getting it so she showed up him.

If you cut it off in the right spot he has a little one inch hole you can drink out of. The funny thing was, it was her first time cutting one open!! Ha! I suppose she’s been around it enough to figure it out :).

The milk was really sweet. Apparently, if you want to drink the milk, you cut open a green one but if you want the meat inside it, you open a brown one. The meat in the green one was the consistency of yogurt…not too good. It tasted better than a coconut from here. Elsie says they grate the coconut meat with a cheese grater and cook it in their rice. Sounds yummy!

While we were waiting for Bro. Jerrel, Ms. Sue, W, Micah (whom in W’s honor changed his name to “M”, hehe) and myself walked down to a little Chinese store and got some drinks. Bro. Jerrel found us and picked us up in the van. Here is a picture of M and his little brother Jerry 🙂 (named after Bro. Jerrel)

We finally left around 1:45 to go to Trio and start VBS. Santiago (goes to church at Bella Vista) brought his daughter Tricia (pronounced Tree see uh) to translate in Kechi and her friend Ingrid to translate in Spanish.

The road to Trio was insane!! Again, we asked Bro. Jerrel to go back for the potholes he missed :).

When we arrived the kids had been waiting for two hours at the church. The children were beautiful. Ms. Sue taught the lesson while W was a human felt board. They didn’t have a place to put the actual board so W used his shirt.

I helped hand things out. The kids were really shy and didn’t want to talk so W broke the ice with some songs.

It took a while for the kids to warm up to us. We gave all the kids pencils. Those kids have so little they almost trampled me to get a pencil. There were about sixty of them.

We next went to meet with a mechanic about another van to purchase for Mission Belize. They thought it may have transmission problems, then they thought it was the cadilidic converter then finally said it was actually the transmission. The thought was getting it fixed then buying it.

Then we went back to the camp for some homemade pizza. Ms. Sue and brother Jerrel came back to the camp after they ate with Gregorio and Flora to plan for the next day of VBS. I sharpened pencils….for a looonnng time. And these were type of pencils that start to get a little sharp then the lead breaks off. 🙂 So it took a little while. Max brought two sea bags filled with Old Navy flip flops for everyone. So while I sharpened pencils, Ms. Sue and W sorted flip flops (they call them slippers) by size. The thought was to give them out the next day. If we waited until the last day, we probably wouldn’t have enough to give all the kids. It was a pretty long day so I went to bed at 10 and the others stayed in the chow hall to plan what lesson they would teach. No imaginary animals woke me up that night 🙂