Thursday's Official Post

Day 6 Thursday Aidan and Julia

This morning was similar to anyone before. Unfortunately Aidan forgot to set the alarm on his clock and the boy's couldn't bird watch with Peter. After a quick breakfast we met for the morning AMP. Ross presented us with the terrible news that Fermenta, the sister of one of the homestay hosts passed away of ovarian cancer last night. Sadly one of her children, Fernando, is one of the boys who works with us. Her kids will now be living with her sister. We gathered ourselves and prepared for our work at the school. Fortunate for us some of the parents had already polished up our previous work and it was ready for cement. We got right to work. Some of us were carrying water, digging sand, and left Aidan to raise the rebars. Once that work was done we began to mix the cement. This was done by pouring water, sand and cement mix into the cement mixer. Some shoveled the sand, some poured the sand and a few rolled the wheelbarrows of cement to where the needed to go. A few lucky kids got to take a break and helped out in the classrooms. Some kids just watched, and some kids got to participate. Surprisingly, Julia got a math lesson, which ended up being fun because of the students, who were part of the group that joins us each afternoon. During the kids lunch break some of the boys went over to join a game of volleyball while Armando flew a kite in front of some sparkling eyes. Many of the kids were hopping on our backs for piggyback rides, because we had our gigantic inflatable beach ball with us, and they liked rolling around on it together. After their break, we finished most of the cementing, and packed up to return to Nu'uk Cheil. We had a big lunch, with pizza, noodles, and lots of fruit.  Then, our friends from St. Jude's came, and we played the 'get across the hot water game', then talked about the topics that our affinity groups focused on. As a special treat, they did a Mayan dance for us right before they left. We had some free time to play a game of taps and for the girls to write a humorous (but amazing and true) song about boys. We then headed off to the Mayan Museum and got a tour from Julio.

We got to make corn tortillas and try smoked peppers. We then went to have a game of soccer with the locals but nobody was there. Instead, we played a small game ourselves, and hung on the swings. Then, we had some more delicious food from our homestay families, and had our season finale of Belizean Idol. The team Jimin and the Potatoes (Tortillas) won, declaring that we will be performing Roar for the Mayan locals tomorrow. Then, we did ANCHOR, and went to our rooms for lights out at 9:45.