Today, we woke to a breakfast of warm fry jacks (puffed-up
fried dough) and re-fried beans—the perfect remedy for our sore muscles. Mixing
concrete is not easy, as we discovered VERY quickly yesterday. We arrived to
the school, ready to start the camp classes, only to decide we should postpone
a little while in hopes that more students would show up. What felt, to us,
like a refreshing, cool breeze (low of 66°) was a much harsher cold front that
kept a lot of the children from coming to school in fear of getting sick with a
cold. A total of about 30 children, ages 4 to 12, came to the camp today, which
was sort of a nice way to ease into our roles as teachers. Being one of the
camp PE teachers, we spent our time outside playing red-light-green-light, red
rover, volleyball, and of course futbol. Those kids are AMAZING at soccer and I
spent much of my morning chasing them back and forth across the field.
After the camp, we ate Styrofoam boxed lunches of chicken,
garden salad, and rice made by a woman that lives down the street from the
school. Some of the kids stayed around during our lunch break, intently
watching us eat. Many of us were more than willing to share our lunches with
them, since we were given pretty heavy servings. After our cool down time from
keeping up with 30 young children, we jumped straight back into construction.
Today’s plan was to finish the concrete pad—which we completed, yay! We were
much, much faster at mixing the concrete today (thank goodness). We did about 9
bags of cement in 3-ish hours, which was a huge step-up from the amount of time
it took us to do the same yesterday. We left the site feeling very accomplished
and ready for dinner. After our much awaited showers, we had a BBQ dinner of
chicken, coleslaw, beans, and tortillas delivered to the hotel. I am convinced
that Belizeans make the BEST tortillas, and would happily eat them for every
meal if I could.
I have absolutely loved my time in Belize so far and am
already nervous about leaving part of my heart here when we leave at the end of
the week. I love the ocean, the vegetation, the kids, the staff at Chan Chen,
the group of students and professors I traveled here with, the kids, the food,
being able to teach, playing with the kids, watching the progress on our
structure—and did I mention the kids!? This really has been an amazing
experience so far and I know there is still more to come before we leave.
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| Lauren teaching PE |
Today I learned:
- Belizeans define a “cold front” very differently than we do in Boise.
- These Belizean children are fantastic soccer/futbol players and I’m convinced they would give any American college soccer player a run for their money.
- Reapplying sun screen during a cloudy “cold front” is just as important as any other day (hence why I rubbed an aloe vera plant all over my red, farmer-tanned arms as soon as we got back to the hotel
- How to master the art of concrete mixing (mostly).
- How to improvise and be flexible when plans change.
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| End of day - Monday |
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