Monday

No pictures to post today, but will try to add some tomorrow. Today was our first day of work at the school, which spanned the gamet of washing dishes after the 420+ students ate lunch to decorating classrooms to playing games and helping in the classrooms to repairing furniture to starting to build the school's first library. The latter involved several of our party slopping around in the muck, trying (and sometimes succeeding) in sinking big, heavy 6 x 6 piles in holes we dug that kept filling up with water. (OK, so we played with big blocks in the sand: but it WAS hard). We even got to play with power tools. We began the day by visiting all the classrooms and introducing ourselves. Suspect the children were most amazed that Craig was the biggest nurse they had ever seen (and a MAN!), that women could grow up to be lawyers (Joan, or "Miss Juanita," as she is known here) and priests (that other John's wife), and that Father Joe could balance brooms on his chin and chairs on his fingers (Note to 2009 teams: you will probably be building a "time out" room for all the kids who try to emulate Father Joe!). The walk back to the hotel was interesting as part of "Carnival" in Belize involves roving bands of adolescents with bottles filled with paint who thrown the paint on one another and perhaps (we feared) on unsuspecting passers-by. We tried to project a muscular Christianity and were unscathed. If the Motrin kicks in, we should be back working bright and early tomorrow morning.