Please Join Us for a Feast and Slideshow Event!

Traditional Belizean Feast Slideshow and Fundraiser Event

Sunday, March 3, 2012  2:00pm

at the Bradley Homestead

*

Come experience a traditional holiday meal from Belize! The menu will include “Relleno,” a stuffed chicken dish prepared with traditionally made spices, coconut rice and beans, vegetarian ceviche, and tortillas. An extended slideshow of the village and its people will be shown with commentary about social aid, permaculture, entrepreneurship, poverty, education, westernization, volunteer projects, and traditional culture.  We will be taking a deeper look at social aid and human nature and how we plan to work with the Three Human Challenges we encountered by using our Five Step Process to Really Helping.  We will be discussing our future projects and how you can get involved, too!

Suggested donation for dinner Adults $10, Children $5 

with all profits funding our future projects.

All are welcome! Families encouraged to attend.

Please RSVP by Feb 28th!

When Technology Fails

<sigh>

After a long trip we had lots of pictures to upload from various devices.  Disaster struck while uploading the ones from my phone (the ones I have been using on this blog)- all the pictures from January disappeared!  Gone from the phone, gone from the computer.  Oh no! 

 

I looked back at my January posts to the blog and I'm not sure whether it was helpful or not to see evidence of all the great photos I lost. On one hand, I feel grateful that at least my photos have been preserved in some form for the sake of storytelling.  On the other hand I am so upset I lost the original photos! You see the ones here on the blog were compressed for the blog and look kinda grainy, but the original photos were full size and beautiful!  I was hoping to print a few of the great ones like the picture of Pamy's family and the one of the girls feeding the seagulls, and I wanted to use some for my upcoming presentations about our trip. 

 

But now I have to decide- do I go through all the trouble of figuring out how to recover photos from the deleted files of my phone?  Or do I remember that 'Impermanence Surrounds Us' and let it go?

 

It's a tough decision....



Darkness Dispelled by Neon Hammock

Grey midwest, dark even at noon.  Coughs and coughdrops and hot tea.  Had to bust out my new hammock, I'm glad I picked one in neon colors to help dispel the darkness.  I strategically placed it with a view of a tree and a poster of ocean waves but it's still not the same in socks and longjohns.

Are We There Yet?

We awoke to a sunny day in Cancun this morning and filled our bellies with chilaquiles and salchicha.  Then a taxi ride to the airport and some browsing at the gift shop.  Somehow I often fail to take pictures of us Doing Stuff because we are, well, doing stuff, but the gift shop was full of cool, colorful trinkets to look at (that I didn't take a single picture of.)

The kids watched as the plane came in and Ru took down some final notes in her Belize notebook.  When we boarded the plane was full of mist which was supposedly the air conditioning reacting to the hot weather but was still creepy-looking.  Sigh- hot weather.  I will miss you so much!

Ru had a turn photo- documenting the flight and Fred the turtle ate all the pretzel nuggets.

The midwest from above is quite sunny, I hope you know, above all those sad grey clouds.  Kas busted out The Hat in preparation for landing.

Yessss!  We made it!  B's parents picked us up at the airport and we went out for chinese food.  It is nice to be back!  Temperatures were around 35°, chioly but not too bad. 

Ru was stoked to be home.  She stripped down yelling "It's fine if I take a bath mom?"  Yes honey, it's fine ;) especially since we haven't had a bathtub available for the last six weeks!  After her bath she put on a beau-i-ful dress and pretty shoes (and a wig) and went to the kitchen to bake some pie.  Ahhhhhh, home again, home again. 

Goodnighty night my friends.  Reflections on being home shall follow.

Soaking Up the Sun

Today was the last day of our trip before we fly out tomorrow so we decided to go soak up the sun at Playa Tortugas. Cancun has a totally different feel than Playa Del Carmen.  For one thing the resorts go right up to the water whereas in Playa there is a wide strip of white beach before any hotels begin. For another thing there are big rocks and boulders along the shore which was different. We found a nice spot to look at lizards.  We made sand-turtles and brownie houses and even played with some other kids from France.  Then a break for grapes and a message in the sand :) When it was time to go TL decided to feed the seagulls some bits of sandwich that had dropped in the sand.  They flew stationary right in the air above her waiting for her to toss a piece up to them.  Great photo op! Kas found a leaf to rock out with. Dinner at a local place down the street where we ordered shrimp soup and a random selection of menu items we were unfamiliar with.  It was delicious!  Pineapple juice smoothie and fried chicken and potatoes with cheese and a pork sautee.  Yum. When we got back to our hotel we giggled at the fact that we've managed to get sunburns in January.  B is especially excited to see what it's like to have a sunburn during the middle of winter.  Good thing too, because his legs are red as a lobster! As our journey comes to an end tonight we want to make a special shout-out to the $2 pair of thrift store sandals I bought for Kas that survived this month of international travel even though they required two rounds of superglue maintenance to make it through. Now, as we say goodbye to this glorious country filled with sunshine and seafood, so too we say goodbye to these sandals, which can serve no purpose in the wintery world of grayness, cold, and ice to which our return is imminent. Goodbye sun! Goodbye, sandy beaches! Goodbye, jungles and lizards and tasty food! Oh, with sorrow we shall depart, but only to return soon! We shall return! For those at home- see you soon! :)