Conclusion of our first week in Belize

December 28:

Overnight update: Dad caught an opossum outside our window in the garbage can.  The poor soul could not escape, so, being the nice guy that he is, Dad decided to "help" him out of the can.

We spent the last day of the work week near Pool 6 surveying.  We had a decent, if not steaming hot and humid, day in the field.  We walked quite a distance to a mound, and then surveyed a non-mound site too.  We walked back closer to the Pool (and our truck) and surveyed there too.  Overall, I am accomplishing more than I had planned, so hopefully that is a good thing :)  We had two casualties of the field: one of my "rite in the rain" pens (lost during the last turn of our first survey) and Dad's plant clippers (lost on the walk back to the truck OR in Ernesto's truck on the bumpy ride home).  We got home as the cleaning ladies were finishing our room, so we got red fanta's from the cafe from "santa" (who told me his whole life story yesterday out of the blue). 

We are now uber suspicious of the cleaning ladies because they took our rum on Wednesday.  Here is the story: we got rum in our gift basket during the Christmas dinner at Banana Bank.  Given that neither of us were going to drink it, we decided to give it to Ernesto later on in the trip.  We put the bow that came with the basket on it and left it in the floor next to Dad's luggage.  When we got back on Wednesday, Dad said "did you do something with that rum?!"  We couldn't find it anywhere, although the bow was dropped on Dad's luggage, so we have evidence that it was indeed there at some point.  Honestly, I think Dad put it somewhere and just forgot that he had done that (Mom, you can relate), but it could be that those sneaky cleaning ladies decided that since we hadn't downed that bottle so far that they needed to finish it off for us.  At any rate, we did a quick inventory and, since only the rum........and not my laptop, camera, iPad, food, phone, or anything of value really........was missing, we decided that they could have it.

We pressed the plants and tried to access the internet, but it was down.  So, we decided to make instant potatoes and watch a movie.  We started with "The Campaign", but it was poorly pirated, and started at a point where there was a ton of language issues, so we switched to "Moonrise Kingdom".  I think Dad liked it, but he didn't really understand it at times.

I got in a cleaning mood and cleaned up the counter in the bathroom and the top of the dresser (where Dad dumps garbage, tons of reading glasses, the food, etc.)  Dad happily obliged me, and read his book.


December 29:

We decided to go back into Belmopan, but first we did dishes.  Actually, he suggested it (GASP) and I asked about small steps (heating up the water, washing his stuff) until he eventually did his very own dishes!  And then I did mine.  We caught a taxi into town (he finally showed up today!  And we have been wandering around town ever since.  Our plan is to get Taiwanese food on our way out of town and even my ultra favorite drink: Bubble Milk Tea!!!

More updates to come!