Cuxlin Ha Punta Gorda

... secure, clean and with reserved seats) buses to Guatemala City and we felt our decision was justified. Once again the London tube pass yard stick came out and for the price of a zone 6 one way trip you could cross the continent (ok its very skinny down here) in style. Plus you get an armed guard with a rusty shotgun to ward off bandits. Having achieved so much it seemed silly to fight our way back to the festival, and sundowners on the Caribbean seemed a much better way to unwind.

I promised my mom that we wouldn't do anything crazy this week. No volcanoes, bats, or missing tuk-tuks. No soccer games or jungle boat rides. Just a nice, safe week volunteering in Belize. However, as I was talking to a patient (in Spanish) yesterday, and explaining that I would be running their EKG, I couldn't help but feel that this week isn't entirely 'normal' either.

This week we're spending our time volunteering with the HOPE ...

Today was our very last clinic at Hillside. It was rather busy (mainly because Emma spent most of the morning doing minor surgery (we had a visiting doctor today!) – removing a rather large, old, infected sebaceous cyst out of a man's back and then stitching him back up again. I meanwhile had a whole family with scabies… hmph. I’m soooo concerned that I have picked up scabies from these past few weeks… so many people I see have it and there ...

... luxury). We left clinic at 1:30 and went to pick up the other girls who had been sitting outside of big falls for a couple of hours. Just after leaving we got a flat tyre!!! Which Andy totally refused our help to fix, so we stood around watching helpless as he changed the tyre (involving finding some wood to help jack it up!) When we got back to hillside we decided it was time we did the full hour and a half of Tae-bo… just so that we can say we’ve done ...

... on mobiles than the villagers are getting when they travel a long way to the big polyclinic is frustrating, especially when we saw some villagers from the village we should have been at on Monday who asked when we’d be back.

Monday afternoon I went on a home visit with Carol to meet a local family who have three very disabled children. The parents are at least first cousins with a lot of family intermarrying and their 3 children 9,8,7 all require constant ...

... through the night….. hopefully he’ll stick to it but at 6 weeks old I get the feeling it may have been futile!!! (I did give advice on getting some birth control asap however, hopefully she will!!!!)

So I once again had that frustrating useless feel when I found that there was one more patient to see. A 39 yr old who had a very strong fam history of diabetes and came in for a glucose test…. It was high… very high. SO I ...

... in one piece and had a well deserved swim (during which the people on the tour from lubantoon pitched up on their cave part of the tour!). We were just about getting ready to go when a whole troup of American kids pitched up (when asked what they were doing in Belize they said 'we're here for Jesus') but it seemed like a good time to leave. On the way home we carried a local family part of the way in the pan (it's considered rude here to drive around with an empty pan ...

... wellies and all sorts of good things). We did it wearing scrubs in our room and will never be doing it in front of the Ameican’s since we proved ourselves rather malcoordinated in the process!!! It was quite a lot of fun however, and a pretty good workout (we sweated gallons though in the heat) and the wonderful American cheesy peptalks throughout and at the end were golden!

Tomorrow we go to Placencia where it may well rain all weekend – Fingers crossed not!!

... stopped on the opposite side of the road. The minibus driver grabbed our bags and the chicken bus guy motioned for us to run across the highway and then pulled us into the back of the old American school bus. I love how there is absolutely no waiting time for connections, just one bus to the next!

We spent way too long on that bus, I know the old man on the minibus was just trying to help, but it took almost 3 hours for the one hour ride. A man came on selling snow ...