"advice #1: dont driNk coffee before going on an international flight. And dont drink coffee that isnt the color of your skin. Im getting nervous so im talking fast. If you forget my name call me simba." -meagan lyOn.
were sitting outside the gate at the ATL airport getting ready to board at 10:31! The girl I'm sitting next to, Meagan, I'm sure will keep me entertained (refer to above quote) hahahah. We're super excited/ nervous! The flight is 3 hours long but it is a direct flight. I'll check in tonight on how the day went 😁😍☺️😁😀🎉✈️💺✈️✈️✈️ bye 🇺🇸!
day 2
today was another awesome day in Belize! We started out at 7:30 this morning with banana pancakes,eggs, sausage, and freshly squeezed orange juice!! So yummy! We then went into town for a scavenger hunt where we went in groups of 4 to find places such as the dentist(there are only 2 in the whole country), a bank, playground, picture with a person born in San Ignacio, Chinese restaurant, the cornerstone foundation, ice cream shoppe, a picture of a stray dog, the police station, and more. This took about 3 hours and after we ate a delicious lunch at guava limb. The food here is much cheaper then the United States and a water bottle is usually only $1. We then went to the Mayan ruins(pictured above)!!!!! These were absolutely breath taking and one of the coolest things I've ever experienced. The pictures just don't do it justice. While there, I learned that the military men they had on site are not highly trained because If something were to happen they usually call in U.S. Special forces who train in the jungles close to where we were. I had no idea that went on. We also were on the Guatemalan border today so that was cool! We finished out the day with a quick swim in the pool and dinner at the log cab inns like we do every night. Overall, Today we met a lot of locals and learned so much from them. Tomorrow I hope to teach them healthy living and more at the market fair we are attending. Thank you God for this one in a lifetime experience, I'm having a blast!! Xoxo- Morgan Jenkins
day 3
as you can see on the itenarary, today we went to the marker and did a health fair. While there we took height, weight, blood pressure, heart rate, and glucose levels through pricking fingers. We tested over 150 people and for the most part, they were surprisingly healthy! I say suprisingly because most people do mot get regular check ups and some even did not know which way to face to have their height measured. A lot of them are very short so I got the comment "you're so tall!" Often. Most of the women were under 5'2" and the men under 5'8". A large majority were over weight so we explained to them how to be more heAlthy be diet and exercise. Some came to us with specific problems such as a sore throat, acid reflux, and diabetes. We didn't have medicine to give out but if they were in bad condition we referred them to a doctor and gave life style change suggestions. Some of them did not speak Any English either so a local helped translate. Overall it was a hot but a great day and I feel like we made a difference in these people's life. We even kept their testing results for our records so they can come back next year and see if there is improvement in their health. We also went into the market after and I bought some natural peanut butter from a man who told me that the prime minister of belize's mother in law lives in savannah (where I'm from) how cool!!! And I bought some local soap. We tried wine too but I didn't buy it because the grapes to make it were imported so it technically wasn't belizian.
Next we went to another Mayan ruin site. These were not as tall, but the architecture was very detailed and unique. We enjoyed running around like little kids on a playground haha. I ran out of storage on my phone to take pictures so none on this blog today, xoxo- Morgan Jenkins
Next we went to another Mayan ruin site. These were not as tall, but the architecture was very detailed and unique. We enjoyed running around like little kids on a playground haha. I ran out of storage on my phone to take pictures so none on this blog today, xoxo- Morgan Jenkins
day 4&5
these past 2 days have been spent building an orphanage called
while there,we built the basement/cellar for a house that will host at least 4 girls. This orphanage is going to be for mainly teenage girls because orphanages in Belize kick girls out to the streets at that age. That leads to most of them turning to prostitution to survive :( this Organizations goal is to be "self-sustaining" so they have farm animals, crops planted, and the cellar we built is going to be used to store food since it is 15 degrees colder underground. There will be no electricity, refrigeration, air conditioning, washer/dryers, etc. so they will teach the girls how to survive and live while supporting them. They plan to use propane to cook also. The houses built there are made of stucco. We built the walls of the cellar with bags filled with cement. They were recycled chicken feed bags we used doubled up. The cement was made of dirt, lime, and water. We stacked them with barb wire in between each layer. It sounds easy but just to fill one bag is a 9 step process and exhausting. By the end of the day we were bruised, cut, blistered, burnt, and tired but the work was worth it because this is going to save girls lives in years to come. James and Nancy are in charge of the organizAtion and were very sweet. They fed us lunch both days also and we played with their kids. Yesterday on our lunch break we had fun playing tug against another belizian organization volunteering theere and beat them on the first round!! Then got dragged on the second. Overall it was very hot but at the end of it I was happy we could help but so tired and ready to go to the cabins "home". we came back, showered, and then got ice cream in town. While there we made a trip to the pharmacy and I was surprised to know that they sell individual pills for cheap because a whole bottle is expensive. Ok well that's it!
Ps: I'm getting very tan and was told I look like a local!! 😉
Til tomorrow! -Morgan Jenkins
Ps: I'm getting very tan and was told I look like a local!! 😉
Til tomorrow! -Morgan Jenkins
day 6
today we got to finally sleep in a little bit compared to days 4&5! We had breakfast at 7:30(remember Belize is two hours behind Georgia time) and loaded up into the vans at 8:45. We split into 3 groups of 6 and located In different parts of Sam Ignacio to hand out pamphlets on aids, glucose, cholesterol, and teen pregnancy. We also gave out condoms and toothbrush/toothpaste. We decided next year we are going to bring female hygiene supplies also. Throughout the trip we have been writing down ideas for next years group on what to bring/improvements because we want more people to get this amazing experience! Anyway, we also did height, weight, blood pressure, and heart rate testing again. We got a lot of "customers" especially children from a nearby school. These children came to cornerstone for lunch where they are provided a free meal every day since most parents at home don't take care of that. I love kids and really enjoyed getting to talk to them about their day during lunch. Next, we went to lunch at ko ax han ah's meaning "let's eat" ! It was delicious and I got a cheeseburger. The portions here are huge so I could only finish half of it! After that we went straight to the San Ignacio resort for the herb train tour. This was not my favorite thing of the trip... Because we saw a snake jumping around about a foot in front of us. All my close friends at home know I had a bad experience with snakes when I was little so this really freightened me. But, seeing the plants and their uses on the tour was interesting. The tour ended with holding green iguanas(as we learned, there are 2 types:black which are scavengers and green which eat plants only.) he also told us that in Belize some people eat "bamboo chicken" which is actually grilled green iguana so we should not order that. At first I was scared to hold them but then it ended up being fun! They crawled all over us and we took lots of pictures! That was a unique experience!
day 7
today we did one of my most favorite things, go to the nursing home. All throughout high school I worked at hospice and sometimes went to their separate Alzheimer's nursing home also. I love the elderly and their stories and endless wisdom. Maybe geriatrics is my calling in nursing, but who knows! Anyways, we spent the whole morning there spending time with the residents. This included talking to them, reading, playing bingo, and also even throwing the beach ball! I spent the first part of the morning with Olivia. She was a very pleasant woman but when I asked if she wAnted to play bingo she said no her bible tells her not to gamble. Next, I talked to a man named Marvin Meyers. Marvin really become special to me in those few short hours. His voice was hoarse and he had a belizian accent so it was very difficult to understand him but I quickly got the hang of it and he even said to me that he really enjoyed talking to me because most people don't understand him. He told me so many interesting stories about his life, regardless if they were true or not I enjoyed listening to him and occasionally getting a word in. He definitely had dementia so he often repeated the question "how long will you be here?" But that did not bother me one bit because I didn't want to leave. Then, I asked if he wanted to play bingo. He kept saying no but I insisted anyway. Eventually I convinced him and he ended up loving it. He won several times and was a trip. He thanked me several times because he was a new resident at the Octavia wright centre nursing home but was very lonely and bored his first month there since he had no visitors and refused to join in on the group activities. Overall that was a great experience I will never forget And Marvin will be in my prayers. Next, we toured the Loma Luz hospital. It was very run down compared to Americas high tech medical equipment. There was no AC so you will see in the pictures where a curtain was blowing in the hallway from the breeze coming from outside. The tour guide nurse told us that the rooms there are $125 a night (it's a private hospital) and there are 10 rooms. In the pharmacy I thought it was interesting that they give you medicine by count in a bag instead of waisting a whole bottle of it. Another weird fact they told us is that most babies in Belize are conceived in December during the holidays and while it is cold since people don't have AC... 😳. The neonatal room in their hospital was "not working" as they told us so patients go to the hospital in Belize city. They only had 1 patient all day so the hospital was very empty!
ps: there are no pictures from thE nursing home because they didnt allow it.
Pss: random fact= Diesel is cheaper than gasoline Here!!
day 8
day 11
Sorry I am just now writing this. We Had a new group come stay at our Inn and they literally took up the wifi watching Netflix....so rude. But anyways, we spent our whole day at the ATM caves. It was unbelievably beautiful, I really can hardly put it into words, especially since I'm not a good writer. We were not allowed to take cameras here because a couple years ago a French man was on the tour and dropped his camera right onto a skull and broke it! The pictures I'm attaching are from the cave website but they do not even do justice on this unique experience but I'm going to give my best Readers Digest version (as my dad says to my talkative mom to do haha). So the tour started out by hiking 45 minutes into the jungle. We crossed the river 3 times to get there. On our way there we learned about different types of plants and ants that we encountered. The whole way there we wondered what in the world this cave was going to be like. Finally we arrived at ifs entrance and we put on our helmets to go in. Our guide, Aaron, explained to us that these caves were formed over a million years ago, and were used around 800 A.D. By the Mayans. They used these caves to get to shevalva which is the underworld. They were suffering a drought and turned to the rain god and maze god(corn) to save them. They brought offerings of food, incents, and blood into the cave to the gods. When this still didn't work they sacrificed humans. In the cave we got to be inches away from real human remains!!!! They do not have a lot of information on the skeletons because they are untouched and still in their original spot they died in. The final Skelton we saw was named the crystalline maiden. Unlike all the other remains, she had her complete body still visible. That was absolutely insane to see!! We were so excited. All the other remains we saw were just parts such as skulls, fingers, legs, and pelvic bones. Since the Mayans were all about under 5 foot tall, the leg bones looked very short. Other then skeletons, we also saw many cracked pots because they carried offerings in them. These were untouched too and only studied through archaeologists viewing them. ThIs cave is very famous and has been featured on national geographic! I'm so glad we got to experience this. Now back to going through the actual cave, it was a 4 mile journey and took about 2 hours.at the entrance of the cave you go right in by swimming! That was awesome with fresh clear water with little fish all around you. Other animals include crickets and crabs and catfish. The fish stop about a half mile in. There are also bats EVERYWHERE. The crickets In Here are vey different then what we're used to. They evolved to live in these dark caves so they had veryyyyy long antennas to guide them through the dark and their bodies look more like spiders. Speaking of the dark, our helmets had lights on them to guide us through the cave. Our guide often told us to turn them off on the swimming parts and we would hold hands instead, just to make it more of an adventure! 😄 it was crazy to look up and see the boulders surrounding us perfectly in plAce. We climbed all over. Under, and between them. It was an adrenaline rush for sure!! Once we reached the part of the cave where offerings took place, we took off our water shoes and were only allowed to wear socks because human oil can harm these ancient formations and so we don't hurt our feet. Certain walls of the cave called stalagmites we were not allowed to touch because of the oily hands can erode these beautiful structures away. Stalagmites are sparkly walls formed by where water used to flow over them. They form very slow only an inch every 100 years. They start from the ceiling where the calcium carbonate and water dripping form them. These are all over the cave. At one part, our guide used the iron sulfide rocks to draw "make up" on our face which was funny too. We learned about the Mayan number system so that is what was drawn on us. Our guide was very knowledgable and we learned so much about Belize in general on our bus ride there from the Inn to the cave and learned a lot also inside the cave. On the way there we picked him up in our van and on the 30 minute drive he taught us about all the structures and land we passed. One thing interesting he did tell us is that most people do not have health insurance because they can't trust the companies here since they often go bankrupt. He also told us that no one uses irrigation on the farms here because they get about 200 inches of rain per year in northern Belize and about 120 inches in middle Belize. They grow a lot of rice and sugar cane but can basically grow just about anything. The field we passed had week old corn planted and it was so pretty to me. Most people don't appreciate that or even notice it's Beauty but all I could think of was my papa as we passed by. I miss him so much. Other things we learned on the van ride wAs that Belize just recently became independent from Britain in the late 1900s so they are a young developing country. Our professor told us that even since he last came here a year ago this country has grown a lot with its infrastructures and even cleaning up littering. Slowly but surely people are becoming more educated, developed, and aware. Something else we learned that when the Mayans inhabited Belize they had a population of over 2.5 million. Now there population is barely 300,000!!! Aaron our tour guide also taught us a lot about creole, which is the main language spoken here. It's very broken English and difficult to understand. On our drive to the cave we passed through several different villages such as Chinese, Africans, mestizo, and Mennonites. It was hard to not be judgement all because these people just don't live like us. One small thing I even noticed was that there are no mailboxes. Anyway, back to the cave, after we exited the cave we still had a 45 minute wAlk back. On that walk I almost stepped on 1 of belize's most poisonous snakes while talking and not paying attention. It is called "fur of the lands" and was pretty large and scary. I basically just turned and walked the other way quickly but couldn't speak because like I said in a previous blog, snakes are my biggest fear. But after that our tour guide told us a funny story to lighten the mood. He's done tours for 16 years and seen small injuries such as broken toes or fingers, bruises and cuts. But last year was different, a girl on one of his times was not feeling well. He was trying to help her climb down one part when he all of a sudden had something brown land on his shoulder... 😷 she apparently wasn't feeling well and had what our group calls "code mayan ruin" hahaha inside joke. Well, it was a great day and I really enjoyed it!! Right now I'm typing this on my iPad in the van while we're on the way to the beach for our next stay! :) I'll add pictures and publish this later!
Ps: a lot of the pictures we've taken I won't have until we get back to the U.S. Because they are on digital cameras and have to be retrieved through a computer so that's why the past couple days I haven't had any.
Ps: a lot of the pictures we've taken I won't have until we get back to the U.S. Because they are on digital cameras and have to be retrieved through a computer so that's why the past couple days I haven't had any.
day 12
This morning we packed up and left San Ignacio to head towards almond beach in Hopkins, Belize. To split up the long bumpy car ride, we made a stop to zip line through the rainforest! 😄😀😃 this was many of our first times doing this so we were anxious/ excited. It was an awesome time and they had a photographer there taking pictures of us so he will email us those in the next couple weeks for me to post. One thing did go wrong though, one of our girls got confused about the directions we were given and improperly braked while zip lining towards a platform and she ran into it full speed. Her Ankles took most of the Impact but it sort of caused whiplash also. She seemed to be doing fine but about an hour after we left there she felt very sick and finally spoke up. She threw up out side the van and then got extremely pale with blue/ purple lips. I'm glad she's okay now but it was a "rush" for me while taking care of her.i love that kind of stuff and that's just another reason for me to do my best in my classes to become a nurse one day soon and do what I love!! We Layed her down in the van and I held her legs up and rubbed ice on them to cool her down and get circulation back in her lower body. Tara and dr hunt put a cold tag and ice on her inner arms and neck and calmed her down. I'm not sure if she was just dehydrated from the hot sun here or if the zip lining and bumpy car ride effected her, but I got in some nursing practice lol and she feels much better now! After a long ride we finally arrived at our destination, the almond beach resort. I am completely blown away with how nice this place is. We were greeted at our van with cold rags scented with lemon grass to cool us down from the heat. Then they gave us all a complementary drink of choice so most of us got. Rum punch! (Drinking age is 18 year so it's perfectly legal). They took us on a tour of the whole property including the pools, hot tub, swim up bar, beach with complementary kayaks and paddle boards, the spa, coffee shop, and then finally to our room where our luggage was inside. We are being treated like loyalty here and are so blessed!! Belize rocks!
today we took no pictures but I'm very tired so I'm not going to write much. We went to BNE which is the Belize natural energy plant. This is one of the best jobs to have here and the facility is the nicest building I've been in while in Belize. We did our regular testing we did at the other Locations and were there 9-3. These workers really did care about their health because this Job is so valuable to them. After the testing, we would individually Explain their results. This covered what each number means, healthy ranges, diet, exercise, and suggestions. It was a pleasure to talk to such genuine hard working people like them. One thing we did notice is that the men here are very tall compared to the men we tested at the market and see around town. Also, women were mainly in charge here and the men were kinda scared of them 😉👌
Ps: for anyone interested here is the link to where I am staying! http://www.logcabinn-belize.com
The next place we're staying is http://www.almondbeachbelize.com/mobile/
Ps: for anyone interested here is the link to where I am staying! http://www.logcabinn-belize.com
The next place we're staying is http://www.almondbeachbelize.com/mobile/
day 9
Today was an adventure to say the least! We canoed down the mystic river for what was supposed to be an easy 2 hours but instead was hard core paddling for 3. Apparently last year the girls did more drifting then hard work but we had no current and paddled hard. It was getting kinda boring until Emily, the other girl In my canoe, leaned to grab her shorts and we almost flipped! But she saved it so we just ended up with a lot of water In our boat instead. We were going to bail the water out with our water bottles but Hunt (our professor) told us not to because we were closer to the water and more balanced. A few minutes later we found that to not be true. Emily yelled to me "dragon flies are mating on your back! I swatted and we all accidently leaned at the same tiMe causing us to FLIP our canoe. We could not stop laughing so it took a while to find what was left of our stuff, flip it over, and strategically climb back in. We ended up loosing my cheap sunglasses and Emily's chest strap for her camera. :( but oh well it's a good memory! Afterwards we were exhausted and still had a ways to go. My stomach was not feeling too well either so we paddled fast and at the end I ran to the bathroom lol. The canoeing was worth it though because we got to see monkeys close up!! And humming birds at lunch! We are extremely tired now and waiting for dinner to be served and then are going to get ice cream from Cayo twist which is non dairy ice cream in town. This trip is amazing and I'm so blessed to be here!! Xoxo- Morgan Ann Jenkins Ps: we have a cute little doggy named spike who has followed us arOUND San Ignacio every day and we have no idea how he finds us but he does. I wish we could take him home!! I am too obsessed with fur babies but I got to FaceTime mine tonight with my parents and will post pictures of them!
day 10
today was spent at the sacred heart junior college teaching coaches, which are parent volunteers, how to do ankle/ wrist taping, CPR training, and dynamic warmups, cool downs, stretches, and rehab for volleyball, basketball, track/field, and soccer. As boring as that sounds, we had a great time and the people we taught caught on quickly. They even fed us a nice lunch that was barbeque chicken, baked beans, tortilla, and potatoe salad with orange juice. They eat a lot of carbs here!! But it actually helps to get us through these long days in the hot sun! After work, we played basketball and volleyball with the coaches kids. It was actually a lot of fun because I surprised myself and played well!! That always makes it more enjoyable. But I'm too competitive haha. Another crazy thing Happened! One of the coaches is best friends with my chemistry professor from GCSU named dr. Baanarjee! He's my least favorite professor because he's the only class I did not get an A in so I'm bitter haha. His friend there that I met went to college together in the U.S. And still talk on a daily basis. He ended up sending him a selfie with me making an angry face and he lectured my professor saying he is an "as*" hahaha that was the highlight of my day for sure. Anyway, now we're about to eat dinner! It's raining here for the first time on our trip so I'm not sure if we're still going to get ice cream later. I hope so though! The chocolate waffle cones are so good, till tomorrow! Xoxo Morgan 😘